Steven Wilson Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii - Steven Wilson mix - May 2nd 2025

[César]

First listening from Tidal.

It’s curious. Dave and Rick voices are crossed backwards. In the Fronts, Dave is on the left and Rick is on the right. But on side and rear surrounds, they are backwards, Dave on the right and Rick on the left.

Since you hear more the side surround than the front, it appears that Dave is on the right, but really both voices come from mixed directions in a strange manner.

Also, yes, the Heights only output very low global echo/reverb in the Top x.x.2 bed channels. I.e. in a x.x.4 system they sound the four top speakers, but in a x.x.6 system only sound the Top Middles.

On the other hand, there is content for the Wides, so the mix is pretty good surrounding you at floor level as if you were there, between them at Pompeii amphitheatre, without sound coming from the open sky above.

I like the clear sound of drum cymbals more than the other quad and 5.1 copies that I have.

One of the aspects that make Echoes special to me is how David and Rick's voices blend together. They way Steven mixed them in surround, so separated between both sides of the listening spectrum, somehow breaks the magic for me. This time, I prefer his stereo mix to the Atmos. Yesterday, I was comparing Andy's mix to Steven's and in terms of voices and instrument placing, I prefer Andy's. Yet, the sound quality is so bad that Steven sounds like heaven in comparison

 

[steelydave]

Much of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw set had already been mixed and broadcast in quad in the 1970s on King Biscuit.

I suspect the elements available to Wilson were already stemmed for 'quad;, hence the remix in quad.
Otherwise why not simply mix to 5.0 or 5.1?

This isn't a thing, especially in the analog era, they wouldn't have made some kind of submaster or intermediate tape in between the multitrack and the mixed quad master. The idea of "stems" is a mostly-consumer term of the post-'Rock Band' game era.

All the KBFH quad masters were destroyed in a fire at DIR's office building in the early '80s, so all that remains are the original multitracks, which were stored elsewhere.

IMO not using the center channel in a live mix, especially a vintage one with a limited number of multitracks has a lot more to do with instrument leakage from onstage mics. Onstage amps and drums all leak into each other's mics, and especially the vocal mic - if you put any vocals in the center channel, you also get guitar and other instruments coming out of the center channel every time you bring up the vocal mic in the mix. If you bypass the center channel all of that leakage can just be part of the 'ambiance' in the phantom center of the front stereo mix. Otherwise you get into trying to use stem extraction software and other tools to try and get a 'clean' vocal with all the other stuff digitally removed, and it's so easy for this to sound artificial, and well...just bad. Even though it's just stereo, Chicago's 1970 Isle of Wight performance (issued as part of their Decades: Live box set and mixed by the oft-reviled Tim Jessup is a good example of just how wrong this kind of thing can go.

It’s curious. Dave and Rick voices are crossed backwards. In the Fronts, Dave is on the left and Rick is on the right. But on side and rear surrounds, they are backwards, Dave on the right and Rick on the left.

Since you hear more the side surround than the front, it appears that Dave is on the right, but really both voices come from mixed directions in a strange manner.

IMO this is about stereo/binaural fold-down as much as anything else - you get the vocal on one side, and you get the ambiance (vocal echoes/reverb/tails/whatever) moving toward the other side. In full surround it allows each vocal to have their own "right angle triangle of sound" in the mix: FL-Ls-Rs for the front left vocal, and FR-Rs-Ls) for the front right vocal.

Eddie Kramer took a similar approach toward the quad mix of The Song Remains the Same, so I think SW's in pretty good company on this.

From a thread I did on the subject:

 

[Owen Smith]

and still reflecting a great non-understanding of how DTS and DD compare.

I'm saying what my ears hear. Dolby Digital 5.1 is generally poor compared to DTS 5.1 with the material I have.