DKA
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
I think a whole lot of things about this..
- I do not consider the presence of overlapping information in other channels to be a weakness in a mix. I think holding back from providing complete discreteness can fulfill many functions, the most important being creating a more "full" mix or allowing for holes in the soundfield to be better filled. I think there are better ways to do this, though, than what Guthrie did. Guthrie was too conservative with this mix, though, with the presence of as much lead vocal audible behind the listener on "Have a Cigar" than there is in the center an example of that.
- The idea of "presenting the stereo's mix in a 5.1 format" is one I don't understand when coming from professional mixers and producers. This is not what I want when I'm buying something put out from a record company. Very few mixers understand this. Steve Wilson does. That's for sure. To use this as an excuse as to why this, or the "Moving Pictures" mix, pulls too many punches, is not something I can be easily sold on.
- The quad, as presented in this package, has its share of flaws itself, and almost goes too far in the other direction, plus sounded rather unbalanced to me.
- That being said, I do firmly believe the mix is derived from multitracks, and that this simply was an artistic choice done by Mr. Guthrie. For what it is, I enjoyed the clean sound of it and feel it more than has its moments. In the end, though, he didn't do what I wish he would have. That's fine. Others are going to feel differently, and more power to them. I don't think anything is being misrepresented.
- I'll never understand why people choose to isolate channels on a mix when listening. The idea of a surround mix is for the channels to psychoacoustically interact with each other and produce a "surround" experience when sitting in the sweet spot. Isolating channels and looking for imperfections is just looking for something not to like in a mix. I'm more of a "glass half full" kind of guy than that.
- I have never believed this to be a "quad" forum. The name on the marquee says "Multichannel music past, present, and future." I've said this before and I'll say it again: I personally do not care about older quad recordings for the most part. I was in diapers when most of them came out, and very rarely do I encounter a transfer that I honestly enjoy. This, however, is the largest surround community that I know of, and the overlap between "modern surround enthusiast" and "grew up on quad as a kid" is rather large. There's room for everyone here.
- People who are going to point fingers and say "fake" need to do a lot of listening as to what "fake" sounds like in 2011. It's not the crap you heard ten years ago, or what Silverline was putting out. People make baseless opinions all the time as to what "derived from stereo" sounds like, and a whole lot of them need to do their research before opening their mouths. From a crispness standpoint, though, hey, I wish some of what I do from stereo sounded as good as Guthrie's mix.
