Suggestions for Dutton Epoch Classical Multichannel SACDs

[humprof]

This is probably a long shot, but I'd pay $$$ for a Dutton reissue of the Martinon/Orchestre de Paris Ravel Orchestral Works in quad (heck, even in stereo, if that's the best that could be done - the Japanese issues are rare as hen's teeth)

They were issued on quad LP in the 70s, which is kinda Dutton's forte.

Dutton hasn't done anything from the Angel/EMI catalog--yet. A number of titles have shown up on Apple Music, though, remixed (or, if you're a skeptic, upmixed) to Atmos. A high-profile title like that one would be a good candidate....

 

[kap'n krunch]

This is probably a long shot, but I'd pay $$$ for a Dutton reissue of the Martinon/Orchestre de Paris Ravel Orchestral Works in quad (heck, even in stereo, if that's the best that could be done - the Japanese issues are rare as hen's teeth)

They were issued on quad LP in the 70s, which is kinda Dutton's forte.

I second and third the motion!
I was fortunate enough to get the CD versions and do an AA3 SQ decode with Lucanu's script and they sound truly great; of course, the discrete source would be way better!

 

[steelydave]

Label licensing issues aside, I was under the impression that most of the EMI/Angel quads were ambient surround, whereas Dutton Epoch tend to see discrete mixes as the low-hanging fruit that they want to go after. Is this not the case?

 

[humprof]

Label licensing issues aside, I was under the impression that most of the EMI/Angel quads were ambient surround, whereas Dutton Epoch tend to see discrete mixes as the low-hanging fruit that they want to go after. Is this not the case?

My slender experience with the label would suggest that is the case, yeah. (Though I can think of one title off the top of my head--Respighi's Pines of Rome & Fountains of Rome, LSO/Lamberto Gardelli--that uses the rears more fully.) On the other hand: the Atmos mixes that Warner Classics has been releasing on Apple Music might imply the existence of multi-channel masters that could be made more immersive in the right hands. Hard for me to break down which recordings were originally on Angel/EMI and which on Warner or Erato or some other label, though.

 

[ubertrout]

Label licensing issues aside, I was under the impression that most of the EMI/Angel quads were ambient surround, whereas Dutton Epoch tend to see discrete mixes as the low-hanging fruit that they want to go after. Is this not the case?

Yeah, that's right. DTS released the companion cycle of Debussy orchestral works as straight transfers and there's not all that much in the rears.
Sony only released a third of Boulez's Ravel in multichannel FYI - Dutton has since released the complete Daphnis but there's still the other two LPs - MQ-32838 (the one Sony did) and MQ-32159. Would make a great disc, especially since I'm pretty sure Sony's SACD is a new mix, not the quad mix. Boulez also recorded a bunch more that decade with New York in stereo (some of which Sony released on stereo SACD) to form a complete set of Ravel's orchestral works, should Michael Dutton be interested in mixing them...

 

[quicksrt]

This is probably a long shot, but I'd pay $$$ for a Dutton reissue of the Martinon/Orchestre de Paris Ravel Orchestral Works in quad (heck, even in stereo, if that's the best that could be done - the Japanese issues are rare as hen's teeth)

They were issued on quad LP in the 70s, which is kinda Dutton's forte.

That is a luscious sounding set, I own the Box set on vinyl.

Some of those exact pieces have appeared in quad on DVD:

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/9077674?ev=rb

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Yeah, that's right. DTS released the companion cycle of Debussy orchestral works as straight transfers and there's not all that much in the rears.
Sony only released a third of Boulez's Ravel in multichannel FYI - Dutton has since released the complete Daphnis but there's still the other two LPs - MQ-32838 (the one Sony did) and MQ-32159. Would make a great disc, especially since I'm pretty sure Sony's SACD is a new mix, not the quad mix. Boulez also recorded a bunch more that decade with New York in stereo (some of which Sony released on stereo SACD) to form a complete set of Ravel's orchestral works, should Michael Dutton be interested in mixing them...

I would love to know what M.J.D.'s current backlog is, of in studio titles to complete. Does he hang on to 5-10 titles at a time before going for more, or are they scheduled with the labels far out into the future, with only a few on hand at a time to work on?

 

[kap'n krunch]

Hmmm, I know Dave is an authority on Quad stuff but, although the Martinon's Debussy LPs on EMI are not SUPER discrete , I did find way more info than in a lot of SQ classical discs...
And now I am doubting myself and/or the script I used, which used to yield such great results that when the Japanese Santana S/T Quad SACD came out I did not find a lot of difference from my decodes...
Am listening to the 1st CD (La Mer, etc.) and am finding a lot of stuff in the rears...I wonder if I have been smoking some REALLY good stuff...

Please illuminate me Dave!

 

[kap'n krunch]

This is the release I decoded..
I was under the impression that they were SQ encoded...maybe they aren't (!?)

 

[4-earredwonder]

The EMI/Angel Classical label is now owned by Warner. I believe ALL the Angel SQ encoded discs were single inventory ONLY. Warner Japan has released a few EMI QUADs as Stereo SACDs so not sure if they retain the SQ encoding.

The DTS Martinon Debussy CDs are ambience only. I have a few of the Martinon 5.1 DTS discs and as ubertrout ascertains ....ambient only rears!

Quadraphonic Discography's CLASSICAL listings. You cannot believe how many EMI released under both their EMI/ANGEL labels:

http://www.surrounddiscography.com/quaddisc/quadclas.htm

 

[kap'n krunch]

The EMI/Angel Classical label is now owned by Warner. I believe ALL the Angel SQ encoded discs were single inventory ONLY. Warner Japan has released a few EMI QUADs as Stereo SACDs so not sure if they retain the SQ encoding.

The DTS Martinon Debussy CDs are ambience only. I have a few of the Martinon 5.1 DTS discs and as ubertrout ascertains ....ambient only rears!

Quadraphonic Discography's CLASSICAL listings. You cannot believe how many EMI released under both their EMI/ANGEL labels:

http://www.surrounddiscography.com/quaddisc/quadclas.htm

well, they are VERY LOUD ambient rears!!!

 

[4-earredwonder]

well, they are VERY LOUD ambient rears!!!

Perhaps on the vinyl kap but I can assure you NOT SO on those DTS CDs.

 

[kap'n krunch]

Perhaps on the vinyl kap but I can assure you NOT SO on those DTS CDs.

wanna bet???

 

[4-earredwonder]

wanna bet???

how MUCH?

 

[steelydave]

I would love to know what M.J.D.'s current backlog is, of in studio titles to complete. Does he hang on to 5-10 titles at a time before going for more, or are they scheduled with the labels far out into the future, with only a few on hand at a time to work on?

I can't answer that question specifically because I honestly don't know (nor could I probably say exactly even if I did) but the nature of the production process means that he's constantly got a lot of irons in the fire, and things are released as they come to fruition rather than scheduling a release of some specific titles on a specific day, and then trying to get the work done to meet that deadline. There are so many factors that can delay a release, from missing master tapes to various legal and approval issues, to pressing plant backlogs that the answer to the question "how long does it take to release an SACD?" is the old British expression 'how long is a piece of string?'

Again I haven't really worked on the classical side of D-V, but on the pop side it's been as quick as 6 weeks from when I've been told they got a license to when it was in your hands (Earth, Wind & Fire 2fer) to 8 or 9 months (I wrote the liner notes for Derringer and the Guess Who Road Food/#10 the summer before they were released) to even longer, as is the case with a whole bunch of titles I worked on with Paul, D-V's artwork guy in the spring and summer of 2020 that still haven't been released.

Hmmm, I know Dave is an authority on Quad stuff but, although the Martinon's Debussy LPs on EMI are not SUPER discrete , I did find way more info than in a lot of SQ classical discs...
And now I am doubting myself and/or the script I used, which used to yield such great results that when the Japanese Santana S/T Quad SACD came out I did not find a lot of difference from my decodes...
Am listening to the 1st CD (La Mer, etc.) and am finding a lot of stuff in the rears...I wonder if I have been smoking some REALLY good stuff...

Please illuminate me Dave!

Well for as much as I know about the pop side of quad from first-hand listening experience, when it comes to classical it's more based on what I've read and what I've heard from others. I'm not saying all the EMI classical quads are ambient - I think, for example, one of those Grapelli/Menuhin LPs is discrete - but it's my understanding that most of them are ambient surround.

One rule of thumb when it comes to quad for me is that you really can't judge the discreteness of a mix from an SQ decode. No matter what decoder you use, there's always some "collateral damage" - that is, things from the front speakers that leak, or even worse, are pumped into the rear channels by the over-zealous logic circuits of a decoder. The same goes in reverse, sometimes SQ encodes are so bad that truly discrete albums are so poorly separated that you can't totally tell what the mixer was trying to do, or if what you're listening to is some kind of fake quad. That was definitely the case for me with The Isley Bros Go for Your Guns SQ LP before I heard the Q8, and especially with the O'Jays Survival and Family Reunion before I heard the revelatory D-V SACD from the discrete master tapes. If @4-earredwonder reports that his collection of digital discs from the discrete masters of these albums are ambient I'd put a lot more credence in that than what an old SQ decode may or may not be doing.

Maybe a question for @ubertrout or @humprof, but if EMI/Angel's quads are primarily ambient, does it make CBS Masterworks close-mic'ed/discrete classical quads somewhat unique? I know there were some other labels doing discrete quad recording like DG (is that where the Pentatone SACDs are sourced from?) but it seems like the other majors favoured ambient surround to this classical neophyte.

 

[humprof]

aybe a question for @ubertrout or @humprof, but if EMI/Angel's quads are primarily ambient, does it make CBS Masterworks close-mic'ed/discrete classical quads somewhat unique? I know there were some other labels doing discrete quad recording like DG (is that where the Pentatone SACDs are sourced from?) but it seems like the other majors favoured ambient surround to this classical neophyte.

Most of what I know about this, I learned from @ubertrout, so I would ultimately defer to him. DG did a handful of relatively discrete quads, mostly with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony. Ditto RCA, though I think Dutton has located most of those already. But from interviews I've read with engineers like Marc J. Aubort, and from contemporary articles in the trade magazines about the recording of the earliest Vanguard and Columbia classical quads, I get the impression that many conductors were skeptical (Boulez and, to some extent, Bernstein and Ormandy were the exceptions), and most engineers took it as gospel that the aim of a good classical recording was to reproduce the concert hall experience as faithfully as possible--that that was how God intended us to listen to classical music, and that afficionados would find anything else "unnatural." Maybe there were a few closet heretics at EMI...?

 

[ubertrout]

I can't answer that question specifically because I honestly don't know (nor could I probably say exactly even if I did) but the nature of the production process means that he's constantly got a lot of irons in the fire, and things are released as they come to fruition rather than scheduling a release of some specific titles on a specific day, and then trying to get the work done to meet that deadline. There are so many factors that can delay a release, from missing master tapes to various legal and approval issues, to pressing plant backlogs that the answer to the question "how long does it take to release an SACD?" is the old British expression 'how long is a piece of string?'

Again I haven't really worked on the classical side of D-V, but on the pop side it's been as quick as 6 weeks from when I've been told they got a license to when it was in your hands (Earth, Wind & Fire 2fer) to 8 or 9 months (I wrote the liner notes for Derringer and the Guess Who Road Food/#10 the summer before they were released) to even longer, as is the case with a whole bunch of titles I worked on with Paul, D-V's artwork guy in the spring and summer of 2020 that still haven't been released.




Well for as much as I know about the pop side of quad from first-hand listening experience, when it comes to classical it's more based on what I've read and what I've heard from others. I'm not saying all the EMI classical quads are ambient - I think, for example, one of those Grapelli/Menuhin LPs is discrete - but it's my understanding that most of them are ambient surround.

One rule of thumb when it comes to quad for me is that you really can't judge the discreteness of a mix from an SQ decode. No matter what decoder you use, there's always some "collateral damage" - that is, things from the front speakers that leak, or even worse, are pumped into the rear channels by the over-zealous logic circuits of a decoder. The same goes in reverse, sometimes SQ encodes are so bad that truly discrete albums are so poorly separated that you can't totally tell what the mixer was trying to do, or if what you're listening to is some kind of fake quad. That was definitely the case for me with The Isley Bros Go for Your Guns SQ LP before I heard the Q8, and especially with the O'Jays Survival and Family Reunion before I heard the revelatory D-V SACD from the discrete master tapes. If @4-earredwonder reports that his collection of digital discs from the discrete masters of these albums are ambient I'd put a lot more credence in that than what an old SQ decode may or may not be doing.

Maybe a question for @ubertrout or @humprof, but if EMI/Angel's quads are primarily ambient, does it make CBS Masterworks close-mic'ed/discrete classical quads somewhat unique? I know there were some other labels doing discrete quad recording like DG (is that where the Pentatone SACDs are sourced from?) but it seems like the other majors favoured ambient surround to this classical neophyte.

Not an expert, but my impression is that most of the classical labels were quite conservative with quad. Of the big European labels only DG's recordings in Boston are particularly discrete. Avant-garde music may be an exception.

I'm not sure why Columbia in particular was so willing to experiment with quad. I do think it was partially artist-specific though, especially with Boulez. RCA had also been an innovator with stereo, and it was some of the same people 20 years later willing to be innovative with quad. I don't know for sure, but the budgets of US labels may have also been higher.

 

[4-earredwonder]

The 1974 EMI Recording of Verdi's Aida with Riccardo Muti conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra is discrete [DTS Entertainment/3 DTS CDs]

https://www.discogs.com/release/17016216-Verdi-Caballé-Domingo-Riccardo-Muti-Aida

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Label licensing issues aside, I was under the impression that most of the EMI/Angel quads were ambient surround, whereas Dutton Epoch tend to see discrete mixes as the low-hanging fruit that they want to go after. Is this not the case?

Even considering all this Dave (and I know your question was rhetorical) how about non-classical EMI titles?

Some of us here enjoy this EMI/Angel SQ title (I have a copy myself)
https://www.discogs.com/release/133...ierre-Rampal-Improvisations-West-Meets-East-3
and there's also this one (potential two-fer?):
https://www.discogs.com/release/9823903-Yehudi-Menuhin-Stéphane-Grappelli-Tea-For-Two
Probably dumb questions (but that's never stopped me before !)
How does MJD sample titles like this from the masters, to hear just how discrete they are for potential DV discrete standards? Can he order the tapes for sampling or maybe even have someone send him digital transfers to sample?

So if you believe this is even in the slightest bit possible, could you please but a bug in his ear on these?
I'm sure they'd have at least as much (or more) appeal than stuff like "Danny Davis And The Nashville Brass - Travelin' & Caribbean Cruise"

 

[fredblue]

Even considering all this Dave (and I know your question was rhetorical) how about non-classical EMI titles?

Some of us here enjoy this EMI/Angel SQ title (I have a copy myself)
https://www.discogs.com/release/133...ierre-Rampal-Improvisations-West-Meets-East-3
and there's also this one (potential two-fer?):
https://www.discogs.com/release/9823903-Yehudi-Menuhin-Stéphane-Grappelli-Tea-For-Two
Probably dumb questions (but that's never stopped me before !)
How does MJD sample titles like this from the masters, to hear just how discrete they are for potential DV discrete standards? Can he order the tapes for sampling or maybe even have someone send him digital transfers to sample?

So if you believe this is even in the slightest bit possible, could you please but a bug in his ear on these?
I'm sure they'd have at least as much (or more) appeal than stuff like "Danny Davis And The Nashville Brass - Travelin' & Caribbean Cruise"

weirdly, that later Tea For Two SQ is really ambient and barely Surround at all, whereas the other Menuhin/Grappelli SQ is nice and Surround-y

would still like all that lot discrete anyway!