Amazon says revised delivery date for me to be the 16th. I ordered just the BD.
Pink Floyd - "Animals" 5.1 Surround Sound Mix (Blu-Ray & SACD editions out in September 2022!)
- Thread starter César
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Totally true, I think. Part of what caused quad to fail is that the labels didn’t look at the best quad mixes and recognize it’s greatest asset. To my ears, having listened to (and looked at the sound files and seeing the separation of) a lot of old quad mixes from the era, the most remarkable of them were the ones with a good bit of space in the recordings, soul and country/folk music often shined in quad while some prog and hard rock got muddled (which explains why Q8 was so popular…soul and country were both popular driving music for a lot of people, while teens were in their rooms with headphones listening to denser rock records).
Pink Floyd were a great band for quad because they understood the space between the notes, but more densely mixed prog and rock were not nearly as successful in terms of the mix.
I imagine that one of the reasons Dutton Vocalion picks what they choose for quad reissues as they go through their options (mostly the Sony owned catalog) is that there are a lot of spacious recordings to work with (and the volume of easy listening albums they choose, which I personally have no time for, is likely informed by the space within the sound). This makes the failure of quad at least partially due to the “rockest” (for lack of a better word) bias on the part of the press. I’m sure the classical world was iffy on quad as well, since the recording habits of orchestral producers back then were limited by standard recording techniques; what was then an ideal set up for symphonic work didn’t consistently lend itself to surround. The best quad puts you in the middle of the action, and metaphorically being in the center of a symphony is not somewhere most people want to be to listen to classical music unless it’s spacious music. Being surrounded by Emerson Lake and Palmer seems like it would be assaulting to me. Being surrounded by a small soul combo with some strings, like the Hi Rhythm Section with Al Green or Ann Peebles at the center of the room is a much better alternative (predictably funk often didn’t translate well, Funkadelic in quad was awful). Or being surrounded by Mickey Newbury’s band making Frisco Mabel Joy, Jackson Browne’s small band making Late For The Sky, or The Carpenters that sounds good (as do some fringe prog/Krautrock records from Germany…Ash Ra Temple, Klaus Schulze). I imagine writers and listeners wanted everything or nothing in quad and everything was a bad idea, quad requires much more nuance than stereo, arguably each speaker after 2 (really after 1) is exponentially more complex in balancing the sound. It took newer technology (including digital) to bring us to the point where a nuanced surround mix could be brought out of denser works (and newer mastering tech made it possible to make sense of some of the older, sometimes less successful quad mixes).
I’ve been working with a producer on a project that involves reissuing some old recordings and he’s demonstrated to me that remixing the material with modern studio technology, while sticking to the spirit of the original mix, can give you much clearer instrument and voice definition, which make the reasons why (for example) Steven Wilson has done newer stereo mixes of many of the projects he’s worked on, it isn’t to alter the spirit of the music, it’s to provide clarity and definition that wasn’t achievable in the early to mid-70’s.
So, basically, quad’s problems is that it happened too technologically early to succeed of a broad level and deliver successful surround sound on a wide array of music, and it’s failure tainted the future success of it’s descendants like 5.1 and Atmos. Those descendants will be appealing to a lot of us (enough to keep them coming), but a lot of other people who might have given them a chance, are disinterested because quad was seen as a gimmick of its time. A lot of them love film and television in surround, but are inexplicably (sometimes aggressively) disinterested in hearing their favorite bands in surround. I know a few Pink Floyd, King Crimson, XTC and/or Yes fans who react to the offer to play the bands in 5.1 for them as a threat (it’s almost like the sunglasses scene in “They Live” trying to get them to listen).
Roger Waters and Production Designer Andrew Sanders describe the inflatables designed for the In The Flesh Tour in 1977:
(Goes live in 16 hours)
(Goes live in 16 hours)
I'm not completely sure I agree, a lot of the heaviest stuff from the era translated pretty well to quad - I'm thinking of albums like Black Sabbath's Paranoid, Deep Purple's Machine Head, Aerosmith's Rocks, Blue Oyster Cult's Secret Treaties, etc
mutant_matt
Active Member
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- Jan 9, 2017
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I very much agree at least WRT Machine Head (in all the various different mixes/releases on the SACDs over the years...)!
Received my confirmation emails for 9/16 release of the CD and LP from Amazon. Looking forward to it. I look forward to the deluxe edition on 10/7 as well.
I wouldn't disagree on 3 or those 4, and I haven't heard the forth (Aerosmith), so I can't address that one. And maybe I'm just rambling (I may be rambling). But I'd counter that, in spite of the heaviness of some of the guitar work, there's lots of openness and subtlety on Paranoid, Machine Head & Secret Treaties. I do sense that the record industry didn't delve deeper into the busier rock sound and mostly chose quad releases (rock included) fairly judiciously, some catastrophic fake quad releases appeared in many genres (the Funkadelic one, and The Chi-Lites were pretty much just reverb fake "quad"), but it seems a lot of care was taken to choose music that fit the format.
I guess my point, and the problem with the way quad was handled back then, was that recording technology wasn't entirely ready for quad (as opposed to when it became sufficiently better and 5.1's SACD's and subsequently DVD's and Blu-rays hit the market). If you look at the discography sites of what quad releases were made available (like the surrounddiscography site), the choices for rock fans interested in quad were quite limited by what (I'm guessing) made sense in terms of possible discreteness in mixing. Jazz, easy listening, country and soul are all quite well represented in the discography of releases, but rock (as one of the more the dominant music markets) was fairly poorly represented and where it was represented, it was largely dominated by lighter rock acts. Sure, some acts were fairly comprehensively covered by quad releases like Chicago, Doobie Brothers, Aerosmith, Santana, Steely Dan, but at some point either it was decided that releases would be limited to either what sounded good (and more than a few that came out did not sound amazing) or the decision was made to cater only to an audience who listened within certain pockets of different genres. Though it's difficult to make sense of the outlay of possible audiences based on what was released.
Regardless, the niche-ifying of quad releases was not a good idea if the hope was that quad would become ubiquitous among music listeners, there had to have been a decision to either exclude parts of genres that didn't work, or whole swaths of the music buying public who the labels imagined would never buy into quad. And just the idea that "it will only ever appeal to certain people" most definitely contributed to it's failure. If DVD film companies decided that surround sound films would only ever appeal to a very small demographic, it would never have become the dominant audio format for DVD's and Blu-rays today. The very fact that the labels hesitated may have killed quad, but it may well have been killed if they hadn't been careful to avoid flooding the market with crap.
I'm getting to the pacing the floor point waiting for the "now shipping" email!
My Amazon preorder now says 9/20.
What exactly have you purchased? According to Amazon UK, the stand-alone Blu-ray disc is still being released on Friday 16 September
My Amazon order says the 16th still.
In recent times I have ordered a variety of music from The Pineapple Thief, Bruce Soord solo, Robert Reed in several different bands. Giancarlo Erra's (Nosound) recent works.
All good and still enjoying.
But I'm ready to go old school progressive. Even if it is REALLY old. Stuff of my youth, and all that. You know?
All good and still enjoying.
But I'm ready to go old school progressive. Even if it is REALLY old. Stuff of my youth, and all that. You know?
Will all the demand for this release, I would imagine they will as soon as it gets released.
Cheers
harync
Senior Member
Hard to say. All of the post-1987 surround albums have already been released in Dolby Audio on Apple Music. None of the Pre-1987 surround albums (AHM in Quad; DSOTM, WYWH) have been released in Dolby Audio on Apple Music. It would be nice if they were all released with Animals.
As was mentioned, none of the Waters era PF albums are available for streaming on Apple. It remind me of the fact that back in the day you couldn't get PF albums (or Stones or Beatles for that matter), albums from record clubs. I assume it was a distribution rights issue. This seems like the same thing.
There are a lot of other excellent 5.1 releases that aren't being streamed. No Dire Straights, no Alan Parsons, no White Album, Al Stewart, Yes.... the list goes on.
JediJoker
Audio Engineer/Enthusiast
...in surround. An important distinction. Pink Floyd's entire catalogue is available to stream/download in lossless stereo.
