Moody Blues in Quad and 5.1

[DJPauly]

Any official or unofficial release of the Blue Jays album in quad or 5.1?

 

[MrMarty]

Bluejays would be awesome in surround

 

[srbjab]

Of all the studio albums following Seventh Sojourn, Long Distance Voyager is the one I'd most like to see get the surround treatment. It's probably the best recorded, best sounding album in the catalog (recorded at their custom built studio), and assuming the multis still exist should be terrific in either 5.1 or Atmos. It's also one of the best reviewed, most highly regarded later titles. Very odd that it somehow escaped the deluxe treatment.

Although technically not a Moody's album, I agree that Blue Jays also deserves a deluxe surround reissue. The songs are gorgeous and the album is a great listen, start to finish, especially with the inclusion of Blue Guitar.

 

[andyp]

It would be nice for Blue Jays to be released in 5.1 along with Blue Guitar and Forever Autumn which was 5.1 on the Jeff Wayne War of the Worlds release on SACD.

 

[ar surround]

Yes, Blue Jays in quad shows that it was indeed made for multichannel. 5.1 would be stupendous. Yet another plea to @Stephen W Tayler !

 

[jimfisheye]

Agreed on Long Distance Voyager!
This is the only 'post' album that approaches some of their peak years and in a genuinely strong way. Love Ray's closing track! Almost hits the vibe of some of Mike's earlier stuff. No more hit and miss than Seventh Sojourn. Mike was already checking out for that one too. (He kind of tells you all about it in the first track.)

I'll have to dig out those SACD files and compare again. Maybe I didn't investigate and realize to drop the C and Lfe channels? I thought I remembered the shared Q4 rips being huge upgrades. There are a couple Q4 rips trading around too though. There's at least one that sounds like someone cranked up some 10k eq about 10db.

 

[JonUrban]

I am surprised that Esoteric has not released 'BlueJays'. They did a great job with the Ray Thomas "From Mighty Oaks" unreleased quad mix, it seems that the BlueJay's would have been a no brainer release by now. Maybe the 'tiff' between the two principles has put a halt to any special release of that album.

If so, that would be a shame - and a loss to us aging quadraphonic fans.

(PS - I agree that Stephen Tyler should have a crack at the multi's on that one as well, as long as the resulting disc gave us both the original unfutzed with 4.0 and whatever new great 5.1 mix he would come up with)

 

[SomethingAnything]

I'll be a contrarian and give the IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD box a big thumbs up! First of all, the box and
contents are beautiful -- I'd like all my CD/DVD sets like that. Try the 5.1 in Dolby, it's better than the DTS.

Then stare for hours at the menu screen

I agree! And I think Jakko took on a difficult mixing task others didn't want to touch it and did his best with it, to the point where I find it quite enjoyable.

 

[jaybird100]

I have those SACD's also but they are not 5.1. TOCCC was released a few years ago in 5.1 but seemed to have issues in the lfe (vocals in an lfe channel?) and Higher and Higher had other problems.

I believe they used the originally created quad masters for the SACD's. All of those albums were going to be released on SQ LP's at one time, but that idea was scrapped when quad appeared to be dying.

 

[jefffloro]

Any news if we will see a release of the quad version of Blue Jays?

 

[andyp]

Any news if we will see a release of the quad version of Blue Jays?

I think we've all had the quad release for years, no?

 

[par4ken]

I think we've all had the quad release for years, no?

Quad reel and a conversion made from it. One of the last reels put out by Stereotape, like Jefferson Starship "Dragonfly" it didn't carry the original cover art!

 

[JediJoker]

Quad reel and a conversion made from it. One of the last reels put out by Stereotape, like Jefferson Starship "Dragonfly" it didn't carry the original cover art!
View attachment 112209

Recently acquired the Q8, which does have the art on the label:

As did an earlier reel release.

 

[peloton]

Of all the studio albums following Seventh Sojourn, Long Distance Voyager is the one I'd most like to see get the surround treatment. It's probably the best recorded, best sounding album in the catalog (recorded at their custom built studio), and assuming the multis still exist should be terrific in either 5.1 or Atmos. It's also one of the best reviewed, most highly regarded later titles. Very odd that it somehow escaped the deluxe treatment.

Although technically not a Moody's album, I agree that Blue Jays also deserves a deluxe surround reissue. The songs are gorgeous and the album is a great listen, start to finish, especially with the inclusion of Blue Guitar.

I would love to see Long Distance Voyager issued as a MCH release...as this had some hits on it I imagine it would sell well also.

 

[SomethingAnything]

I would love to see Long Distance Voyager issued as a MCH release...as this had some hits on it I imagine it would sell well also.

Yes, it would be great. And perhaps a few bonus tracks or demos. And an instrumental version of the album would also work well. Getting carried away now, but what hey!

 

[jimfisheye]

I found copies of the SACD images and decided to heed some of the comments here and have another listen. Spoiler: I'm actually hearing these DSD copies for the very first time and they're sounding overall better than the copies of the reels I have!

I must have stumbled into the early botched transcodes of these discs back in the mid 2000s. Same thing happened with copies of the Genesis SACDs around the same time. Someone was doing a transcode that output to 44.1k and 16 bit. The result in hindsight compared to a proper transcode was just pure corrupt unrecoverable audio. Actual grinding distortion and that kind of thing. I thought it was a novelty release and botched that way. Yeah, I never bought into DSD converters. And the transcodes I hear when actually clicking the correct buttons are transparent on my PCM converters now! So I'm still never buying into DSD converters. (This isn't a claim of sample rate conversion being audible. Take the 16/44.1 as a telltale here. The issue with someone's early transcode attempt was corrupt audio with crunchy distortion.)

Alright so, wow! I was missing out! The reels mind you, do sound brighter and detailed and the SACDs sound choked A/B'ing them at first glance without matching levels. Matching levels... Someone did in fact go after these reel transfers with a 10k eq boost too. (There's a more severe copy sharing around too.) Varies between the albums. EGBDF is brutal. TOCCC almost matches the sound of the SACD. The rest are in between. If I match the high end between copies, now I'm hearing ultimately more content in the SACD copy and more natural eq balance. These are meant to be turned up a decent amount and the sound is fat!

I trashed the apparently errant added C and Lfe channels per the comments. I didn't investigate them closely but the 4 quad channels are clearly the same recording from the reels. It doesn't appear any content was removed from the quad channels. Whatever the case, they sound less altered than the reel copies in the end.

So I missed out on these upgrades for almost 20 years because I trusted some botched rip was genuine when it was anything but! Appreciate the comments and thank you!

 

[ar surround]

Alright so, wow! I was missing out!

No worries Jim. With The Moody Blues albums, if you played one and remembered what you had listened to, you weren't really there.

 

[jimfisheye]

No worries Jim. With The Moody Blues albums, if you played one and remembered what you had listened to, you weren't really there.

Haha! I WAS too late actually. Born in '67. I was technically around but not aware. Tried to catch up after the fact and get experienced. To the best of my recollection, that is.

But I remember hearing ISOTLC and EGBDF a lot early on. The opening of EGBDF was and still is magical!

 

[ar surround]

The opening of EGBDF was and still is magical!

Especially the way Procession segues into The Story In Your Eyes.

 

[4-earredwonder]

Of all the studio albums following Seventh Sojourn, Long Distance Voyager is the one I'd most like to see get the surround treatment. It's probably the best recorded, best sounding album in the catalog (recorded at their custom built studio), and assuming the multis still exist should be terrific in either 5.1 or Atmos. It's also one of the best reviewed, most highly regarded later titles. Very odd that it somehow escaped the deluxe treatment.

Although technically not a Moody's album, I agree that Blue Jays also deserves a deluxe surround reissue. The songs are gorgeous and the album is a great listen, start to finish, especially with the inclusion of Blue Guitar.

Until they release LONG DISTANCE VOYAGER in Surround this Stereo SHM SACD from UMG Japan [enclosed in one of their little cardboard boxes] sounds superb and decodes well in the Super DSP mode of my Meridian pre/pro!