Hello everyone, my name is Jared aka Methuselah’s Grandpa & I love surround music so much that…

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

….I now spend several hours every day devoted to mixing old and new music into surround sound.

Pink Floyd’s DSOTM was the first time I heard Quadraphonic music & it opened up my ears to the wonderful experience of surround-sound & also the unfortunate limits of stereo.

After searching, collecting & listening to as much surround music as I could find, …I hit that wall that so many are probably familiar with. “Where is the rest of it?”, …my initial euphoria was eventually crushed once I realized that the party was basically over in terms of discovering a whole bunch of great new lossless surround mixes.

I RARELY listened to anything in stereo for a long time and I think this made me more in tune to what I loved and hated about certain surround mixes.

I am a musician of 20+ years so I was somewhat familiar with DAWs like Audacity, …so I used it to examine 100s of surround mixes in my collection, …I wanted to see what was under the hood & what it was specifically that was happening in each channel that I wanted more of, or less of.

I was curious to see if there was some magical recipe that made one surround mix so much better than another. Well, …I didn’t find a one-size-fits-all template but what I did find was my own very specific tastes for what could make or break a surround mix.

I won’t go into all of it now but for me;
a great mix has very discrete surround sound, …I don’t want 5-channel stereo.
A bad mix has a very loud and distracting Center channel. Stereo & Quad mixes have shown me that the nuances between the Left and Right vocal track can be like candy to the ears but that can be lost when blasting the vocals in the Center channel & you can lose those details. Also, it disrupts the panorama IMO.

There are many more but this isn’t the time or place for that.

So, with these “guidelines” I began to seek out studio multitracks spanning over 60 years and create my own surround mixes from scratch. I’ve mixed over +200 songs as of Nov. 2022 in 4.0, 4.1, 5.1 & 7.1 that have only ever had stereo releases, …I continue to learn and improve each day & one day hope to work directly with artists and recording engineers.
—————————
I just realized how long this introduction was, …sorry! haha I can ramble on for a bit without realizing it. Anyways, …I’m glad I finally signed up for an account here, …I’ve visited the site a handful of times and always enjoyed the conversations and information.

 

[krnewman]

….I now spend several hours every day devoted to mixing old and new music into surround sound.

Pink Floyd’s DSOTM was the first time I heard Quadraphonic music & it opened up my ears to the wonderful experience of surround-sound & also the unfortunate limits of stereo.

After searching, collecting & listening to as much surround music as I could find, …I hit that wall that so many are probably familiar with. “Where is the rest of it?”, …my initial euphoria was eventually crushed once I realized that the party was basically over in terms of discovering a whole bunch of great new lossless surround mixes.

I RARELY listened to anything in stereo for a long time and I think this made me more in tune to what I loved and hated about certain surround mixes.

I am a musician of 20+ years so I was somewhat familiar with DAWs like Audacity, …so I used it to examine 100s of surround mixes in my collection, …I wanted to see what was under the hood & what it was specifically that was happening in each channel that I wanted more of, or less of.

I was curious to see if there was some magical recipe that made one surround mix so much better than another. Well, …I didn’t find a one-size-fits-all template but what I did find was my own very specific tastes for what could make or break a surround mix.

I won’t go into all of it now but for me;
a great mix has very discrete surround sound, …I don’t want 5-channel stereo.
A bad mix has a very loud and distracting Center channel. Stereo & Quad mixes have shown me that the nuances between the Left and Right vocal track can be like candy to the ears but that can be lost when blasting the vocals in the Center channel & you can lose those details. Also, it disrupts the panorama IMO.

There are many more but this isn’t the time or place for that.

So, with these “guidelines” I began to seek out studio multitracks spanning over 60 years and create my own surround mixes from scratch. I’ve mixed over +200 songs as of Nov. 2022 in 4.0, 4.1, 5.1 & 7.1 that have only ever had stereo releases, …I continue to learn and improve each day & one day hope to work directly with artists and recording engineers.
—————————
I just realized how long this introduction was, …sorry! haha I can ramble on for a bit without realizing it. Anyways, …I’m glad I finally signed up for an account here, …I’ve visited the site a handful of times and always enjoyed the conversations and information.

There's so much fun can be had with homebrew multichannel.

Of course, in the dark days there wasn't new stuff coming out for a long time so we explored the heck out of whatever really was there.

One thing I have spent years on is 3 ch stuff, RCA Living Stereo LPs, of course, but ESP Saydiscs, and anything that was 3 ch by accident (and in another category altogether, the Haeco CSG LPs which sound like total crap in mono and stereo, designed to be "compatible with both but actually compatible with neither, but which sound good in 3 channel if you play around a bit, playing around being half the object here, the other the musical results. This applies to an entire [correction: 6 out of 9 of the tracks on the studio disc] LP of Cream Wheels of Fire, e.g. This is important information imo)

On top of that, I love experimenting with 3ch but putting the third speaker in different places, or splitting the center or rear channel to two or three speakers and then playing with the speaker arrangement and seating. Naturally this led nicely to 3ch "Surround Sound" as in the glory days of VHS tapes and the joys of Dolby PL I, which is still imo underrated. Just as mono has its own gestalt and soundstages (Listen to the mono LP of Notorious Byrd Brothers sometime, the second side where they go psychedelic, the mono mix plays with your room, it's that good. You won't believe it's mono), so does 3ch, which should not be ignored imo. Of course, I have no right to mention any of this, the real pros and professional amateurs were hooking up multiple speaker rigs since the 1950s.

 

[JonUrban]

I remember when I was in the Navy back in the early 70s, in my "pre-quad" years. I installed some Jensen 6x9 speakers in the back deck of my car (didn't we all?) and I screwed up the wiring somehow (Especially embarrassing as I was an Electronic Tech), and once I was done I headed out on the road to listen to them. I recall it was an Elton John cassette I was playing and I noticed right away that different parts of the tune were only coming out of the rears! Music passages that I'd never heard exposed in listening to that song/tape. In retrospect, it was my first foray into quad!

 

[krnewman]

When I was 11 I read an article about experiments at Bell labs with a DEC-10 and a room they constructed entirely of speakers, so they could put a sound anywhere in the room they wanted. I immediately put together a tool kit (my poor old man) with stuff to take to the dump a few miles from my house (I would bike to the woods nearby then sneak in commando style) to break into old abandoned radios, stereos, TVs, anything with speaker cones in them. I would take the speakers, and whatever else I'd scavenged, home and build (and decorate) speaker cabinets out of anything I could get my hands on. I would then place as many as possible around my room. This was still using mono. Then I incorporated stereo. Anyway, I could not duplicate their computer/speaker room but I found I could change the sound a number of ways which did give me enough spatial effects to make me permanently addicted. The fact most of my sources were "resource rich" because it was the late 60s early 70s and stereo was still youngish probably was a stroke of luck, because this meant my experiments were successful enough to inspire me for the next 50 years. So many interesting mixes back then. So alive or waiting and eager to be brought to life. Modern stuff is mostly like they smother it and stuff it in a box. Meh, phooey.

 

[gene_stl]

Welcome Methuselah's Grandpa and Krnewman !
Although I have built everything that goes into a stereo both from kits and from scratch , including speakers, I don't think it ever occured to me to try to mix my own stuff. Not to mention practically missing the multichannel party. But better late than never.

Both you guys will be great additions here!

 

[krnewman]

Welcome Methuselah's Grandpa and Krnewman !
Although I have built everything that goes into a stereo both from kits and from scratch , including speakers, I don't think it ever occured to me to try to mix my own stuff. Not to mention practically missing the multichannel party. But better late than never.

Both you guys will be great additions here!

tyftkw

 

[krnewman]

….I now spend several hours every day devoted to mixing old and new music into surround sound.

Pink Floyd’s DSOTM was the first time I heard Quadraphonic music & it opened up my ears to the wonderful experience of surround-sound & also the unfortunate limits of stereo.

After searching, collecting & listening to as much surround music as I could find, …I hit that wall that so many are probably familiar with. “Where is the rest of it?”, …my initial euphoria was eventually crushed once I realized that the party was basically over in terms of discovering a whole bunch of great new lossless surround mixes.

I RARELY listened to anything in stereo for a long time and I think this made me more in tune to what I loved and hated about certain surround mixes.

I am a musician of 20+ years so I was somewhat familiar with DAWs like Audacity, …so I used it to examine 100s of surround mixes in my collection, …I wanted to see what was under the hood & what it was specifically that was happening in each channel that I wanted more of, or less of.

I was curious to see if there was some magical recipe that made one surround mix so much better than another. Well, …I didn’t find a one-size-fits-all template but what I did find was my own very specific tastes for what could make or break a surround mix.

I won’t go into all of it now but for me;
a great mix has very discrete surround sound, …I don’t want 5-channel stereo.
A bad mix has a very loud and distracting Center channel. Stereo & Quad mixes have shown me that the nuances between the Left and Right vocal track can be like candy to the ears but that can be lost when blasting the vocals in the Center channel & you can lose those details. Also, it disrupts the panorama IMO.

There are many more but this isn’t the time or place for that.

So, with these “guidelines” I began to seek out studio multitracks spanning over 60 years and create my own surround mixes from scratch. I’ve mixed over +200 songs as of Nov. 2022 in 4.0, 4.1, 5.1 & 7.1 that have only ever had stereo releases, …I continue to learn and improve each day & one day hope to work directly with artists and recording engineers.
—————————
I just realized how long this introduction was, …sorry! haha I can ramble on for a bit without realizing it. Anyways, …I’m glad I finally signed up for an account here, …I’ve visited the site a handful of times and always enjoyed the conversations and information.

all I know is I have black sabbath paranoid in Q8, and the usual other formats (though i never heard the QR), but the best version i ever heard of it was a homebrew DTS mix a guy made back in the early noughts. In all the other formats it’s a pretty good album but in that DTS mix of his, it’s a much better album. Say, don’t suppose I could hire you to do me a remix of seventh sojourn based on just LF and RF? (Of course I can provide the source material which are legitimate copies which I legitimately own, I don’t usually ask people to break the law as a matter of course) Make it a really sparse psych album, like it’s from the Swedish progrock revival of the early 90s? Maybe make the bass merciless? I wonder what it would be like to take those channels from both the DTS disc and the Q8 and merge them together somehow? Naw, probably impossible to synch them, or at least I don’t know of any software which could do that. Anyway, what interests me is i’d want you to take what I hear and make it into what you hear so I can understand what you are really talking about. And to hear it another way so as to hear it more completely, maybe to understand it better but at least to experience if more fully, broader, deeper (e.g. listen to the stereo vinyl of Santana/Buddy Miles live, a truly great album, then listen to any decent copy of it in any quad, it’s just…i don’t know? … “further up and further in?”), which is what interests me most about multi channel sound in the first place.

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

There's so much fun can be had with homebrew multichannel.

Of course, in the dark days there wasn't new stuff coming out for a long time so we explored the heck out of whatever really was there.

One thing I have spent years on is 3 ch stuff, RCA Living Stereo LPs, of course, but ESP Saydiscs, and anything that was 3 ch by accident (and in another category altogether, the Haeco CSG LPs which sound like total crap in mono and stereo, designed to be "compatible with both but actually compatible with neither, but which sound good in 3 channel if you play around a bit, playing around being half the object here, the other the musical results. This applies to an entire [correction: 6 out of 9 of the tracks on the studio disc] LP of Cream Wheels of Fire, e.g. This is important information imo)

On top of that, I love experimenting with 3ch but putting the third speaker in different places, or splitting the center or rear channel to two or three speakers and then playing with the speaker arrangement and seating. Naturally this led nicely to 3ch "Surround Sound" as in the glory days of VHS tapes and the joys of Dolby PL I, which is still imo underrated. Just as mono has its own gestalt and soundstages (Listen to the mono LP of Notorious Byrd Brothers sometime, the second side where they go psychedelic, the mono mix plays with your room, it's that good. You won't believe it's mono), so does 3ch, which should not be ignored imo. Of course, I have no right to mention any of this, the real pros and professional amateurs were hooking up multiple speaker rigs since the 1950s.

Hello Mr. Newman!
Yes, “homebrew” multichannel takes up A LOT of my time, & I don’t get bored with it, …yesterday for example, I spent 12 hours working on a few new 5.1 mixes from the 80s; today I will take the day off though! haha

That 3-channel audio sounds pretty cool, …I’m curious as to how they mixed that 3rd channel, …was meant to be in front? Were the lead vocals included in that channel?

I have always been interested in speakers and tech. I tore apart clock radios when I was 8 and by age 11 I had rigged up my own surround system, with a home-made subwoofer (even though it was just 4-channel stereo). I hooked it all up to my Nintendo! I loved the bass!!
Hahaha

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

all I know is I have black sabbath paranoid in Q8, and the usual other formats (though i never heard the QR), but the best version i ever heard of it was a homebrew DTS mix a guy made back in the early noughts. In all the other formats it’s a pretty good album but in that DTS mix of his, it’s a much better album. Say, don’t suppose I could hire you to do me a remix of seventh sojourn based on just LF and RF? (Of course I can provide the source material which are legitimate copies which I legitimately own, I don’t usually ask people to break the law as a matter of course) Make it a really sparse psych album, like it’s from the Swedish progrock revival of the early 90s? Maybe make the bass merciless? I wonder what it would be like to take those channels from both the DTS disc and the Q8 and merge them together somehow? Naw, probably impossible to synch them, or at least I don’t know of any software which could do that. Anyway, what interests me is i’d want you to take what I hear and make it into what you hear so I can understand what you are really talking about. And to hear it another way so as to hear it more completely, maybe to understand it better but at least to experience if more fully, broader, deeper (e.g. listen to the stereo vinyl of Santana/Buddy Miles live, a truly great album, then listen to any decent copy of it in any quad, it’s just…i don’t know? … “further up and further in?”), which is what interests me most about multi channel sound in the first place.

I think you would really like that Quad-Reel of Alan Parson’s DSOTM. I’m not sure I’ve seen/heard an unofficial DTS mix of that, …it sounds intriguing.

As far as doing a new mix of seventh sojourn, …if the sources are a Q8 and a separate stereo mix, …I’m not sure I’d be able to do much with that at all. People who do UPmixes are used to expanding channels into several whereas I start with 10-80 tracks and eventually mix/master them down to 4.0/5.1/7.1
I will send you a private message to share my surround mixes and maybe try to fulfill your request as well.

 

[krnewman]

Hello Mr. Newman!
Yes, “homebrew” multichannel takes up A LOT of my time, & I don’t get bored with it, …yesterday for example, I spent 12 hours working on a few new 5.1 mixes from the 80s; today I will take the day off though! haha

That 3-channel audio sounds pretty cool, …I’m curious as to how they mixed that 3rd channel, …was meant to be in front? Were the lead vocals included in that channel?

I have always been interested in speakers and tech. I tore apart clock radios when I was 8 and by age 11 I had rigged up my own surround system, with a home-made subwoofer (even though it was just 4-channel stereo). I hooked it all up to my Nintendo! I loved the bass!!
Hahaha

since we are brothers, the RCA LS was made for LF CF RF. Taking that CF and splitting it to LR RR or simply CR (or all three, what the hey) sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t but tweezing a third channel out of the ground was always meant for CR whether intentionally or not. Wendy Carlos played around with the whole 3 ch speaker placement a lot. I should dig up my notes.

 

[jaybird100]

I remember when I was in the Navy back in the early 70s, in my "pre-quad" years. I installed some Jensen 6x9 speakers in the back deck of my car (didn't we all?) and I screwed up the wiring somehow (Especially embarrassing as I was an Electronic Tech), and once I was done I headed out on the road to listen to them. I recall it was an Elton John cassette I was playing and I noticed right away that different parts of the tune were only coming out of the rears! Music passages that I'd never heard exposed in listening to that song/tape. In retrospect, it was my first foray into quad!

Then our good friends at Universal chose to put out several of his albums on hybrid multichannel SACD's! If only they would have gone back and done the rest of them...

 

[gene_stl]

There is a Facebook group called Quad Trader's where people who have done their own multichannel mixes offer them for free.

They are not bootlegs and there are rules about what may be offered.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/737866253060668

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

There is a Facebook group called Quad Trader's where people who have done their own multichannel mixes offer them for free.

They are not bootlegs and there are rules about what may be offered.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/737866253060668

I quit Facebook about 8 years ago but I appreciate the link, thank you!
For now I share my surround mixes publicly in a couple places including my YouTube channel where they will stream up to 5.1 Dolby Digital+
https://www.youtube.com/@methuselahsgrandpa/featured