HiRez Poll Nyro, Laura - ELI AND THE 13TH CONFESSION [SACD]

[edisonbaggins]

...to be candid the drums could be omitted IMO and not many would even notice...

Oh, I think I'd notice! They are what I find most annoying about the arrangements, wrecking the mood for me quite often. It's like the dude was ODing on coke or something.

 

[jefe1]

Well this one finally arrived yesterday along with my Quadio box. I had a holiday weekend with time to listen to all these discs but the post office didn't accommodate me.....

This is not exactly my cup of tea I ordered it on reputation only. I Hope it will grow on me rather than have dust grow on it. On my first listen it is clear I like the separation but it will take a few more sessions to settle in.
If I did not have to come back to work I would have listened to the Quadio box all night......

 

[fredblue]

This really, truly works for you? Are the drums crammed in one channel or are they at least spread across the rears?

Obviously I'd prefer the drums spread out the soundstage if possible but if all they had to play with in the Quad days was all drums on one track or something, then I'm cool with that..and on this disc it kinda works (you're so intent on that voice I think, that is very much the lead instrument)... in particular though (and I know this is gonna divide the crowd but whatever) I love to be able to hear the bass parts when they're really brought up in one of the rear channels on some of these Quads, there's something magical happens sometimes when the bass gets plonked into one of the rears, I can just imagine the 70's mixers were saying "Hey! Listen to THIS bass, man, stick it in the rears!" (a really good one for showing off some fab bass chops is the Tower Of Power Quad.. a lot of people don't like that one with its' "4-corner" mega discrete mix, especially for a 'late Quad' its unusual, a lot of the time Quads got kinda safer/less 'out there' as time went on.. but I don't care what anyone says, its a personal experience and personally I love it on Tower of Power and I don't have problem with it on this one either! )

 

[fredblue]

Oh, I think I'd notice! They are what I find most annoying about the arrangements, wrecking the mood for me quite often. It's like the dude was ODing on coke or something.

Dude prob'ly was

 

[edisonbaggins]

...I love it on Tower of Power and I don't have problem with it on this one either! )

I recall ToP rockin the Baggy-bags pretty good. I'll have to revisit.
Yeah, I totally understand that the drums might actually have been recorded in mono, so what more could they have done - understandable.
I guess, in that case, were I the engineer, I'd try to go phantom front or rear center, though, instead of a corner. Not sure that'd improve anything, but seems to me it'd be less awkward, as, live, you are used to the drummer being stage center.

 

[fredblue]

I recall ToP rockin the Baggy-bags pretty good. I'll have to revisit.
Yeah, I totally understand that the drums might actually have been recorded in mono, so what more could they have done - understandable.
I guess, in that case, were I the engineer, I'd try to go phantom front or rear center, though, instead of a corner. Not sure that'd improve anything, but seems to me it'd be less awkward, as, live, you are used to the drummer being stage center.

Trk 6 on the Tower Of Power Quad ("You Ought To Havin Fun") has some funky bass in Rear Left.. check it outttt

If we went back in a time machine to the early 1970's and said to the mixing guys doing these old Quads ("you know, one day this will have evolved into a MultiChannel thing, 6, 8 or even more channels.. with a dedicated Centre channel for vocals and a subwoofer for low bass..") they'd probably laugh at us!

Not least because they would say that for surround music the sub and centre are redundant.. and with 4 x full range boxes and front pair imaged properly, they probably are.. but its evolution.. sharks are perfect, have you ever seen one at the wheel of a car? Nah. Anyway, where were we?

Oh yeah, things are more refined now and have kinda been this way for years now of course with 5.1 surround music.. but at the time Quad was starting out there were no rules, no conventions on how to mix for Surround, you just did what you did and sometimes it worked out cool, sometimes it didn't.. that's still how 5.1 music works now in a way, for every Steven Wilson or Elliot Scheiner 5.1 there's a hundred less accomplished 5.1 mixes out there, that for all sorts of reasons don't tick the boxes of what we expect from a 'good' surround mix.. we've all heard them.. but there's certain expectations now, we expect rhythm section largely across the front, strings and synths and backing vocals are nicest when they pop up in the rears ("ooh".. "aah".. etc.)

 

[edisonbaggins]

...at the time Quad was starting out there were no rules, no conventions on how to mix for Surround, you just did what you did and sometimes it worked out cool, sometimes it didn't...

If what I've read is true, there were sometimes limitations of the mixing consoles to deal with. Like, even if they'd like to phantom center a certain part they might not have had the option, short of actually copying the part to a 2nd channel.
Not all consoles were equal and it took a while for the most sophisticated quad consoles to develop, in terms of panning. They had to engineer, design and build new hardware, at times.

 

[Clint Eastwood]

This is an easy 10 for me...the vocals are just superb and it's discrete enough to satisfy most surround lovers..her version of Stoned Soul Picnic is ALMOST as good as my beloved 5th Dimension version....she was the originator of the song but Marilyn McCoo just did it better...and let me go on record as saying I could care less where the drums come from..front...rear.. in the driveway..next door...as long as I can hear them...and in this mix they sound fine..

 

[fredblue]

If what I've read is true, there were sometimes limitations of the mixing consoles to deal with. Like, even if they'd like to phantom center a certain part they might not have had the option, short of actually copying the part to a 2nd channel.
Not all consoles were equal and it took a while for the most sophisticated quad consoles to develop, in terms of panning. They had to engineer, design and build new hardware, at times.

Yeah I've heard that kinda thing too, Baggy.. makes it even more incredible the amount of decent Quad we got huh.. 40+ years is nothing in the scheme of things but to me its a literal lifetime and I appreciate so much what those 70s Quad guys were able to pull off 5 decades ago, I'm sure it wasn't easy for them a lot of the time. Hats off to em, eh! :worthy

 

[4-earredwonder]

This is an easy 10 for me...the vocals are just superb and it's discrete enough to satisfy most surround lovers..her version of Stoned Soul Picnic is ALMOST as good as my beloved 5th Dimension version....she was the originator of the song but Marilyn McCoo just did it better...and let me go on record as saying I could care less where the drums come from..front...rear.. in the driveway..next door...as long as I can hear them...and in this mix they sound fine..

Clint, in 1968, The Fifth Dimension appeared at my college and premiered Stone Soul Picnic and the students went wild. Marilyn McCoo had that magic voice, beauty and personality which catapulted Laura Nyro's hit into megagold. It was one of those magic moments for me.

 

[Q-Eight]

Most, if not all of the songs on this record come from 1", 8-track tape. So, much like the Sly Stone GH (which also had a few songs from 8-track) drums were recorded mono. So, it is very much a limitation of the multitracks. It really seems to me that Columbia Records had a "16-track or better" Edict to avoid mixes like this. Inevitably, some did get put out, like Sly.

However, in my miniscule mixing experience, I've found if you only have one track of drums, if you're lucky and have one track of percussion - put the percussion in the adjacent channel so you have a stereo rhythm section. This works really well in the rears and I did just this exactly on my 4-channel remix of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it through the Grapevine". If you have a bass, piano and a guitar, you place those across the front with bass up the middle and you have an 8-track mix that really explores the 4-channel space without leaving any dead space in any channel. Often times when I mix, I put bass in all 4-channels to really flesh out the mix.

My biggest gripe about this Laura Nyro mix (and it's a very personal gripe) is that I would've mixed it my way with drums/percussion in the back, vocals and bass front center; ancillaries wherever. I don't like where on "Eli" piano and tambourine share the channel. To me, that's conflicting. In my mind, if instruments must share a channel, each instrument should occupy it's own frequency range. If you have bass in one channel, compliment it with horns, acoustic guitar or percussion. Don't fill one channel with a bunch of all mid-rangey instruments because then it becomes the dominant channel. I can understand why this mix was possibly rejected.

Like I said, that's a very personal gripe. It's all in my head, really.

Aside from that, I'm like a puppy at Halloween with this release. Not enough Scotch-Guard in the world will protect the front room carpet. An unreleased Quad mix finally seeing the light of day after almost 50 years? Vindication at last!!

Speaking of rumoured, unreleased possibly EPIC Quad mixes.... Sly Stone's "There's a Riot Goin' On". It was announced and made it to a bunch of record jackets as "Coming Soon".. Please oh, please look for that one!

 

[4-earredwonder]

Most, if not all of the songs on this record come from 1", 8-track tape. So, much like the Sly Stone GH (which also had a few songs from 8-track) drums were recorded mono. So, it is very much a limitation of the multitracks. It really seems to me that Columbia Records had a "16-track or better" Edict to avoid mixes like this. Inevitably, some did get put out, like Sly.

However, in my miniscule mixing experience, I've found if you only have one track of drums, if you're lucky and have one track of percussion - put the percussion in the adjacent channel so you have a stereo rhythm section. This works really well in the rears and I did just this exactly on my 4-channel remix of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it through the Grapevine". If you have a bass, piano and a guitar, you place those across the front with bass up the middle and you have an 8-track mix that really explores the 4-channel space without leaving any dead space in any channel. Often times when I mix, I put bass in all 4-channels to really flesh out the mix.

My biggest gripe about this Laura Nyro mix (and it's a very personal gripe) is that I would've mixed it my way with drums/percussion in the back, vocals and bass front center; ancillaries wherever. I don't like where on "Eli" piano and tambourine share the channel. To me, that's conflicting. In my mind, if instruments must share a channel, each instrument should occupy it's own frequency range. If you have bass in one channel, compliment it with horns, acoustic guitar or percussion. Don't fill one channel with a bunch of all mid-rangey instruments because then it becomes the dominant channel. I can understand why this mix was possibly rejected.

Like I said, that's a very personal gripe. It's all in my head, really.

Aside from that, I'm like a puppy at Halloween with this release. Not enough Scotch-Guard in the world will protect the front room carpet. An unreleased Quad mix finally seeing the light of day after almost 50 years? Vindication at last!!

Speaking of rumoured, unreleased possibly EPIC Quad mixes.... Sly Stone's "There's a Riot Goin' On". It was announced and made it to a bunch of record jackets as "Coming Soon".. Please oh, please look for that one!

A VERY interesting treatise on QUAD mixing but I suppose we all have to understand that at the time ELI was mixed into QUAD, it was a brave new world as engineers were 'experimenting' with a vastly new concept and there was no reference point as to what worked or didn't. And everything was done in the analogue domain.

I have NO issues with the ELI Quad mix. In fact after hearing the shrill/bassless Vinyl, cassettes, etc for years, hearing this newly minted never before commercially available QUAD mix was a revelation.

BTW, until Sly's 'There's a Riot Goin' On' receives a QUAD debut (which IMO would be spectacular), are you aware of ORG's Stereo SACD remaster. Actually sounds quite good http://hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=8834

GOOD PRICE: http://www.musicdirect.com/p-108673-sly-and-the-family-stone-theres-a-riot-goin-on-hybrid-sacd.aspx

 

[edisonbaggins]

In fact after hearing the shrill/bassless Vinyl, cassettes, etc for years, hearing this newly minted never before commercially available QUAD mix was a revelation.

Can you comment on any other layers? Stereo? Mono? Are they an improvement, sonically, over previous editions you've heard?

 

[4-earredwonder]

Can you comment on any other layers? Stereo? Mono? Are they an improvement, sonically, over previous editions you've heard?

Absolute improvement, EB. Of course, I didn't have a state of the art turntable when ELI was initially released on vinyl, but even on my friend's high end equipment 'of the time' it was never audiophile sounding whereas BS&T and Chicago on Vinyl always sounded spectacular.

Would love it if Audio Fidelity would release her other Columbia albums as Stereo SACDs if the improvement would prove to be as dramatic as Eli.

 

[lennon fan]

For people who are disturbed about the single channel for drums, while this is terrible on, say, Sly's GH album, for Laura IMO it works because drums are not the front and center as they would be for rock/soul bands but rather they are accents or additions to the music which is clearly focused on Laura and her piano.
I can appreciate the above critiques but truly for an early '68 recording this is great.

 

[4-earredwonder]

For people who are disturbed about the single channel for drums, while this is terrible on, say, Sly's GH album, for Laura IMO it works because drums are not the front and center as they would be for rock/soul bands but rather they are accents or additions to the music which is clearly focused on Laura and her piano.
I can appreciate the above critiques but truly for an early '68 recording this is great.

I echo your sentiments, lennonfan, and add that this is by far the BEST this album has ever sounded via a commercial release. AF has released what I consider to be one of their true masterpieces.

 

[kap'n krunch]

I was wondering..
Would this SACD be the mix of "Eli's coming" that was featured in a Quad version on a Japanese SQ LP sampler in the 70's with a very unfortunate back cover of a bunch of shirtless Japanese guys (and a couple caucasian and some more other races) that aslo had some other SQ mixes that were never released?

 

[fredblue]

No idea kap but I've mulled over getting that SQ sampler a couple of times the past year or so.. but I couldn't justify splashing out for one Paul Revere track and one Laura Nyro track (unless there's other stuff on there that never saw release IDK?).. hopefully someone here has got both that Japanese sampler and this AF SACD and can let us know the score..

 

[kap'n krunch]

No idea kap but I've mulled over getting that SQ sampler a couple of times the past year or so.. but I couldn't justify splashing out for one Paul Revere track and one Laura Nyro track (unless there's other stuff on there that never saw release IDK?).. hopefully someone here has got both that Japanese sampler and this AF SACD and can let us know the score..

I got the Japanese SQ LP...

 

[fredblue]

I got the Japanese SQ LP...

Ah.. bravo! All we need now is someone with the SACD.. oh, hang on! :yikes