Listening to Now (In Surround) - Volume 2
- Thread starter Clint Eastwood
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Is it really? I mean it’s a top selling classic album but I would of thought with some of the stronger quad titles AF served up, there might be higher rated 4.0s.
Spectrum being so great and rare, Doors being hot still with all of those hits, Full Sail being such a sweet one. Bread has all those chart hits as well!
Still amazed how AF was able to pull this off! I need to listen to it again soon it’s been a long time, thx for reminder.
Right!?! I was REALLY surprised! Check out the thread link and click on the View Results button to be amazed! Stay Surrounded, Comrade!
AF released several quad SACDs that still get regular rotation here, but for me Spectrum is the best of the lot, both in sound quality and content, as well as for the fact that it was a previously unreleased quad mix. Many of the AF quads suffer from a rolled-off top end as a result of their decision not to master the quad mix - The Guess Who's Best Of, Vol. 1 is probably the worst offender, but even Herbie Hancock's Thrust and Loggins & Messina's self-titled album need 3-5dB of top end to match the tonality of the stereo masterings on the same disc - but Spectrum suffers no such problem. I spent an age trying to fix the 5.1 DVD-A mix of the album, but the quad mix knocks it into a cocked hat so spectacularly I don't think I've even given it one listen since the SACD was released.
As far as chart positions go, I think the more time passes the less relevant they are to anything, especially a half-century after the fact. Sure, "good" and "commercially successful" are two largely overlapping circles, but there's lots of good music that didn't do that well on the pop charts, and even more music that charted that hasn't stood the test of time. I'm not bagging on Bread (especially as the number one proponent of the David Gates First quad mix) or the Doors but if the same logic was applied 50 years from now and a label was reissuing surround mixes of today's music, it would be saying that Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish were the "best" candidates and not Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree or something like that.
My only (small) misgiving with the quad mix of Spectrum is that the Jan Hammer synth solo that opens Quadrant 4, which slowly pans from left to right in the stereo mix, is locked into the left rear speaker in the quad mix for the duration. It seems like an obvious candidate for a 360-degree around-the-room pan and I'm not sure why they just left it in a static position when normally engineers take relatively great pains to mimic the nuances of the stereo mix, or often exceed them when it comes to whizz-bang ping-pong effects.
As far as chart positions go, I think the more time passes the less relevant they are to anything, especially a half-century after the fact. Sure, "good" and "commercially successful" are two largely overlapping circles, but there's lots of good music that didn't do that well on the pop charts, and even more music that charted that hasn't stood the test of time. I'm not bagging on Bread (especially as the number one proponent of the David Gates First quad mix) or the Doors but if the same logic was applied 50 years from now and a label was reissuing surround mixes of today's music, it would be saying that Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish were the "best" candidates and not Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree or something like that.
My only (small) misgiving with the quad mix of Spectrum is that the Jan Hammer synth solo that opens Quadrant 4, which slowly pans from left to right in the stereo mix, is locked into the left rear speaker in the quad mix for the duration. It seems like an obvious candidate for a 360-degree around-the-room pan and I'm not sure why they just left it in a static position when normally engineers take relatively great pains to mimic the nuances of the stereo mix, or often exceed them when it comes to whizz-bang ping-pong effects.
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When I was in college in the turbulent 60's.....and financially struggling [used to type/re write term papers on eraseable bond for a buck a page] I had a buddy with the deepest of pockets who assembled a state of the art sound system replete with these humumgous Voice Of The Theater Speakers and we use to demo his system with this album.
Wonder why I ever caught the audiophile bug?
And now we have computers, printers .... and I understand they're getting $30+ per page to assemble term papers for the academically challenged who still don't pay attention in school!
MoonMadness from the boxset with 35 votes of 10 
Absolute brilliant mix from Stephen W Tayler
Track 3 Chord change always blows my mind
Absolute brilliant mix from Stephen W Tayler
Track 3 Chord change always blows my mind
Time for a little …
King Crimson - Larks’ Tongues in Aspic - in ATMOS
King Crimson - Larks’ Tongues in Aspic - in ATMOS
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And now…
King Crimson - Islands
not in ATMOS…
King Crimson - Islands
not in ATMOS…
OK QQ'ers. Hold on to your panties. I've owned the Joni Mitchell Quadio set for a few weeks now. I haven't even opened it yet, nor listened to any of it streaming. No, really.
I just had to have it, but Joni isn't my favorite artist....so. Sure, in time. Just no hurry. I'm much more digging the Howard Jones stuff I received. Oh, and can't wait for Hawkwind. Holy shit man, that will be epic.
I just had to have it, but Joni isn't my favorite artist....so. Sure, in time. Just no hurry. I'm much more digging the Howard Jones stuff I received. Oh, and can't wait for Hawkwind. Holy shit man, that will be epic.
Elton John Honky Château SACD purchased from a fellow qq'er.
Sounds great to these ears.
Sounds great to these ears.
Weird, Crowded House BDA in Atmos. So, I ripped it. Most of my media players won't engage in Atmos. VLC player finally, after letting it run for about a minute, finally kicked over to Atmos.
I don't get it. Why do I have these issues at times?
I don't get it. Why do I have these issues at times?
Listen to Court and Spark in quad, and tune down the fronts a tad, listening to the backing band mainly on rear surrounds, and it's revealed as a hot rhythm section nailing it down. Joni is so prominent, it will not eliminate her at all.
But yeah the Hawkwind album I think is the most exciting progressive rock thing since Van der Graaf Generator got 5.1 mixes.
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Rick Wakeman & The English Rock Ensemble The Red Planet
Do you guys really NEED a stereo mix? How many of you view downmixing as sacrilegious?
JediJoker
Audio Engineer/Enthusiast
It's not sacrilegious, but it does mean that the end result won't be optimal on stereo speakers, even if optimal on headphones (binaural rendering). I do prefer to have a proper stereo mix.
If a stereo mix was created then I’d like it included please. Not asking for much really.
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