King Biscuit Flower Hour

[Zephead2112]

Zephead, I am presently working at an archive project in Boston that has a fair amount of reels left over from Boston area stations. In my list I'm showing a 10 inch reel of Robert Plant, but it might just be an interview. I expect to stop by there in the next few days, and I'll grab the reel and check it out. It's not for sale but at least I can confirm what is or isn't on it. I saw this tour as well and also remember the initial broadcast. I don't think there was anything other than the Texas show, so the mention of Riverfront coliseum might be another example of King Biscuit mentioning incorrect venues.

That would be fantastic, thank you very much! At least I might know what I'm actually hunting for. There was a 1985 broadcast of his Dallas show which is excellent but I don't believe it was a KBFH broadcast (it could have been Westwood One). Which show did you attend? Thanks once again!

 

[ssully]

When you are in the front row at a good live concert, and the band is cranked up loud, you do not hear any ambience in your rear anything. You are totally absorbed and into the sound that is all around you and coming from in front. It is no longer a front vs rear sound experience, from my perspective.

Allman's at the Fillmore East is another one that is "you are on-stage and playing with the band" type of arrangement.

Unless the concert PA itself was set up for 'quad'.

As the early 70s ELP and Yes shows recorded by KBFH were, for example.

 

[ssully]

So many questions, still....


It's now years later, and after the mrfloydin debacle (what a torrent of confusion! Which persists on his 2015-vintage website to this date), is the consensus that that no discrete quad reels even existed? Or that no quad reels were ever sent to stations by KBFH? One or both of these appears to be Bob R's and Mark Anderson's position, and they are both very reliable sources. Mark's site even says:

The shows were provided to radio stations on 7-1/2ips 2 track reel to reel
tapes in the SQ quadraphonic format. It was thought that 7-1/2ips 4 track discrete quadraphonic
tapes from the masters existed in the hands of private collectors, this has turned out to be untrue
as they were merely the 2 track tapes supplied to radio stations and when played on a quad 4 channel
reel showed activity on the rear channel VU meters, thus confusing the issue. Vinyl LP records were
not issued until the late 70's after the quad era. CD's of the quad era shows are not SQ encoded.

Yet, there was a mention on this thread by Fizzywiggs of some stations being equipped with matrix 'encoders'... ? Implying possession, for a time at least, of a quad reel at those stations, if true? Have ANY discrete quad KBFH reels turned up in the trader market?

Fizzy, the answer to your question about SQ mixes going to cd is that some were and some weren't. While I have found that pretty much all the commercial cd's were remixed (maybe a couple of exceptions), the broadcast cd's that started coming out in the late 80's are a mixed bag. There are definitely some SQ sources to be found there, even up until the bitter end of the biscuit show. Stuff like the Yes 74 thing was never remixed, so that one always shows up in its' original form (albeit with the usual brick wall limiting. bleck),

This claim that KBFH remixed quad-broadcast stuff for commercial stereo CD release, because the original 2 track masters are gone...does anyone have actual proof of this remixing? Does anyone have a KBFH commercial CD release that they can demonstrate was remixed? FWIW the ELP Anaheim CD mix sounds quite similar to the 'Welcome back My Friends' LP/CD of the same show, except having less reverb.

Finally, does anyone know why the 'Yes 74' thing shows up with 'brick wall limiting' regularly? Brick wall limiting as we know it today of course didn't exist in 1974, so it would not have been broadcast that way. It's never been sold commercially, so the only possible KBFH-sanctioned 'remix' would be the stream on Wolfgang's Vault. But quadaholic says it's never been remixed...and I can confirm the WV stream of it is not brickwalled*.


*and if it's not remixed on WV, does that mean it could still be SQ encoded there, and could be decoded if WV offered it as a lossless download ?

 

[quadaholic]

So many questions, still....


It's now years later, and after the mrfloydin debacle (what a torrent of confusion! Which persists on his 2015-vintage website to this date), is the consensus that that no discrete quad reels even existed? Or that no quad reels were ever sent to stations by KBFH? One or both of these appears to be Bob R's and Mark Anderson's position, and they are both very reliable sources. Mark's site even says:

The shows were provided to radio stations on 7-1/2ips 2 track reel to reel
tapes in the SQ quadraphonic format. It was thought that 7-1/2ips 4 track discrete quadraphonic
tapes from the masters existed in the hands of private collectors, this has turned out to be untrue
as they were merely the 2 track tapes supplied to radio stations and when played on a quad 4 channel
reel showed activity on the rear channel VU meters, thus confusing the issue. Vinyl LP records were
not issued until the late 70's after the quad era. CD's of the quad era shows are not SQ encoded.

Yet, there was a mention on this thread by Fizzywiggs of some stations being equipped with matrix 'encoders'... ? Implying possession, for a time at least, of a quad reel at those stations, if true? Have ANY discrete quad KBFH reels turned up in the trader market?



This claim that KBFH remixed quad-broadcast stuff for commercial stereo CD release, because the original 2 track masters are gone...does anyone have actual proof of this remixing? Does anyone have a KBFH commercial CD release that they can demonstrate was remixed? FWIW the ELP Anaheim CD mix sounds quite similar to the 'Welcome back My Friends' LP/CD of the same show, except having less reverb.

Finally, does anyone know why the 'Yes 74' thing shows up with 'brick wall limiting' regularly? Brick wall limiting as we know it today of course didn't exist in 1974, so it would not have been broadcast that way. It's never been sold commercially, so the only possible KBFH-sanctioned 'remix' would be the stream on Wolfgang's Vault. But quadaholic says it's never been remixed...and I can confirm the WV stream of it is not brickwalled*.


*and if it's not remixed on WV, does that mean it could still be SQ encoded there, and could be decoded if WV offered it as a lossless download ?

So many questions, still....


It's now years later, and after the mrfloydin debacle (what a torrent of confusion! Which persists on his 2015-vintage website to this date), is the consensus that that no discrete quad reels even existed? Or that no quad reels were ever sent to stations by KBFH? One or both of these appears to be Bob R's and Mark Anderson's position, and they are both very reliable sources. Mark's site even says:

The shows were provided to radio stations on 7-1/2ips 2 track reel to reel
tapes in the SQ quadraphonic format. It was thought that 7-1/2ips 4 track discrete quadraphonic
tapes from the masters existed in the hands of private collectors, this has turned out to be untrue
as they were merely the 2 track tapes supplied to radio stations and when played on a quad 4 channel
reel showed activity on the rear channel VU meters, thus confusing the issue. Vinyl LP records were
not issued until the late 70's after the quad era. CD's of the quad era shows are not SQ encoded.

Yet, there was a mention on this thread by Fizzywiggs of some stations being equipped with matrix 'encoders'... ? Implying possession, for a time at least, of a quad reel at those stations, if true? Have ANY discrete quad KBFH reels turned up in the trader market?



This claim that KBFH remixed quad-broadcast stuff for commercial stereo CD release, because the original 2 track masters are gone...does anyone have actual proof of this remixing? Does anyone have a KBFH commercial CD release that they can demonstrate was remixed? FWIW the ELP Anaheim CD mix sounds quite similar to the 'Welcome back My Friends' LP/CD of the same show, except having less reverb.

Finally, does anyone know why the 'Yes 74' thing shows up with 'brick wall limiting' regularly? Brick wall limiting as we know it today of course didn't exist in 1974, so it would not have been broadcast that way. It's never been sold commercially, so the only possible KBFH-sanctioned 'remix' would be the stream on Wolfgang's Vault. But quadaholic says it's never been remixed...and I can confirm the WV stream of it is not brickwalled*.


*and if it's not remixed on WV, does that mean it could still be SQ encoded there, and could be decoded if WV offered it as a lossless download ?

SSully, I will do my best to answer your questions (with what I THINK to be true at the moment).
1) No, I don't think there were ever any discrete 4 channel reels sent out to radio stations. I have transferred a bunch of shows and have never come across one. Plus, the logistics of dealing with 4 track reels would have been way to complicated and expensive for stations to deal with. By comparison, an SQ reel is plug and play, and it would be up to the listener to get the right gear to make it all work.

2) Remixing of quad mixes - I haven't heard every last one of the commercial cd releases of the shows, but all the ones I've heard are remixed. ELP was definitely remixed. This is a very confusing show as far as mixes go. There are actually 2 different quad mixes. One was for the album release (which got folded down to stereo). Then the quad mix for King Biscuit is actually a little more straight forward than the album mix with less efx and panning stuff going on. The stereo mix for the cd does sound very similar to the original broadcast mix in stereo. However, if you have the SQ mix, the big moog will be spinning around the speakers from time to time, amongst other things. The end of Karn Evil 9 is the easiest example. If you like, I can shoot a video of the end of that going through my audionics and you can see the meter lighting up.

3) rebroadcast of quad mixes- Yes, I have found encoded mixes on broadcast cd's. While there was a fire and tapes were lost in the early 80's, it seems like there must have been some production masters that survived.

4) Brickwall limiting on Yes show - Later King Biscuit broadcast cd's have progressively more and more limiting on them. The early ones much less so. Another issue I have found is that the first two songs of the show (Sound Chaser and Close to the Edge) were printed to tape extremely hot (way too much so with lots of distortion) and the wave forms are all clipped even before the limitting. I think the existing version of the show we've been hearing for years MIGHT be a production/duping master which was less than perfect. If any other reels show up from the early broadcasts of this show it might be worth comparing. I have a version of sound chaser from a 74 "best of" show which sounds noticeably cleaner from what I remember, which makes me think the (lost) master might have been what they used for this cut. The Wolfgangs vault version is encoded, with the exception of Ritual, which is just stereo. Having said that, the encoding is very messed up and will not decode "as is".
5) When Fizzy is mentioning stations having "encoders", I expect he was referring to the time when some stations were upmixing stereo stuff into quad for broadcast to better match the actual quad stuff they were running along side it.

One final thing. I've found that there are more than a couple of King Biscuit shows that advertise as being quad which definitely are NOT. Just plain stereo sometimes.

 

[ssully]

SSully, I will do my best to answer your questions (with what I THINK to be true at the moment).
1) No, I don't think there were ever any discrete 4 channel reels sent out to radio stations. I have transferred a bunch of shows and have never come across one. Plus, the logistics of dealing with 4 track reels would have been way to complicated and expensive for stations to deal with. By comparison, an SQ reel is plug and play, and it would be up to the listener to get the right gear to make it all work.

2) Remixing of quad mixes - I haven't heard every last one of the commercial cd releases of the shows, but all the ones I've heard are remixed. ELP was definitely remixed. This is a very confusing show as far as mixes go.

I was probably unnecessarily complicating the question, by using as an example something that was broadcast in matrixed quad.

A better example would be a KBFH show that was mixed and broadcast in stereo only in the 1970s/early 80s, captured on a bootleg, and later (after the '82 fire) released on CD officially. Does the CD release sound remixed (not just differently mastered) compared to what was broadcast?

There are actually 2 different quad mixes. One was for the album release (which got folded down to stereo). Then the quad mix for King Biscuit is actually a little more straight forward than the album mix with less efx and panning stuff going on. The stereo mix for the cd does sound very similar to the original broadcast mix in stereo.

And that would be the best comparison, not a comparison of quad to stereo.

3) rebroadcast of quad mixes- Yes, I have found encoded mixes on broadcast cd's. While there was a fire and tapes were lost in the early 80's, it seems like there must have been some production masters that survived.

4) Brickwall limiting on Yes show - Later King Biscuit broadcast cd's have progressively more and more limiting on them. The early ones much less so.

I guess that was the underlying question. Was KBFH ever 'baking in' compression to its products, or was it added by radio stations?

Hardcore digital compression didn't become a thing until the late 1980s, so I would be surprised to find it on any for-broadcast CDs made before then.

Another issue I have found is that the first two songs of the show (Sound Chaser and Close to the Edge) were printed to tape extremely hot (way too much so with lots of distortion) and the wave forms are all clipped even before the limitting. I think the existing version of the show we've been hearing for years MIGHT be a production/duping master which was less than perfect. If any other reels show up from the early broadcasts of this show it might be worth comparing. I have a version of sound chaser from a 74 "best of" show which sounds noticeably cleaner from what I remember, which makes me think the (lost) master might have been what they used for this cut.

I have at least three different-sounding surround 'decodes' of this. One is OD's from 2012, another is from 2019 by a 'guy' who 'developed his own process with guidance from OD' (and this one sounds the best) , a third is by someone else entirely. All show to be compressed in dynamic range and limited in frequency range. This could be due to the 'mastering' choices of the persons who did the decoding, or it could just be baked into their sources, I just don't know.

The Wolfgangs vault version is encoded, with the exception of Ritual, which is just stereo. Having said that, the encoding is very messed up and will not decode "as is".

Was it ever losslessly available from Wolfgangs? AFAIK, WV downloads these days are mp3-only. This is what I was told, I haven't done any

FWIW I can say that when I use Audacity to record the streaming audio of 'Close to the Edge' that's available on the site, I see no evidence of clipping, nor obvious sign of lossy encoding. The recorded wav file displays no shelving in a frequency scan, nor does the spectrum show any abrupt shelving or hard low pass filtering, as one would expect from all but the best quality mp3s. So this is a high quality mp3 if it is one) . There is audible content to at least 17kHz. The audio sounds 'hot' ; Eddy Offord , who oversaw their live sound back then, liked pushing things into the red. But that's old school distortion

None of which is as dispositive as having a confirmed digital dub of 'master reels' audio to compare it to.

 

[quadaholic]

I was probably unnecessarily complicating the question, by using as an example something that was broadcast in matrixed quad.

A better example would be a KBFH show that was mixed and broadcast in stereo only in the 1970s/early 80s, captured on a bootleg, and later (after the '82 fire) released on CD officially. Does the CD release sound remixed (not just differently mastered) compared to what was broadcast?




And that would be the best comparison, not a comparison of quad to stereo.



I guess that was the underlying question. Was KBFH ever 'baking in' compression to its products, or was it added by radio stations?

Hardcore digital compression didn't become a thing until the late 1980s, so I would be surprised to find it on any for-broadcast CDs made before then.




I have at least three different-sounding surround 'decodes' of this. One is OD's from 2012, another is from 2019 by a 'guy' who 'developed his own process with guidance from OD' (and this one sounds the best) , a third is by someone else entirely. All show to be compressed in dynamic range and limited in frequency range. This could be due to the 'mastering' choices of the persons who did the decoding, or it could just be baked into their sources, I just don't know.



Was it ever losslessly available from Wolfgangs? AFAIK, WV downloads these days are mp3-only. This is what I was told, I haven't done any

FWIW I can say that when I use Audacity to record the streaming audio of 'Close to the Edge' that's available on the site, I see no evidence of clipping, nor obvious sign of lossy encoding. The recorded wav file displays no shelving in a frequency scan, nor does the spectrum show any abrupt shelving or hard low pass filtering, as one would expect from all but the best quality mp3s. So this is a high quality mp3 if it is one) . There is audible content to at least 17kHz. The audio sounds 'hot' ; Eddy Offord , who oversaw their live sound back then, liked pushing things into the red. But that's old school distortion

None of which is as dispositive as having a confirmed digital dub of 'master reels' audio to compare it to.

Sully, apologies for not following up on this sooner.
From the handful of remixed commercial cd releases I have heard, the remixes seem to be a little more polished than the original radio mixes, whether they be quad or not. The original mixes were done for relatively short money and limited time. I'm not sure if any original mixes were used for the cd's.
As far as compression goes, i expect all of the mixes done would have had some sort of mix bus compression on them. Of course, any off air tapes would have even more compression added to the overall sound as a result of whatever the stations were using on their air chain.
Your comments on the sound of the Yes show sound like what I hear, too. To me, it sounds like some fidelity was lost somewhere along the way. Seeing as the WV mix of "Ritual" sounds a little cleaner, that would mean that the original multi's were not the culprit. The mix of that show has always sounded pretty crunchy to me.
In the earlier days of WV, they offered a members only "higher quality" stream if I am remembering correctly. It was either 256 or 328 mp3, which sounded pretty decent. i think I recorded the yes show off of that and have it hiding on a drive somewhere.
Anyway, I think that covers it. Once again, just my opinion and not the last word.

 

[quadaholic]

That would be fantastic, thank you very much! At least I might know what I'm actually hunting for. There was a 1985 broadcast of his Dallas show which is excellent but I don't believe it was a KBFH broadcast (it could have been Westwood One). Which show did you attend? Thanks once again!

Zephead2112, I just realized I didn't get back to you about those tapes. The archive has 2 reels of the Dallas 85 thing, and then there's a 10 inch reel that just says "Robert Plant press conference". As far as the show I saw, I saw Robert with Phil playing drums at the Worcester Centrum.

 

[Zephead2112]

Zephead2112, I just realized I didn't get back to you about those tapes. The archive has 2 reels of the Dallas 85 thing, and then there's a 10 inch reel that just says "Robert Plant press conference". As far as the show I saw, I saw Robert with Phil playing drums at the Worcester Centrum.

Oh wow, thank you very much for confirming that. The Dallas '85 broadcast is superb (Big Log is a real standout). May I ask if this was a KBFH reel or a Westwood One reel? I've been trying to find out for years so that I can narrow down my search. This is really valuable information for me so thanks again. The Worcester '83 show is fantastic, I often pull out the audience recording.

 

[quadaholic]

Oh wow, thank you very much for confirming that. The Dallas '85 broadcast is superb (Big Log is a real standout). May I ask if this was a KBFH reel or a Westwood One reel? I've been trying to find out for years so that I can narrow down my search. This is really valuable information for me so thanks again. The Worcester '83 show is fantastic, I often pull out the audience recording.

I don't remember seeing any DIR tags on the Dallas boxes, but I'll be back there next weekend and I'll take a look . Thinking about that Worcester show, I remember there was a small contingent of folks throwing sneakers on the stage as Robert wouldn't play any Zep stuff. Worcester is an interesting place...

 

[Zephead2112]

I don't remember seeing any DIR tags on the Dallas boxes, but I'll be back there next weekend and I'll take a look . Thinking about that Worcester show, I remember there was a small contingent of folks throwing sneakers on the stage as Robert wouldn't play any Zep stuff. Worcester is an interesting place...

That's brilliant, thanks once again. And also for the memories!

 

[quadaholic]

That's brilliant, thanks once again. And also for the memories!

No prob. If you have any more biscuit questions, feel free to ask away. This archive thing has a fair amount of old biscuit and bbc rock hour reels. Sadly, am not at liberty to share them as per the owners wishes. However, if that ever changes, they'll be up online yesterday, if you know what I mean. So far, haven't found a lot of cd's or albums of those shows, as they must have been easier to walk away with back then.

 

[Zephead2112]

Much appreciated!

 

[The Pink Floyd]

Where are all the KBFH recordings? I remember hearing some really good stuff on that show. A couple of favorites were Rainbow and Judas Priest.

 

[quadaholic]

Where are all the KBFH recordings? I remember hearing some really good stuff on that show. A couple of favorites were Rainbow and Judas Priest.

At the moment, all the DIR/Biscuit assets are owned by Wolfgangs Vault. There is a good deal of music being streamed there, although there are a lot of remixed versions that are a mixed bag of good and less good.

 

[The Pink Floyd]

At the moment, all the DIR/Biscuit assets are owned by Wolfgangs Vault. There is a good deal of music being streamed there, although there are a lot of remixed versions that are a mixed bag of good and less good.

Thank you

 

[Zephead2112]

I don't remember seeing any DIR tags on the Dallas boxes, but I'll be back there next weekend and I'll take a look . Thinking about that Worcester show, I remember there was a small contingent of folks throwing sneakers on the stage as Robert wouldn't play any Zep stuff. Worcester is an interesting place...

Hi, sorry to trouble! I was just wondering if you were able to take another look at the RP reels to see if they were DIR or otherwise (?). Thanks once again!

 

[quadaholic]

Hi, sorry to trouble! I was just wondering if you were able to take another look at the RP reels to see if they were DIR or otherwise (?). Thanks once again!

I think I remember a hand printed label on the tapes saying "ABC rock radio" or something similar. There weren't any cue sheets or anything helpful like that.

 

[mrcond]

Oh wow, thank you very much for confirming that. The Dallas '85 broadcast is superb (Big Log is a real standout). May I ask if this was a KBFH reel or a Westwood One reel? I've been trying to find out for years so that I can narrow down my search. This is really valuable information for me so thanks again. The Worcester '83 show is fantastic, I often pull out the audience recording.

I don't know if this helps but the complete Robert Plant Dallas 1985 show is on YouTube, including the radio intro etc. indicating it was part of the "Super Groups in Concert" series, which appear to have been produced by ABC Radio Networks and not a King Biscuit production. This would be consistent with what @quadaholic says in the post above this one. (But I could be wrong, this is just based on my limited research.) I recorded the 1983 RP King Biscuit set off the radio back in 1983 and also my friend's CD called "Best of King Biscuit" which had 2 RP tracks on it (In The Mood and Little By Little, I believe, both seemingly from 1985 and possibly the Cincinnati show?). I still have these cassettes.

Here is the YouTube link to Dallas 1985 (but then, I am sure you have already come across this in your research):

 

[quadaholic]

I definitely remember those occasional "Super Groups" in concert shows. That makes sense. I have a Cars supergroups show on LP. I should check the rest of the archive for syndicated lps. So far only a couple of biscuit lp's, but there are more rock around the world and westwood one shows. I expect King Biscuit lps had an easy time of walking away from stations back then.

 

[Zephead2112]

@quadaholic @mrcond thanks both for the information. At least I now know exactly what I'm hunting for!