HiRez Poll O'Jays, The - SHIP AHOY [SACD]

[fredblue]

that mean fredgreen

I hear he does funny things to some people..!!

 

[fredblue]

Just a quick Qn for you Linda, if i may, before i turn in for the night,
do you have the Q8 of the O'Jays Message in the Music?
thank you in advance,
Good night from a very humid London! :sun

 

[Quad Linda]

No, sorry I don't. I have that one on SQ.

Just a quick Qn for you Linda, if i may, before i turn in for the night,
do you have the Q8 of the O'Jays Message in the Music?
thank you in advance,
Good night from a very humid London! :sun

 

[fredblue]

No, sorry I don't. I have that one on SQ.

ah right! I hear the Q8 is hard to come by for some reason!?
how do you find the SQ LP sonically and mix-wise?

 

[Quad Linda]

I ceased buying Q8's in '74, with the exception of Q8 only titles. In '76, I bought a few again, since I had a brand new car with a Q8 I installed, along with an auto reverse cassette. :51banana: The day the Quad was installed, I bought Carly's Greatest, Love Will Keep Us Together, & Hissing of Summer Lawns.

In the years since, I've rebought every Q8 possible on Quad vinyl. The better sonics of the vinyl more than makes up for the difference in separation, especially once I switched to separates (preamp/power amp(s)/tuner) in the late '70's.

Message in the Music is typical Philadelphia International: good Q mix, good fidelity.

BTW: I never owned an SQ of Ship Ahoy, just SACD & Q8.

Put your hands together.

ah right! I hear the Q8 is hard to come by for some reason!?
how do you find the SQ LP sonically and mix-wise?

 

[oxforddickie]

In the years since, I've rebought every Q8 possible on Quad vinyl. The better sonics of the vinyl more than makes up for the difference in separation, especially once I switched to separates (preamp/power amp(s)/tuner) in the late '70's..

I'm with you totally. The Q8's limited bandwith etc really doesn't make it the source of choice for me. As you say, the sonic quality of a decoded vinyl rip is far more listenable to most Q8's i've heard so far. Of course, this is my piont of view........


OD

 

[fredblue]

I ceased buying Q8's in '74, with the exception of Q8 only titles. In '76, I bought a few again, since I had a brand new car with a Q8 I installed, along with an auto reverse cassette. :51banana: The day the Quad was installed, I bought Carly's Greatest, Love Will Keep Us Together, & Hissing of Summer Lawns.

In the years since, I've rebought every Q8 possible on Quad vinyl. The better sonics of the vinyl more than makes up for the difference in separation, especially once I switched to separates (preamp/power amp(s)/tuner) in the late '70's.

Message in the Music is typical Philadelphia International: good Q mix, good fidelity.

BTW: I never owned an SQ of Ship Ahoy, just SACD & Q8.

Put your hands together.

brillo! thanks for the great info as always!

its such a shame there are no "traces" of the other O'Jays or Isley Brothers Quads, beyond the usual two SACD clones.

or if there are, I've never found them!

somebody must be sitting on pristine Q8's of the O'Jays' Message in the Music, Family Reunion, Survival..
and the Isleys' Live it Up, Heat is On, Go for your Guns, Harvest for the World.

unless Sony have all the Quad masters for these albums safely tucked away in the vaults, these really ought to be preserved for the future.

all such wonderful albums..!!

 

[steelydave]

So I converted my rip of this disc to PCM and tore it apart in Nuendo, expecting it to be a mess like the Isley Brothers 3+3 SACD. Just to recap for anyone who didn't read my thread about it, the Isley Brothers disc not only had the rear left & right channels swapped, but the channel levels (both left to right and front to back) were unbalanced on every single track, and by different amounts on each track. Not only that, spectral analysis revealed that frequency response cut off abruptly around 20kHz, suggesting it was sourced from a 44.1kHz PCM master.

The reason I wanted to look at the O'Jays disc is that I was pretty sure that the rear left and right channels were swapped, due to the intro for 'For The Love Of Money' panning in a 'Z' pattern instead of a circle, like most quadraphonic pans did. Sure enough, listening to the channels from every song on headphones bore this theory out, the right and left rear channels are swapped. Here's my proof - these are the things that align properly after you do the rear channel swap:

(FL = front left, FR = front right, SL = surround left, SR = Surround Right)

Track 1: bass guitar FL & SL
Track 2: Intro sound effects FL & SL and FR & SR, bass guitar FL & SL
Track 3: Backing vox FL & SL during outro
Track 4: Low backing vocalist FL & SL
Track 5: Bass guitar intro circles instead of zig-zags, outro vocals, same thing
Track 6: Bass drum & backing vox FL & SL
Track 7: Low backing vocalist FL & SL
Track 8: Backing vocals FL & SL

Pretty conclusive I think - this was originally released on SQ vinyl (in addition to Q8) and they pretty much never did diagonal pans because (aside from sounding weird) they would give SQ encoders siezures.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that both the stereo and surround layers are both high resolution. I don't think it's possible to tell if this release originated in PCM or not but if it did, it was at least 96/24 because there's high frequency content in both the stereo and surround layers above 30kHz. Additionally, all of the channel balances, both between left and right speakers, and front and back are absolutely bang on, I didn't have to tweak anything.

If you're going to do what I did and convert the SACD to PCM and re-author as 5.1 FLAC, you can delete the center channel. I found the front soundstage was greatly improved by eliminating it - it's just a mono sum of the front left and front right speakers and it sort of 'smears' the front soundfield just by virtue of existing. I kept the LFE track because I wasn't sure if they 'shaved off' any of the bass in the LFE track from the main speakers, and I didn't want to mess with it for ages trying to figure it out, because to my ears it sounds good as-is.

An interesting note: I dynamic range analysis on my final FLACs (after the rear channel swap and the center channel deletion) using the DR meter in foobar and the results were interesting: every track was reduced by 1dB versus the analysis for the untouched SACD. I don't know if it was the removal of the center channel, or the fact that I worked at 88.2kHz/24bit thereby removing a lot of the ultrasonic noise that exists starting around 40kHz) that would account from this, but it would be interesting to determine if the ultrasonic noise inherent in DSD artificially inflates dynamic range readings.


Having said all that, I agree with fredblue about how amazing this recording is, especially with the rear channels fixed. It's truly an example of how good old quad masters can sound in modern digital formats. I just wish the labels that are sitting on all these amazing recordings realize soon that they need to sell these pumpkins, because eventually it's going to be November 1st and nobody's going to want them any more.

I'm tempted now to look at some of the other quad to SACD discs that Sony did like Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow and the Herbie Hancock Headhunters album. Are there any others that I'm missing?

 

[zabble]

I'm tempted now to look at some of the other quad to SACD discs that Sony did like Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow and the Herbie Hancock Headhunters album. Are there any others that I'm missing?

Off the top of my head:
1. Weather Report - Mysterious Traveller
2. E. Power Biggs (the title escapes me)
3. A Chorus Line - OST

 

[fredblue]

1.) Johann Sebastian Bach - The Four Great Toccatas & Fugues Played By E.Power Biggs,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/908

2.) Boulez Conducts Bartok - Concerto For Orchestra, Miraculous Mandarin,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/249

3.) Tchaikovsky - Nutcracker Suite & 4th Symphony; Bernstein,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/247

4.) Holst: The Planets/Britten - Four Sea Interludes; Bernstein,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/246

5.) Boulez Conducts Ravel - La Valse, Menuet Antique, Mother Goose,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/250

6.) Prokofiev and Mussorgsky - Schippers,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/251

7.) Rodrigo: Villa Lobos, Guitar Concertos; John Williams,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/1210

8.) A Chorus Line - Original Broadway Cast Recording,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/636

9.) Weather Report - Mysterious Traveller,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/728

10.) Jeff Beck - Blow By Blow,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/620

11.) Herbie Hancock - Headhunters,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/589

12.) Isley Brothers - 3+3,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/676

13.) O'Jays - Ship Ahoy,
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/694

 

[fredblue]

Couple of short reviews of the Schippers/Prokofiev+Mussorgsky and Boulez/Bartok SACDs here (both mentioning their Quad origins)..

http://www.classicalcdreview.com/mc25.htm

 

[fredblue]

I agree with this reviewer, the Nutcracker on this SACD does sound absolutely stunning (and better than the 70's Quad of the 4th Symphony imho)..

http://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-9034/

 

[sf49erjohn]

I agree with this reviewer, the Nutcracker on this SACD does sound absolutely stunning (and better than the 70's Quad of the 4th Symphony imho)..

http://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-9034/

Fred-
Any tips for ordering the surround sound Leonard Bernstein/New York Philharmonic SACD that you commented on? I went to the Arkiv Music website but could not locate it on their site. Thanks!

 

[fredblue]

Fred-
Any tips for ordering the surround sound Leonard Bernstein/New York Philharmonic SACD that you commented on? I went to the Arkiv Music website but could not locate it on their site. Thanks!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00008J2QN

 

[fredblue]

So I converted my rip of this disc to PCM and tore it apart in Nuendo, expecting it to be a mess like the Isley Brothers 3+3 SACD. Just to recap for anyone who didn't read my thread about it, the Isley Brothers disc not only had the rear left & right channels swapped, but the channel levels (both left to right and front to back) were unbalanced on every single track, and by different amounts on each track. Not only that, spectral analysis revealed that frequency response cut off abruptly around 20kHz, suggesting it was sourced from a 44.1kHz PCM master.

The reason I wanted to look at the O'Jays disc is that I was pretty sure that the rear left and right channels were swapped, due to the intro for 'For The Love Of Money' panning in a 'Z' pattern instead of a circle, like most quadraphonic pans did. Sure enough, listening to the channels from every song on headphones bore this theory out, the right and left rear channels are swapped. Here's my proof - these are the things that align properly after you do the rear channel swap:

(FL = front left, FR = front right, SL = surround left, SR = Surround Right)

Track 1: bass guitar FL & SL
Track 2: Intro sound effects FL & SL and FR & SR, bass guitar FL & SL
Track 3: Backing vox FL & SL during outro
Track 4: Low backing vocalist FL & SL
Track 5: Bass guitar intro circles instead of zig-zags, outro vocals, same thing
Track 6: Bass drum & backing vox FL & SL
Track 7: Low backing vocalist FL & SL
Track 8: Backing vocals FL & SL

Pretty conclusive I think - this was originally released on SQ vinyl (in addition to Q8) and they pretty much never did diagonal pans because (aside from sounding weird) they would give SQ encoders siezures.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that both the stereo and surround layers are both high resolution. I don't think it's possible to tell if this release originated in PCM or not but if it did, it was at least 96/24 because there's high frequency content in both the stereo and surround layers above 30kHz. Additionally, all of the channel balances, both between left and right speakers, and front and back are absolutely bang on, I didn't have to tweak anything.

If you're going to do what I did and convert the SACD to PCM and re-author as 5.1 FLAC, you can delete the center channel. I found the front soundstage was greatly improved by eliminating it - it's just a mono sum of the front left and front right speakers and it sort of 'smears' the front soundfield just by virtue of existing. I kept the LFE track because I wasn't sure if they 'shaved off' any of the bass in the LFE track from the main speakers, and I didn't want to mess with it for ages trying to figure it out, because to my ears it sounds good as-is.

An interesting note: I dynamic range analysis on my final FLACs (after the rear channel swap and the center channel deletion) using the DR meter in foobar and the results were interesting: every track was reduced by 1dB versus the analysis for the untouched SACD. I don't know if it was the removal of the center channel, or the fact that I worked at 88.2kHz/24bit thereby removing a lot of the ultrasonic noise that exists starting around 40kHz) that would account from this, but it would be interesting to determine if the ultrasonic noise inherent in DSD artificially inflates dynamic range readings.


Having said all that, I agree with fredblue about how amazing this recording is, especially with the rear channels fixed. It's truly an example of how good old quad masters can sound in modern digital formats. I just wish the labels that are sitting on all these amazing recordings realize soon that they need to sell these pumpkins, because eventually it's going to be November 1st and nobody's going to want them any more.

I'm tempted now to look at some of the other quad to SACD discs that Sony did like Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow and the Herbie Hancock Headhunters album. Are there any others that I'm missing?

So.. I'm cranking the SQ LP of Ship Ahoy thru the new Surround Master SQ Vinyl unit.. and well.. I am.. aghast at the results..

That bouncing bass intro to "For The Love Of Money" that does a "Z" shape on the SACD also does a "Z" figure on the SQ record..!!!

It goes...

Bouncing Bass FROM
FRONT LEFT (bom bom bom, bom bom bom bom bom bom bada)

TO Bouncing Bass
FRONT RIGHT (bom bom bom, bom bom bom bom bada)

THEN cymbals kick in FRONT RIGHT,
with other parts of drum kit FRONT LEFT
and percussion REAR LEFT

TO Bouncing Bass
REAR LEFT (bom bom bom, bom bom bom bada bada)

TO Bouncing Bass
REAR RIGHT (bom bom bom, bom bom bom bada bada)

AS "Money Money Money Money.." vocals kick in
at FRONT LEFT

and then swoosh
TO
FRONT RIGHT
"Money..."

swoosh
TO
REAR RIGHT
"Money Money Money Money.."

swoosh TO
REAR LEFT
"Money"

swoosh TO
FRONT LEFT
"Money Money Money Money.."

swoosh TO
FRONT RIGHT
"Money"

swoosh TO
REAR RIGHT
"Money Money Money Money"

swoosh TO
REAR LEFT
"Money"

swoosh TO
FRONT LEFT
"Money Money Money Money"

swoosh TO
FRONT RIGHT
"Money"

swoosh TO
REAR RIGHT
"Money Money Money Money"

swoosh TO
REAR LEFT
"Money"

..rhythm section and percussion play away without vocal accompaniment..

trumpet at
FRONT RIGHT...

bom chicka wah guitar
FRONT LEFT..

..then on a bit, there's another bouncing bass bit "bom a lom a lom a lom a lom a lom a lom.." that is in
REAR RIGHT...

also the percussive/stabbing organ "bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah" is in
REAR RIGHT...

more "For The Love Of Money" pans from
FRONT LEFT
to
FRONT RIGHT
to
REAR RIGHT ...


organ swells
REAR RIGHT

horns (or is it alto sax at one point too?) at
FRONT RIGHT

...
more instrumental then

"Changing.. Changing up your mind" is at
REAR LEFT

Then "Changing.. Changing up your mind" is at
FRONT RIGHT

Then "People don't let money, don't let money change you.. Almighty dollar.." is at
FRONT LEFT

Then "People don't let money, don't let money change you..Almight dollar.." is at
REAR RIGHT

While "Keep On" is at
FRONT RIGHT

"Don't let money change you"
REAR LEFT"

"People don't let money.."
FRONT RIGHT

"People don't let money.."
FRONT LEFT

and the final refrains of
"People don't let money.." fade out at
REAR RIGHT.

I jotted all that down in real time.. there may be errors but I did double check it playing it thru a few times afterwards (and checking channel assignment with Fredgar Winter's Nightdreams which does all the piano panning round the room bit just like the DTS CD) but I'll go thru it all again once I get a MOTU and record the 4 individually decoded channels in.. this is fascinating.. and very surprising..!! :yikes

 

[fredblue]

Oh PS everybody, I have NO idea WTF I was doing giving this one an "8" all those years ago.. this is an out and out "10".. gotta be one of the all-time great Quad mixes.

 

[ssully]

So.. I'm cranking the SQ LP of Ship Ahoy thru the new Surround Master SQ Vinyl unit.. and well.. I am.. aghast at the results..

That bouncing bass intro to "For The Love Of Money" that does a "Z" shape on the SACD also does a "Z" figure on the SQ record..!!!

Interesting......

 

[markshan]

Probably my favorite soul SACD (fan copies of the CD-4 of "What's Going On" and the quad (tape?) of "Imagination" better it, but those aren't SACDs. Why can't we get any Stevie on surround?

 

[ssully]

Interesting......

and see also this thread (be sure to go backwards there and find steelydave's post too):

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...eassignment-recommendations.19693/post-369388


if I've read everything correctly, the upshot appears to be:

the channel assignment on the SACD is indeed correct and as originally intended; the rear channels do not need to be swapped.

(though no one seems to have heard the Q8 ;> )

 

[fredblue]

Oh PS everybody, I have NO idea WTF I was doing giving this one an "8" all those years ago.. this is an out and out "10".. gotta be one of the all-time great Quad mixes.

..and now we can amend our QQ Poll votes, duly upped from an "8" to a "10".