Pink Floyd/The Division Bell - Ask Andy Jackson about the Mastering and the Mix

[newbyquad]

Great to have you here Andy. Awesome job on TDB too, especially the QUAD mix and not the 5.1 mix. Adventurous mix in my opinion.

Anyway, are you planning on doing any other surround mixes? Because we have been advocating a couple on here for years. The main one is AMBROSIA's first album engineered by Alan Parsons, it was nominated for a Grammy in 1975 for exceptional sound and the other is SEVEN DREAMS by Spirit. They are both pretty obscure albums but believe me if someone were to do to them what you did on TDB, they would sell out quickly. Thousands of fans waiting for these.

 

[newbyquad]

Here is my take. It is a logic one, not an audio one.

Less people own 5.1 systems than own 5.1 systems PLUS 4.0 systems.

Personally, I like 4.0 because it forces the mixer to place the voice on one of the 4 speakers as a choice for each song.

If it were my album, I would have it with options, if you play it on a 4.0 system, then have the disc automatically start on that system. If it senses a 5.1 however, have it move on to the 5.1.

My SONY car stereo has that feature and since you own the master, you don't have to pay separate royalties for each mix.

 

[Andy Jackson]

Great to have you here Andy. Awesome job on TDB too, especially the QUAD mix and not the 5.1 mix. Adventurous mix in my opinion.

Anyway, are you planning on doing any other surround mixes? Because we have been advocating a couple on here for years. The main one is AMBROSIA's first album engineered by Alan Parsons, it was nominated for a Grammy in 1975 for exceptional sound and the other is SEVEN DREAMS by Spirit. They are both pretty obscure albums but believe me if someone were to do to them what you did on TDB, they would sell out quickly. Thousands of fans waiting for these.

Absolutely not my call needless to say, however, I pretty confine myself to Floyd stuff, mastering (for anyone, stereo only) & making my own music. I don't have my own surround studio, I use Gilmour's, so it all gets a bit complex.

 

[0tto]

I use Gilmour's, so it all gets a bit complex.

i guess you sees him quite often. i wonder what is David stance on the surround format?
some musicians not even aware about such thing inspite of having albums, issued in the past in quad formats.
and in regards of "Signal to Noise". i wasn't aware but now checked out amazon and seems would place an order. just need sort of small clarification.
print on back says DVD-Audio, 96/24 lossless and at same time DTS HD MA, which is BD format. at least i never before have seen DTS HD on DVD-A.
so if i purchase this release, how i supposed to utilize it?

 

[Andy Jackson]

i guess you sees him quite often. i wonder what is David stance on the surround format?
some musicians not even aware about such thing inspite of having albums, issued in the past in quad formats.
and in regards of "Signal to Noise". i wasn't aware but now checked out amazon and seems would place an order. just need sort of small clarification.
print on back says DVD-Audio, 96/24 lossless and at same time DTS HD MA, which is BD format. at least i never before have seen DTS HD on DVD-A.
so if i purchase this release, how i supposed to utilize it?

Re David, no I don't see him that often, only when we're working. Obviously Floyd have had a long association with surround formats (DSoM etc available on quad vinyl), but DG himself doesn't especially engage with it, he more focuses on the music itself. It's more myself (or James Guthrie) that engage with this stuff.

As for Signal to noise DTS MA, yes it has that format & it certainly works seamlessly on the player I use (a Cambridge Audio). If you want to know more you'd need to ask Neil Wilkes who authored it!!

 

[newbyquad]

Thank you for the response. It is appreciated. You should seriously consider a larger side career in surround mixing, you obviously have a gift for it.

 

[Andy Jackson]

Thank you for the response. It is appreciated. You should seriously consider a larger side career in surround mixing, you obviously have a gift for it.

Maybe. It'd mean a paradigm shift to working wholly digital, but that's what I do with my own stuff anyway. My mastering room could accommodate 5.1 monitoring, so that's possible. Trouble is I don't think there's any back catalogue left, Steven W has done it all ;-)

 

[DuncanS]

Maybe. It'd mean a paradigm shift to working wholly digital, but that's what I do with my own stuff anyway. My mastering room could accommodate 5.1 monitoring, so that's possible. Trouble is I don't think there's any back catalogue left, Steven W has done it all ;-)

'The Division Bell' & your own 'Signal To Noise' surround mixes sound great. There is plenty of good stuff in the back catalogues untouched out there. Go for it!

 

[Cyber 1]

I'll send you a real nice case of beer if you do Animals

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Maybe. It'd mean a paradigm shift to working wholly digital, but that's what I do with my own stuff anyway. My mastering room could accommodate 5.1 monitoring, so that's possible. Trouble is I don't think there's any back catalogue left, Steven W has done it all ;-)

It would be very intersting if you could work on more surround mixes. There are definately artists who are interested in surround. Perhaps The Pinapple Thief is a nice start, https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...-1-Interview-with-Bruce-Soord&highlight=Soord

 

[Andy Jackson]

Who knows, maybe it's something to think about. It's nice to know that people like what I do.

 

[rontoon]

Who knows, maybe it's something to think about. It's nice to know that people like what I do.

You probably have a bigger fan base than you're aware of. And for good reason.

 

[Snood]

Need more peeps voting on poll https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...AL-TO-NOISE-DVD-A&highlight=andy+jackson+poll

Oh Hi Andy - Snood bought your CD/DVD toooo from recommendations on here - have not listened to yet, got some Crimson to get tooooooo

Thank you for doing what ya do - but seriously think that if there are opportunities to do more 5.1 mixes of other groups besides PF, you should really consider it. That is if you have the time.

Thank yoooooooooooou very much for your time , effort and talent.

We love you here at QQ forums :snoodhug: - damn where is my emoticon?

 

[Andy Jackson]

thanks everyone

 

[patrick1]

thanks everyone

Thank you, Andy, for taking the time to enlighten us all!!!

 

[elmer]

Re David, no I don't see him that often, only when we're working. Obviously Floyd have had a long association with surround formats (DSoM etc available on quad vinyl), but DG himself doesn't especially engage with it, he more focuses on the music itself. It's more myself (or James Guthrie) that engage with this stuff.

As for Signal to noise DTS MA, yes it has that format & it certainly works seamlessly on the player I use (a Cambridge Audio). If you want to know more you'd need to ask Neil Wilkes who authored it!!

First off, let me state that I am most appreciative of Andy's presence here on QQ and having recently received Signal to Noise directly from Cherry Red (autographed by Andy) - it' in heavy rotation!

The disc however is DVD Audio and contains only MLP losslesss 96/24 (stereo & Quad) & DTS 96/24. The back of the digipak states DTS HD MA & Dolby True HD which are Blu Ray formats and are not on this disc - a misprint.

The disc is still wonderful!

 

[Andy Jackson]

First off, let me state that I am most appreciative of Andy's presence here on QQ and having recently received Signal to Noise directly from Cherry Red (autographed by Andy) - it' in heavy rotation!

The disc however is DVD Audio and contains only MLP losslesss 96/24 (stereo & Quad) & DTS 96/24. The back of the digipak states DTS HD MA & Dolby True HD which are Blu Ray formats and are not on this disc - a misprint.

The disc is still wonderful!

1st, thanks for buying & glad you like it!

Surround formats. Someone else said that they suspected the formats as printed didn't make sense. SO... Neil Wilkes authored it & it was he (in discussion with me) that set the formats. We decided on PCM (at one point considering not MLP'ing it, but it gets really marginal for bitrate output) and DTS. I'm not up on formats enough to know flavours of DTS apart, except I knew what we had would cover bases (as it has a low rate, old style, DTS stream embedded), and listened to them to make sure I was happy, and that the test disc all worked properly (FWIW I liked the DTS over the MLP on the player I was using, a Cambridge Audio, rather counter intuitive). I didn't spot that it says Dolby True HD on the artwork, I was just thinking about the artwork proper (photos, fonts, layout etc). I kinda did the artwork inasmuch as that stuff goes, but it goes off to someone who does a mean Quark Express to actually put it together (Phil Smee in this case). I guess it was between him & Mark @Esoteric that that stuff got decided, and I paid it not a lot of attention. I'll point this out to Esoteric, but I doubt that it'll get changed unless it sells a boat load.

Should anyone be geeky enough to be interested, this is from an email from Neil at the time:
The quads are quad encoded too - no empty LFE/C channels - so it identifies correctly in the stream types (checked this is correct on our Oppo players) as DTS Quad or MLP Quad. This should prevent any dodgy channel remapping to place content in centre channels when not wanted (which can happen, apparently, if a DTS-HD MA stream is encoded in 5.1 & played back through DTS-HD essentials decoders in a system configured as 7.1 the rear channels get duplicated for the sides - eek or what!!)

The DTS stream was generated with the slightly older "DTS-Pro" series encoder as opposed to the newer DTS-HD MAS suite we use for Blu-ray.
We chose this encoder because it outputs .dts (padded) mode which is preferred by Scenarist SD over .cpt (compact) mode output by the newer one when in DVD mode. I cannot hear any difference between the 2 though (cpt was a form used mainly by Apple's DVD-SP software)

 

[elmer]

1st, thanks for buying & glad you like it!

Surround formats. Someone else said that they suspected the formats as printed didn't make sense. SO... Neil Wilkes authored it & it was he (in discussion with me) that set the formats. We decided on PCM (at one point considering not MLP'ing it, but it gets really marginal for bitrate output) and DTS. I'm not up on formats enough to know flavours of DTS apart, except I knew what we had would cover bases (as it has a low rate, old style, DTS stream embedded), and listened to them to make sure I was happy, and that the test disc all worked properly (FWIW I liked the DTS over the MLP on the player I was using, a Cambridge Audio, rather counter intuitive). I didn't spot that it says Dolby True HD on the artwork, I was just thinking about the artwork proper (photos, fonts, layout etc). I kinda did the artwork inasmuch as that stuff goes, but it goes off to someone who does a mean Quark Express to actually put it together (Phil Smee in this case). I guess it was between him & Mark @Esoteric that that stuff got decided, and I paid it not a lot of attention. I'll point this out to Esoteric, but I doubt that it'll get changed unless it sells a boat load.

Should anyone be geeky enough to be interested, this is from an email from Neil at the time:
The quads are quad encoded too - no empty LFE/C channels - so it identifies correctly in the stream types (checked this is correct on our Oppo players) as DTS Quad or MLP Quad. This should prevent any dodgy channel remapping to place content in centre channels when not wanted (which can happen, apparently, if a DTS-HD MA stream is encoded in 5.1 & played back through DTS-HD essentials decoders in a system configured as 7.1 the rear channels get duplicated for the sides - eek or what!!)

The DTS stream was generated with the slightly older "DTS-Pro" series encoder as opposed to the newer DTS-HD MAS suite we use for Blu-ray.
We chose this encoder because it outputs .dts (padded) mode which is preferred by Scenarist SD over .cpt (compact) mode output by the newer one when in DVD mode. I cannot hear any difference between the 2 though (cpt was a form used mainly by Apple's DVD-SP software)

The devil is in the details. While there are many here that would certainly qualify as "geeky" enough to care about Neil's comments, The misprint might be misleading to those owners of blu ray players without DVD Audio capability who are expecting lossless DTS HD MA or Dolby True HD based on the package info.

I suspect that a package correction in unlikely. The clarification here might help though.

 

[Andy Jackson]

Indeed. Just emailed Mark @ Esoteric & he's most apologetic & has said it will be corrected on future runs (if there are any)

 

[0tto]

elmer
Andy Jackson

my first thought was... disc perhaps has BD files formats and structure, placed onto regular DVD medium, to cut the cost on production.
albeit such would be out of any known standard but technically it's still works on BD players.
but thanks you guys for clarification. ordered two disc, for me and my relative.

p.s. Andy, you're kidding about DTS sounds better than MLP?
that's impossible with the audio stream, from which almost 3/4 of an information about captured sound is missing, after compression into DTS format