Similar mix approach, at least to my ears.
Van Morrison "Moondance" (Standalone Blu-Ray with Steven Wilson Dolby Atmos mix coming in December!)
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himey
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
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I haven't listened to the new Moondance. Once I got past the forward lead vocal on Ripple, I really grew to like the Atmos mix of American Beauty.
Isn't both Steven Wilson mixes?
himey
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olgitnorm
701 Club - QQ All-Star
Are there more Atmos streams other than American Beauty?
Europe ‘72, also mixed in Atmos by Wilson.
olgitnorm
701 Club - QQ All-Star
I was referring specifically to Grateful Dead Albums but thanks anyway
Oops, my bad. Sorry.
I stream Apple, but very little, mainly just to check out new released such as this Moondance.
As a long time audiophile and surround sound lover, I can only hope for a few things.
1 The availability of multich streams continue to encourage the public to become involved again.
2 The numbers of listeners on Apple-Tidal and our voices encourage them to devote the bandwidth to
losslessly stream Atmos and the rest. The audiophiles made it happen for 2ch streaming.
3 Our continued support of SDE and IAA not only keeps them in business but also encourages the
big labels to do the same. (make multich discs) Money talks my friends.
As a long time audiophile and surround sound lover, I can only hope for a few things.
1 The availability of multich streams continue to encourage the public to become involved again.
2 The numbers of listeners on Apple-Tidal and our voices encourage them to devote the bandwidth to
losslessly stream Atmos and the rest. The audiophiles made it happen for 2ch streaming.
3 Our continued support of SDE and IAA not only keeps them in business but also encourages the
big labels to do the same. (make multich discs) Money talks my friends.
Since this thread has already wandered a bit afield, I'm gonna veer off on another tangent and throw in a mention of a Van Morrison double DVD that I recently bought (used & cheap) that I think is really good: Live At Montreux, which features live videos of Jazz Festival performances in 1980 and 1974. I couldn't find much mention of this anywhere else on QQ, so I'm wedging it in here.
The DTS 5.1 is the typical audience & ambience in the rears, nothing remarkable there, and the video quality isn't stellar, especially for the 1974 disc. But the music! If you enjoy classic-era Van, I think you would really appreciate this. The 1974 show is with a pickup band he'd never played with before, playing mostly unreleased songs that the audience must have been largely unfamiliar with, and his voice is a little worn, but it's pretty transcendent, despite (or maybe, because of). The 1980 show is with a large, accomplished, apparently well-rehearsed band and the set features a lot of his well-known 70s songs, and it's a solid and very enjoyable presentation.
If you're a VM fan and can find this used for $10 or so, I'd say it's well worth the small investment.
https://www.discogs.com/master/781800-Van-Morrison-Live-At-Montreux-1980-1974
The DTS 5.1 is the typical audience & ambience in the rears, nothing remarkable there, and the video quality isn't stellar, especially for the 1974 disc. But the music! If you enjoy classic-era Van, I think you would really appreciate this. The 1974 show is with a pickup band he'd never played with before, playing mostly unreleased songs that the audience must have been largely unfamiliar with, and his voice is a little worn, but it's pretty transcendent, despite (or maybe, because of). The 1980 show is with a large, accomplished, apparently well-rehearsed band and the set features a lot of his well-known 70s songs, and it's a solid and very enjoyable presentation.
If you're a VM fan and can find this used for $10 or so, I'd say it's well worth the small investment.
https://www.discogs.com/master/781800-Van-Morrison-Live-At-Montreux-1980-1974
Yes! Don’t get this for surround… get it for the magnificent performances on the 1980 disc. Wonderful!
I’ve been comparing the Steven Wilson Atmos mix with the Scheiner Blu-ray 5.1 mix.
I like better the Atmos mix.
As my rig has Wides (9.1.4) I always appreciate the Atmos mixes that use extensively the Wides. Because, I think, the object positioning spread around the room should give a more spacious feeling than if tie only to bed channels.
The first Steven Wilson Atmos mixes did use the wides very scarce, if at all. I attributed this to the fact that his study has only 7.1.4 monitor speakers, as far as I can see in its pictures. And perhaps he didn't could test how much improves the listening with wides? But recently, more and more S. Wilson Atmos mixes do use the Wides.
Steven Wilson also used to mix the main vocals in the Center, which I do not like, because it looks too much isolated.
But in this Moondance Atmos, there is a very great use of the Wides.
For example In the tracks “Moondance” and “Caravan” the Morrison vocal is distributed between Center, a little in the sides and… with more volume in the Wides. No voice in the Fronts. Good voice immersion.
In the third track “Crazy Love”, again the vocal is only in the Center. Although it does not sound too much isolated to me, because It sounds more predominant.
In summary, the Scheiner 5.1 sound like more discrete, but with the sounds a little more “separated” (like the old Quad mixes style). Instead the Wilson Atmos mix sound to me much better, more spacious, and more balanced.
Although it sounds good enough to me, this and other Wilson mixes deserve Blu-rays or TrueHD download releases.
I like better the Atmos mix.
As my rig has Wides (9.1.4) I always appreciate the Atmos mixes that use extensively the Wides. Because, I think, the object positioning spread around the room should give a more spacious feeling than if tie only to bed channels.
The first Steven Wilson Atmos mixes did use the wides very scarce, if at all. I attributed this to the fact that his study has only 7.1.4 monitor speakers, as far as I can see in its pictures. And perhaps he didn't could test how much improves the listening with wides? But recently, more and more S. Wilson Atmos mixes do use the Wides.
Steven Wilson also used to mix the main vocals in the Center, which I do not like, because it looks too much isolated.
But in this Moondance Atmos, there is a very great use of the Wides.
For example In the tracks “Moondance” and “Caravan” the Morrison vocal is distributed between Center, a little in the sides and… with more volume in the Wides. No voice in the Fronts. Good voice immersion.
In the third track “Crazy Love”, again the vocal is only in the Center. Although it does not sound too much isolated to me, because It sounds more predominant.
In summary, the Scheiner 5.1 sound like more discrete, but with the sounds a little more “separated” (like the old Quad mixes style). Instead the Wilson Atmos mix sound to me much better, more spacious, and more balanced.
Although it sounds good enough to me, this and other Wilson mixes deserve Blu-rays or TrueHD download releases.
Last edited:
I just picked up the physical disc set of this and it is fantastic!
?? That's the 10 yr old set with Scheiner's 5.1 mix, not the recent Atmos. Unless I missed it. ?
That’s correct, just the Scheiner’s 5.1 mix. I love it as I just have a 5.1 setup. I was able to pick up a new sealed old stock copy and I will take it over any streamed Atmos mix at the moment. If I ever get a Atmos setup.
I couldn't say for sure unless I had the ADM master to look at through the Dolby Renderer, but I think he used to keep the lead vocals in the bed and now instead uses a mono object positioned somewhere between the center speaker and sides. I recently discovered that - in ProTools at least - if you have an object panned exactly 68% between the front and side speakers, it appears fully isolated in the wides in a 9.1.x configuration.
In 7.1.4, the lead vocal throughout "Into The Mystic" sounds like it's at almost equal level in the center & sides. It gives a really great 'in your head' effect while also anchored toward the front soundstage.
Yes, I read about the 68º in your article in IAA. Then, should this be the recommendation to locate the wide speakers instead of at an azimuth angle at the middle of a straight line between the front and the side, like I read somewhere? I will check in my room where exactly do I have my wides.
What I like is that the vocals do not appear at all at the fronts. I increased the master volume and put my ear together to the front, and no voice was heard. The voice appears only in the center and in the wides, with ‘high’ volume, and in the sides with a little lower volume.
That would mean an object exactly at 68º (for not leak sound to the front) and other sound vocals at the bed Center and the sides (or objects located in the bed locations). Or perhaps just a lateral object at more than 68º that is spread between the wide and the side.
I really like the ‘wide’ stage and immersion that I get when the mixer uses objects at or near 68º. My collection of Atmos-using-the-wides is increasing.
Perhaps the ‘voice inside the head’ using also the center and objects at less than 90º is more tolerant of being outside the sweet spot than when using only the sides, like some Bruce Soord mix.
For the sound to appear only in the center and not the fronts, all you have to do is turn the 'center percentage' control on the surround panner all the way up.
I never thought I'd be saying this, but put me in the camp with @sjcorne and others who prefer the new Wilson mix over the Scheiner 5.1, even in it's current lossy streaming incarnation.
In his golden 5.1 remixing years, Scheiner seems to have favoured drier approach that used less reverbs and echos than the original stereo mixes of the same albums - in some cases this improves the sound, like with Steely Dan's Gaucho, but in others it can make the remixes feel small and weak (like his remix of G 'n' R's Appetite for Destruction) or just not quite have the same vibe as the original, which I feel is the case here.
When I read some reports that WIlson's new Atmos mix wasn't "cohesive" I was worried, because in my opinion the catalog of Atmos remixes of legacy albums released to streaming has been far more miss than hit. Turns out I needn't have, because not only is it cohesive, it has the "sound" of the original stereo mix, and even sacrifices some discreteness, like putting the backing vox on tracks like Brand New Day up front.
I also think the use of the heights is great - the horns on this album, which aren't employed like a standard pop/rock or R&B horn section, and more like Irish pipes always had a kind of ethereal quality, and to have them floating around up there is a wonderful touch. I think everyone's entitled to their opinions on what constitutes a "valid" mixing approach, but I personally never understood the "it has to represent a live band playing!" orthodoxy. The addition of height speakers is just increasing the scope of the sonic palate that mixing engineers have to work with - maybe in a few years we'll colletively go "yeah, they were putting too much stuff up there in those early mixes" like we feel that early quad mixes have too many ping-pong swirls, but the way you figure out what is good is by first testing the limits of what's possible. We wouldn't have any of the great stereo mixes of the last 40 years if we didn't have the crazy hard-panned early stereo mixes of the '60s like the Beatles albums, and we won't have the great Atmos mixes of 2028 without the experimental ones of 2023.
I also have to say that I hope this is one that sees physical release, or at least lossless release in some format. When I was a younger more optimistic man in my late teens and early 20s, before life entirely crushed my will to live, this was my favourite album for a period of 4 or 5 years, where I played it daily, if not twice a day. It really spoke to my romantic notions of the world and my place in it, and it was right around the time I first got into surround with my DTS-capable Sherwood 5.1 receiver. I used to regularly listen to it in stereo and imagine where I'd put the various elements in the surround field on a 5.1 mix, and this new version meets every expectation I've had for all that time and then some. I became a huge Van Morrison fan for a period off the back of this album, buying every CD he'd put out up until about 1999's Back on Top, collecting dozens (if not hundreds) of his bootlegs, and seeing him in concert a bunch of times. To be honest, Van' (who's always been a grouch) behaviour over the last couple of decades (especially recently where he seems to have succumbed to the worst and most nihilistic aspects of his personality) really put me off listening to even his older music so it was nice to be able to listen to this, one of my old favourites, with a fresh set of ears as a result of the new mix.
I also hope, if the tapes exist, that WB and Steven Wilson can do more like this. WB owns the rights to Van's first three albums (Astral Weeks and His Band and Street Choir in addition to Moondance) outright so they can do what they like. Presumably Moondance was first for the Atmos treatment as low-hanging fruit, since the multitracks were all cataloged (and probably digitized) as part of the CD/BluRay deluxe edition a few years back. And hey, if they need a guy to organize future Van Morrison surround box sets, I know a guy (charming, clever, rakishly handsome, highly respected by the surround community, and most of all humble) who'd be willing to take the job.
In his golden 5.1 remixing years, Scheiner seems to have favoured drier approach that used less reverbs and echos than the original stereo mixes of the same albums - in some cases this improves the sound, like with Steely Dan's Gaucho, but in others it can make the remixes feel small and weak (like his remix of G 'n' R's Appetite for Destruction) or just not quite have the same vibe as the original, which I feel is the case here.
When I read some reports that WIlson's new Atmos mix wasn't "cohesive" I was worried, because in my opinion the catalog of Atmos remixes of legacy albums released to streaming has been far more miss than hit. Turns out I needn't have, because not only is it cohesive, it has the "sound" of the original stereo mix, and even sacrifices some discreteness, like putting the backing vox on tracks like Brand New Day up front.
I also think the use of the heights is great - the horns on this album, which aren't employed like a standard pop/rock or R&B horn section, and more like Irish pipes always had a kind of ethereal quality, and to have them floating around up there is a wonderful touch. I think everyone's entitled to their opinions on what constitutes a "valid" mixing approach, but I personally never understood the "it has to represent a live band playing!" orthodoxy. The addition of height speakers is just increasing the scope of the sonic palate that mixing engineers have to work with - maybe in a few years we'll colletively go "yeah, they were putting too much stuff up there in those early mixes" like we feel that early quad mixes have too many ping-pong swirls, but the way you figure out what is good is by first testing the limits of what's possible. We wouldn't have any of the great stereo mixes of the last 40 years if we didn't have the crazy hard-panned early stereo mixes of the '60s like the Beatles albums, and we won't have the great Atmos mixes of 2028 without the experimental ones of 2023.
I also have to say that I hope this is one that sees physical release, or at least lossless release in some format. When I was a younger more optimistic man in my late teens and early 20s, before life entirely crushed my will to live, this was my favourite album for a period of 4 or 5 years, where I played it daily, if not twice a day. It really spoke to my romantic notions of the world and my place in it, and it was right around the time I first got into surround with my DTS-capable Sherwood 5.1 receiver. I used to regularly listen to it in stereo and imagine where I'd put the various elements in the surround field on a 5.1 mix, and this new version meets every expectation I've had for all that time and then some. I became a huge Van Morrison fan for a period off the back of this album, buying every CD he'd put out up until about 1999's Back on Top, collecting dozens (if not hundreds) of his bootlegs, and seeing him in concert a bunch of times. To be honest, Van' (who's always been a grouch) behaviour over the last couple of decades (especially recently where he seems to have succumbed to the worst and most nihilistic aspects of his personality) really put me off listening to even his older music so it was nice to be able to listen to this, one of my old favourites, with a fresh set of ears as a result of the new mix.
I also hope, if the tapes exist, that WB and Steven Wilson can do more like this. WB owns the rights to Van's first three albums (Astral Weeks and His Band and Street Choir in addition to Moondance) outright so they can do what they like. Presumably Moondance was first for the Atmos treatment as low-hanging fruit, since the multitracks were all cataloged (and probably digitized) as part of the CD/BluRay deluxe edition a few years back. And hey, if they need a guy to organize future Van Morrison surround box sets, I know a guy (charming, clever, rakishly handsome, highly respected by the surround community, and most of all humble) who'd be willing to take the job.
wheeler98
400 Club - QQ All-Star
Moondance in atmos is being released as a single bluray that features the Wilson 5.1 mix AND the recent atmos treatment
https://store.warnermusic.ca/products/moondance-deluxe-blu-ray?variant=46759072104767
https://store.warnermusic.ca/products/moondance-deluxe-blu-ray?variant=46759072104767
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