HiRez Poll Mahavishnu Orchestra, The - BIRDS OF FIRE [SACD]

[PmikeK]

Drums in rears should mean hi hat on right so drum kit is behind you. Drums in rears but placed as if they were in front makes no sense.

 

[PmikeK]

My take:

1) the front Left and Right on the original stereo and quad mix has violin left, guitar right.
2) the AF quad mix front Left and Right has guitar left, violin right
3) drums are in rear in both quad mixes

either it's just a mistake on AF's part, or the Q8 is a mistake and the AF is correct...


or this:


The original stereo mix is from an 'audience ' perspective':

                    tt-drums



violin              keys                 guitar

-------------------------------------------------

                      ^ (listener)

(btw violin left like this is where Jerry Goodman actually played onstage. McLaughlin was in the middle, and Jan Hammer and Ric Laird to the right. Billy Cobham's tom-toms (tt) were on the left, from an audience perspective)


The AF idea for the quad was to give the listener an onstage perspective, from a point between the drums and the front line instruments. In which case *everything* should be swapped left/right.

----------------------------------------------
guitar               keys           violin

                      ^

                    drums-tt

But is that what happened? Are the drums also swapped L/R on the AF compared to the stereo and Q8/SQ LP quad? I haven't got my AF file with me at the moment so I can't check.

Onstage facing the musicians makes no sense. If drums are in rears you put them there like a drum kit is behind you. Hi hat on left.

 

[ashr1565]

Was it worth the money? Not sure about that - I knocked off a point for barebones presentation and another for the flipped channels(even though it's not a big problem as far as listening goes), so 8. Nice wide mix and an inspired choice by AF to bring to SACD.

 

[humprof]

JazzTimes interviews John McLaughlin, who talks a lot about the Mahavishnu Orchestra:
https://jazztimes.com/features/inte...ahavishnu-orchestra-liberation-time-and-more/

 

[ssully]

AFAICT the consensus is still that the front L/R are swapped from what they 'should' be. That is certainly true in comparison to the stereo mix. I acknowledge that an SQ LP algorithmic decode is problematic as a comparison. The discrete Q8 would tell us something definitive

Did anyone ever post instrument placement information about the Q8 mix??

If nothing else , someone please just tell us if the drum intro of One Word goes in a circle, or in a zigzag, on the Q8!

On the AF SACD, it goes like this (confirming what steelydave reported before, except the roll starts in front center rather than right):


CF/center front (briefly) --> LF/left front --> SR/surround right --> SL/surround left --> RF/right front --> LF/left front --> SR/surround right

or of you prefer it schematic:


(I still heartily dislike the 'drums mostly in the back' as a mixing choice and am going to try swapping the drum *solo* on 'One Word' back to front, just to see if that satisfies for that part.)

 

[ssully]

I haven't flipped the 'One Word' middle drum solo to the fronts yet, but I did swap the front left and right for all the Birds of Fire tracks (using Music Media Helper, it was easy). The now-circling Cobham that starts 'One Word' sounds most excellent. And on all the tracks the violin and guitar are in the 'right' places at last.

Btw in both versions, the intro ends with a final loud snare drum whack in the surround left channel...that would be position '8' , I neglected to show it above. (You can see it in the waveform though.)


Path of the drums when front left and right are swapped:

 

[par4ken]

Unfortunately the situation is complicated.

I've used used 'One Word' as my exploration track. Comments are based on careful listening and manipulating tracks in Audition, and on looking at the waveforms (I did a 'laser drop' of the SACD).

In the front L R of the SQ the array of instruments is clearly:
violin - keys - guitar, as noted (and also true of the original stereo mix).
In the front L R of SACD, it's clearly
guitar - keys - violin (the opposite of the SQ fronts and the 2ch mix)

In surround L R of the SQ things get weird. Unlike the SACD, there is a lot non-drum content in the surrounds. And the positions of instruments from L to R is not as obvious as in the fronts -- there's a lot of everything in both surround channels. IOW the surround SQ channels are not nearly as discrete as on the SACD. However, listening to just the SQ surround channels 'in stereo', while panning one channel hard left and the other hard right, then reversing the panning, it becomes clear that the surround array is:
guitar - keys - violin
(though the separation is very much less than in the front channels).
In other words, in the SQ, the surround channel instrument array is the opposite of the SQ front channels!

So that's an 'x' pattern right there....*on the SQ*

And what about the surround L R of the SACD?

The SACD is extremely discrete, so it's hard to go by the placement of the electric instruments. The surround channel contents are almost entirely drums. You can *barely* hear bleed-through that seems to match the front channel array (guitar-keys-violin). However, simply *looking at* the waveforms, makes things clearer -- I can see areas where the waveforms differ a lot between surround L and R channels. I've attached a screen cap showing such an area. Green waveforms are SQ, white are SACD, top to bottom is FL, FR, SL, SR . The upshot is...in those areas, the shape of the SACD L R surrounds tracks the shape of the surround L R of the SQ! (Which also means the surround SACD channel array is 'guitar - keys - violin', as the bleedthrough indicated... and matches the SACD front channel instrument array)

In short,
front channels: SACD is reversed L-R compared to SQ (and compared to 2ch original mix)
rear channels: SACD has the same L-R array as the SQ surround channels and the SACD front channels; but the SQ surround L-R is reversed compared to the SQ front L-R


So.

For the SACD, it looks like just swapping the L and R, in both front and back, would restore the original instrument array (considering the 2 channel mix as 'original').

For the SQ, it looks like *just* the rear channel L R should be swapped.

Unless they meant it to be an X!

Would love for someone to corroborate or contradict these findings --

ssully this is the post of yours that I was refering to.

 

[GaryG]

So is the channel swap fixed on the Sony Japan 7" SACD?

 

[Dynamic Editor]

So is the channel swap fixed on the Sony Japan 7" SACD?

No, the Audio Fidelity and Sony Japan 7" feature the same channel order.

 

[par4ken]

Is there no poll for the Sony release? The only difference I believe is some bass and treble boost on the Sony while the AF is a flat transfer.

I own both SACD releases as well as the SQ LP. I had just made a rip of the SQ album and so knew how the panning of the drums was supposed to go. Shortly after that I received the Sony disc; at first I thought that the channels had been corrected on the Sony release.

It turned out that when I last moved my equipement around I had swapped the front channel (analogue) outputs of the BDP-95. Stereo was unaffected as that machine has separate Stereo outputs. Just goes to show that two wrongs can make a right!

 

[kap'n krunch]

Had to rip my AF copy thru analog outs to remix the faulty swapped front channels. Used Logic to mix it down to 5.1 interleaved AIFFs and XLD to convert it to FLAC. Was my last project with my now gone MOTU 828es. I cheated a bit and added jus a little bit of “silver” using the Logic’s Exciter plugin…

 

[Malhomme]

I cast a 8 as something was unsettling in the mix. I am not too founf of drums being in the rear. Channel separation was not to my taste (There is little separation between violin and guitar).
Until I read that it could be explained with the swapping of front channels. So 8 is nice and conservative.

 

[ssully]

? You should hear good separation most of the time between violin and guitar, from the front channels. Very apparent when solos are traded, as on 'Celestial Terrestrial Commuters':

Unswapped: guitar on left, violin right, synth middle.
Swapped, violin left, guitar right, synth middle.

Swapping doesn't change the instrumental balances or separation in the mix, though room acoustics could do all sorts of things.

 

[Malhomme]

Funny as I don't get that, first track both guitars and violin are slightly on the left

 

[ssully]

The first track has the least distinct separation and is the most different from the original stereo mix. With Audacity one can easily isolate channels in quad and steroe mixes and hear what's in them. Here's what I hear in the quad JSACD: The lead guitar from about 1:27 to 2:45 is in both channels, so appears centered. The violin (?I think it's violin, with heavy processing; if it's not synth) lead from about 3:13 to 4:10 is entirely in the right (unswapped)/left (swapped) channel. NB this extreme separation does *not* occur in the stereo mix -- the processed violin is in both channels there. In the coda, from about 4:50 to the end, the guitar is in both channels but the violin is in the left (unswapped)/right (swapped) -- this is especially audible at 5:13. IN the original stereo mix the violin bit occurs in the left channel, quite buried in the mix, and the guitar is mostly in the right channel.

By the second track Miles Beyond, the separations are quite clear. For the 'chorus' 1:05-1:49, violin on right (unswapped)/left(swapped) , guitar on left(unswapped)/right(swapped). For the violin pizzicato solo, both channels. The final guitar lead is in the left (unswapped)/right(swapped) channel. The swapped assignments are what one also hears on the stereo mix.

For Celestial Terrestrial Commuters, it's also quite clear (though the there is a little guitar bleed-through to its opposite channel) Synth in middle, guitar on left(unswapped)/right(swapped), violin on the right(unswapped)/left(swapped) . Again the swapped channel assignements and separation of instruments are what one hears on the original stereo mix.

On One Word, another track where solos are traded, the synth is again in middle, the guitar again in left(unswapped)/right(swapped) and violin in the right(unswapped)/left(swapped) (with again a little guitar bleed-through) . And again the swapped version is the one that imitates the original studio mix.


tl;dr don't go only by the title track, it's a bit unusual

 

[Colin London]

Drums in rears should mean hi hat on right so drum kit is behind you. Drums in rears but placed as if they were in front makes no sense.

It does make sense as it is the Floor Toms we can hear in a new way.
Like a Drum kit around you.

 

[Malhomme]

Drums in rears should mean hi hat on right so drum kit is behind you. Drums in rears but placed as if they were in front makes no sense.

Weeeell, the contrary. If you turn your back on drums, the HH wil be on your left. Unless of course the drummer is Phil Collins, or any leftist.