The stereo remasters are from the 2-track master tapes that were digitized to 24bit 96kHz years ago (circa 2003 or earlier). Those original 1/4 inch master tapes, by David Gilmour's own admission in an interview, are worn out - practically no oxide left. Subsequent *remixes* (ie: surround sound) are from the earliest generation 16 track multi-track tapes, which you can bet were also digitized and used as the source. The quality of A-D conversions and digital processing is what has improved hugely since the first CD release versions, the first having come from 2nd generation EQ'd-for-vinyl master tapes with audibly more mid range than latter remasters. Arguably the "best" remaster is Doug Sax's for the 30th anniversary edition.
How come all new reissue being mastered horrible compared to the original records? These engineers have no skills these days. 95% of reissues released today have no chance.
@@rabarebra largely they are over-processed, including needless high pass filtering, and/or from poorer quality sources than the original cuts made from master tapes long before they were worn out.
You are correct. A lot of people seem confused by this as does Paul McGowan. This is the second time he has published this video. The first time I remarked about his error and he ignored me and then republished the same video without any corrections! 🤣🤣🤣
Yes, the question was about the '50th anniversary Remaster' .. Remaster being the important word. He then proceeds to give an explanation of doing a Remix which is something else entirely..... So in the end does not answer the question that was asked 🙄
I saw that same premiere tour of Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon at the DU arena in '72. Amazing concert. I acquired the 2003 release of the 5.1 "high-res" version a couple years ago and played it on my 5.1 DSD system and it blew me away and everyone I shared it with. I'll have to look out for this new release. Love your videos, my friend. Still want to get down there and tour your wonderful facility. Blessings!
I was 13 when the album came out. Opened up my parents huge console stereo cabinet, unhooked the speakers wires, ran new wires around the corner of the room, up the stairs and into my bedroom where I had 2 speakers without cabinets, and cranked it as loud as I could. My dad almost killed me.
Looks like Paul uses the ATC SCM 50s in this room. Extremely accurate and transparent speakers for mixing. Great recordings/mixes sound spectacular, bad recordings/mixes sound rough. Ive always been interested in the audiophile community’s thoughts on ATC. They are a tried and true gold standard used by many of the best studios in the world. I believe their founder Billy Woodman is credited with creating/popularizing their famous mid range driver dome. As a musician myself, I think that listening to well recorded music on a pair of ATC speakers like these, in a well treated room (corner bass absorption, good amount of diffusion) - is heaven. Just my opinion. How does the audiophile community view these speakers compared to your similarly priced (circa 15-17k) B&Ws, Bang & Olufson, PS Audio speakers etc? I’ve seen a few audiophile UA-cam channels that look like they use six figure rigs (amps, DACs, cables, etc) but do use these or even larger ATCs as their main monitors. Seems like the ATCs have a reputation outside of the audio engineering/musician community. Curious to hear people’s thoughts.
I have owned active atc 10 and passive scm 20 that were much better but maybe I didn’t find the right amps because they never really came alive here. Sold them ten years ago.
I own a pair of ATC SCM 50ASL and I can only say that the sound that these speakers can reproduce (depending on the source material quality) can be extremely impressive. I use them solely to “enjoy” music and the way that musical details, textures etc. are presented is extremely addictive…
The most impressive Session of Dotm I saw in Hamburg Germany in the Planetarium Hamburg. They owned a huge professionel JBL Surround set up and of course amazing possibilites of 3d projection. On the 2nd place is in my own 5.1 SACD Setup with the 30th anniversary mix. Just if you own the right Equipment and room, you are able to hear and feel the deep bass in this recording. Greets from Germany
With software from companies like Isotope it is possible to isolate frequencies (and thus instruments) from mixed tracks. It can be done quickly with less quality or painstakingly with shockingly good quality. So that which was not available as separate tracks could be isolated from the master mixes. DSotM is certainly an album worth this extended effort.
If you've hear Dark Side Of The Moon 230 times; you've heard it enough. I played it too much in my younger years. Wish You Were Here sounds fresher; and maybe just maybe it's the better album.
To me they're different, but neither is better. I will say they are the top two albums the band ever put out, followed by The Final Cut (arguably by a different band).
Better is a subjective word. If I had never before heard either Dark Side or Wish You... and was played each one several times; I'm not sure which one I would have taken the better liking to. My overplaying Dark Side when younger biases me toward Wish You. The original U.K. pressing of Wish You is so much more natural sounding than the US pressing. It almost sounds unplugged compared to the US version. I have always thought the vocals on Dark Side were synthetic and electronicy sounding. There is a Capitol XDR Extended Dynamic Range cassette which sounds good for those with top flight cassette decks. You can't accuse tape of brightness very often. It has a very smooth liquid sound with real continuity. With reel tape being the ultimate, because of the wider tape and higher speeds.
I have always used the track "Cross eyed Mary" from Tull's Aqualung album on 180g vinyl to demonstrate that there comes a point that remastered vinyl blows most other sources away. I have a gold remastered cd version that doesn't even come close even through my Esoteric P-03/D-03. People are literally bowled over at the difference.
People say that equipment is better than in previous decades. But I've heard recordings from the 1950's that sound amazing. I'm guessing it's not just the gear, but the person using the gear as well. Put a Stradivarius in my hands and I'll just make noise. In the right hands, this beautiful instrument sings.
Jazz recording engineer Rudy van Gelder worked his magic on many recordings using such equipment. Many albums done today using far "better" equipment sound much worse.
live classical recording demanded the most from everyone & everything in the loop... from the conductor to the master cutter. & they usually delivered. many recording engineers also happened to be jazz fans & naturally took their hw & quality standards to those gigs. the mass market of the '60s gave us the Beatles & Beach Boys quality recordings... + a lot of dreck. good-enough-to-make-a-quick-buck won over as-good-as-it-can-be. we've been recovering (& re-mixing/mastring!) every since. for all its sins & weirdness, high-end consumer market & hw has made that possible by revealing so much good & bad on the creation/ production side.
the 50'th re-mastering is simply too expensive to even consider buying. I'll stick with my 30th anniversary 5.1 SACD. Still my favourite demo disc for people that want to see what surround music is all about. The opening to Time blows their mind every time ;)
Modern recording tou can save the stems, which are the individual tracks, and you can also record direct inputs from instruments that can be reamped for different tones from the original recording . They can easily re remoxed and mastered at any time in the future.
I think the point here has been completely missed; this is a re-mastering of the original, not a re-mixing (though I admit, I could be wrong, I can't see a definitive answer on the 50th version, but they usually claim to be 're-masters' rather than re-mixes'. In my opinion, the reason for the sound being much better, and probably more 'hi-fi' or high-fidelity, is that mastering trends have changed, especially for classic albums such as this. A while ago the pinnacle of mastering was for the sound to be as 'loud' as possible, with this album, I'd imagine that has been stripped back and a much more dynamic and exciting sound is able to shine through as there is more headroom to allow instruments to breathe through.
I'm a fan of the 50th anniversary remaster. It amazes me that so many years later we are still able to remaster an album like this! But I am glad we can, it sounds spectacular.
We bought the album again for my Dad, but he prized it so much he never opened the vinyl package and refuses to play it. He says we can put it on when he is gone!
@@designxyz5007 He grew up very poor, so he has issues with hording things. He said we have to wear out his old vinyl version before he will open it. 😅
That record changed it all for me, for that time I was a popmusic lover. After buying that record I went for more complex music and I bought all of their records. I have this album in various recordings but no longer in vinyl (record was played to,to many times) and it was badly pressed as all of their recordings in vinyl that I could by in Belgium. The only regret that I have is not been able to see and hear Pink Floyd live in a concert. I will be looking for this new version.
@shangrilaladeda No such thing as "complex music" Only music. Art is Subjective. A simple piece of music can stir the soul more than the most complex piece. Ella Fitzgerald didn't write her songs, YET she's an "artist' with very very few peers. And THAT fact may be too complex for your limited brain.
@@1959ludo No such thing as "complex" The simplest piece of music can stir the soul more than the most complex. Ella Fitzgerald didn't write her songs, YET she is LIGHT YEARS above most others.
Paul, my hope with the equipment in the Octave Records studio is that, if there is ever downtime from recordings, that the equipment is put to good use digitizing old awesome recordings in analog into DSD format and made available to people.
@1:44 "I have taken some pretty bad sounding recordings, and really made them sound great." Sadly, countless engineers take some pretty great sound recordings, and make them sound really bad.
*I _ WAS _ AT_ THAT_ CONCERT* _with 9 other GIs. We had 300 GRAMS of HASH and we smoked it in less than 1 day. -- I was there till the END :) sleeping in the bicycle stadium!_ *I WOULD LOVE TO TALK ABOUT THAT CONCERT!!!* _while I can ;) lol Draft 72/74 Germany S&S ARMOR._ -- They wanted to make me a SGT in my 18th month... I was like, "are you crazy" ..... I just wanted my Honorable ;) - m.
Haha. I attended the first show of the American tour for Animals. They had a quad system there. About 30 minutes 'before' the show you could hear a tractor faintly off in the distance which got louder and louder in the sound field. There were also birds in the track, darting across the sound field. Being in the altered state typically associated with a Pink Floyd concert certainly enhanced the experience. Miami Baseball Stadium, in 1977, I believe.
My issue is with the DSD resolutions above the recorded resolution. If a release was done originally recorded at 24/96, into the board and upsampling doesn't do any good, because you can't get more than what was put into the system, then why are they selling DSD 128, 256, 512, and even 1024? What gives?
On my mfsl disc, there are some unmusical subterranean frequencies going on that sound like somebody jumping on a wooden floor listening to an unisolated turntable. It's weird.
What you describe is remixing the album, whereas the question was around remastering. Maybe it was remixed as well, but the two processes obviously have different purposes and limitations.
@@crazyprayingmantis5596 He just answered the dumb question he received. I bet this PSaudio guy haven't even checked out the 50th anniversary of that album so he doesn't know the facts. It is the guy asking who should be embarrassed. He probably asked on behalf of the old 5.1 mix done 20 years ago. Nothing new in this set apart from the remaster of the 2-track.
@@Oldcrow77 I have read the protracted discussions over the The David Bowie albums. Rarely total concensus.Especially with The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust CD. Historically the early RCAs were/are considered best. However asking prices for preowned are crazy money. Some prefer the 1990s Ryko /EMI described as thin sounding but wider dynamic range, including rape hiss which come with bonus tracks. The 1999 24 BIT remasters are disliked by purists but preferred by a few for the clarity, also the source tape is said to be decent.. Then we had the 2012 remasters which some listeners describe as least fatiguing & best of the bunch, whilst others say are dull & lifeless ! The fly in the ointment is a 2012 DVD - Audio only disc that only came with the new vinyl release - said to better all the cds & even SACD. £50 to £100 of our UK 🇬🇧 pounds being asked preowned albums that come with this. As people have said why was the DVD - A packaged with the vinyl but not the cd release ??? 🤔
My understanding of remastering is cleaning up the original master but not changing the mix at all. For example, running the old master through Dolby to get rid of tape hiss. Once you start twiddling with individual tracks, therefore changing the original recording in some way, then it becomes a remix. I am all in favour of remixing classic albums, because the sound can improve overall, especially in bringing the bass forward or toning down the treble. But it has to be recognized, that a remix is a remix, and it is not the original album any longer.
Almost. Dolby NR works only if the tape is recorded (encoded) that way. It's an encode/decode (frequency selective compression/expansion) process. The Animals album, for example, was recorded at Floyd's own studio with DBX NR and so was played back (mixed) via DBX decode, which seems to have been slightly off in its calibration (which was easy to get wrong). On the remix edition of that album the DBX encode/decode stage in mixing was able to be bypassed entirely.
@@TWEAKER01 Thanks for that information - I am certainly not an expert. I guess what I was trying to get across is that remastering, to me, has become a grey area. Buying a remaster may not get you better sound, in fact, I think it is a very iffy situation these days. But in a lot of cases, when a remix is presented as such, I like what I hear. Giles Martin's remixes of Abbey Road and Revolver I think are extraordinary for example.
PLEASE!!.....would be fantastic if an engineer could listen, side by side, a couple of tracks - comparing the original remaster with this remaster. Let us know what differences you hear!
Pink Floyd, ampzilla,ads 910s almost caused my dad and i a falling out in 1980. 😆 he would just like to hear his double klh 9's while listening to classical music.
But the 30 anniversary is DSD 5.1. The 50th pressing is in Atmos 24 bit / 48khz and PCM 5.1 24 bit / 192 khz. DSD multichannel is superior to Atmos or PCM 5.1.
I have the originally released vinyl, the 1980's CD release (I think they used the same masters as the vinyl) and a SACD remaster from 2003. The first two sound great but the 2003 SACD was a big disappointment as the remastering reduced the volume on the clocks on 'Time' and bloated the bass such that it overpowers the music. Very expensive for a disc I don't play. Still like the original 70's mastering.
Any remaster that fails to faithfully emulate the original version's mix balance throughout, alters what the artist(s) or recording company, wanted others to hear, and what I found and still find, enjoyable to listen to.
Seems to be some confusion here. The Stereo 50th was NOT ReMixed - only Remastered. Rob- if you think that sounded good - try to find the Pre-Emphasis 1983 CD. In must peoples opinion still the best digital master.
I bought a MFSL UHQR version directly from the company back in the '80s. I always thought it sounded fantastic. I'd love to do a comparison, but at that price, it's not happening.
A great album obviously, but I have never been overly impressed with the recording. Steely Dan's Aja, for example, is superior in sound among others. I'll have to check out this remaster. A lot of times, these remasters just end up being highly compressed so they sound much louder which translates into 'better' for many. Have to give them the benefit of the doubt though and check it out.
You're correct about the original recording but the 50th anniversary remaster is fantastic quality, the recording sounds fresh, check it out you won't be disappointed and if you disagree feel free to come back to ridicule my comment.
Is there really any significant difference between the 50th and the 2016 remaster? If the 50th is actually better, then why wasn't it done better in 2016? The technology couldn't have changed much since then. Sounds like an audio engineer could increase a frequency by half a decibel and call it "remastered".
The sound quality is like a food , everybody afford that some things are delicious, but ,with more or minus salt, Pepper, sugar, the same food can be better for different peoples. Sorry about my english
Personally I’m not overly impressed with 50th. The treble seems a bit subdued as does the lead guitar on occasion making it sound a bit muddy or dull sounding in parts. Whereas Animals really benefited from extra bass, there was not a thing wrong with the bass on DSOTM in the first place.
C’mon Paul. Some remasters have clarity to an unnatural fault. It’s almost as if they’re for people with too much high frequency hearing loss (or an under revealing speaker system!).
you're confusing compression with the over-use of peak limiting. Compression was used extensively, aesthetically, during the *recording and mixing* of the album. Compression works more within the body of the music. It can increase sustain and those "warm" overtones, and yes: low level detail. Peak limiting affects peaks only and is often applied (sometimes judiciously) on certain tracks during mixing, and in mastering, and again in broadcast. Overdone, it punches holes in the music and can cause high treble distortion (modulation). Compare the early DSOTM CD editions against the 30th anniv edition at *matched level* and you'll hear that the latter sounds "warmer" largely due to Doug Sax's judicious mastering.
Couldnt they haved remastered an album that actually needed it. I understand PinkFloyd is gonna be ultra profitable, but can we get another mastering engineer to look at Vulgar Display of Power. Pantera, great musicians, and a good album, its just clipped too hard up top with thin mids and ok bottom. The other 5 platinum records sound great.
the ORIGINAL wasn't good enough - so they HAD to remaster it ... that wasn't good enough - so they had to remaster it AGAIN ?? ... how many times do you have to do it to get it RIGHT ??
Alan Parsons was known for really compressing all his recordings. I guess digitizing the original recording and manipulating the 1's and 0's can really breath new life into old recordings if you like that kind of thing. I'll stick with my original vinyl album that has entertained me for 50 years, compression and all.
many are from sources not previously made available, and/or via better noise reduction decodes (eg: "Animals"), and/or via better A to D conversion than in the 80s or even the 90s.
AArrrrgh!! Get the terminology correct please! If you're using the original 16-track tape. and adjusting all the instruments, then that's a REMIX. If you're processing the 2-track masters (the stereo mixes), then you are MASTERING. If you are re-doing the mastering again for some reason, then you are REMASTERING. There's a BIG difference between a remix and a remaster. I have no idea what the new Pink Floyd album is.
I know this would be sacrilege. But if a new band with today’s instruments in recording technology, and a great vocalist can remake Darkside of the moon.. That was recorded for audio files, and not recorded specifically for radio and headphones. As a young teenager, I remember hearing dark side of the moon on a friends uncles stereo system that was European high-end stuff, speakers and amplifiers in preamplifiers and turntable . I remember hearing all the instruments and sounds pass from the left over my head to the right, sounds coming from the rear and shooting to the front in the back of the room . Sounds in the music that I never heard reproduced hearing it on the radio . Or hearing it out of a cassette on anybody else’s stereo. A system, make such a big difference . That’s how I got turned on to class A amplifiers and tube preamplifiers.
The part about all these remasters is that way to many of them utterly fail to maintain/keep the originals MOJO, they end up sounding like some flat crappy thing you've never heard before. All of that stuff was created on the technology of the time and that simply does not translate through a remaster to todays standards and equipment. Streaming services are chock full of shitte remasters.
@Old Crow there are always exceptions. Alan Parsons did Dark Side. I don't like most remasters. They eff with the mix and I don't like it. The band recorded and mixed it the way they wanted it to sound at that moment.
You’ll not beat the original. The best of this album was and still is the Toshiba EMI Pro Use version SHLV 804AH. The Mobile Fidelity UHQR version is a close second. Remastered is a bastardization of the original. There has not been one that is as good as even the original one. Try and find a near mint copy well taken care of by it’s previous owner. Just say no to remastered! Doesn’t make the cut pal!
digital recording ruined real music because it gave them the choice to keep adding and layering AND analog recording you had only so many tracks to work with and the music was awesome real rock n roll blues not like this new hiphop rap country crap of today
@@craigaust3306 I would be condemning Ukraine for starting the war when they started murdering Russians in Ukraine. Ukraine only have themselves to blame and they're going to lose big-time.
Precious noise. I defy anyone to explain the "musical" value of the sound on this album. Listen to it with a sober mind and see if you don't realize you are a moron for liking it.
Hard to tell what sounds better. The old or the new. I actually didn’t have the album until the early 80s. It was a half speed mastered disc played on an entirely different system than I have today at 66. Like many, I got rid of my records and went the CD route. Over the last 8 years or so I got back into records (about 800 now) and just bought the remastered one. So why can’t I tell you if there’s a difference between the two? Cause I was always stoned when I listened to music 40 years ago 😜😜. But I can tell you the new one sounds fantastic. 😂😂😂😂😂
Here is proof that the rip off of remastering the 1973 RECORDED The dark side if the moon every 3 years is a terrible sounding album. Most of my records were recorded in 1971 & before. In 1972 I thought the sound on all records were was more harsh, that the sound wasnt as good. I was suspicious that something solid state transistor digital was added, but 2 sound engineers swore I was wrong. You here all this talk that digital didnt start till the very late seventies. Michael Fremer from Stereophile confirmed I was right all along. Fremer JUST said this, so I googled it up what he said. The Doors and The Elektra Records Sound Part 1. Also below when it is talking about DISCRETE recorders, it's talking about tiny tralnsistor Integrated integrated IC transistors that dont sound as good, for example early seventies Sony stereo amps with more expensive & complicated hand wired transistors sound better than today's IC amps, but still tubes recorders sound better. Guitarists today love guitar tube amps better. Analog Planet www.analogplanet.com › content › doors-and-e... Apr 30, 2010 - When I came back to do some mixing in 1970 it was still the same, except that they changed the console to solid-state. The whole control room was all brick, and it had individual panels of acoustical tile to deaden it down. Basically it was a very live room. The console sat on a platform, which was about six or eight inches off the floor. The tape machine sat behind us; we had an old Ampex 200 three-track, which had separate record and playback electronics so that you could select separate record or playback curves. They had a thing back then called A.M.E., which was Ampex Master Equalization, and then they had N.A.B., so if you recorded A.M.E. and played it back N.A.B., it would come out brighter. It's like recording with Dolby and not decoding. We also had an Ampex 300, I believe, three-track, which I converted over to a four-track with sel-sync (the ability to perform overdubs). BB: No, the room stayed the same from the day I walked in the door, which was about 1963 to 1968. When I came back to do some mixing in 1970 it was still the same, except that they changed the console to solid-state. But anyway, back to the console. Tutti used to go to England a lot, and he purchased a solid-state console over there. For the life of me, I can't remember the name of it. We all thought it was kind of cool. It had a lot of features that the tube console didn't have. It sounded different, you know? Tubes still sounded the best. Anyway, Jac Holzman purchased one as well, and we had it customized for our needs at Elektra Studios. So, that's how the console got there. BB: I still like mono to this day, because there aren't any distractions. It's like a black and white movie, where you can create incredible dimensions, depth-wise, and hide things. That's very hard to do in stereo. That's because we don't record in stereo: We record multi-track point-source discrete audio. The difference in the mix was when we would open it up to stereo, we would have to change things, because it didn't fall in the same place. Spatially, things would fall into other places. MG: It sounds to me as if the first Doors album had the best high-frequency extension, transient snap, and overall transparency, and that with each album sonically fine as they arethose qualities seemed to diminish. Would you agree or disagree? BB: I'd agree with that to an extent, because the first album was all tube. Strange Days was done on a tube console, but with a solid-state eight-track. From then on it became all solid-state consoles and solid-state tape machines. There was also this direction that Paul wanted to take it, a more intellectual kind of a sound, not as raw as the first album. The sound started to become more scientific as it went along, a little more clinical, because studios, by and large, are hospitals, they're not places to record music. Technology is the evil person here. MG: I guess that's not fighting technology, it's kind of going around it. BB: Sound since the 1960s has gone backwards instead of forwards, in my estimation. In the recordings that I do today for motion pictures, I use tube microphones, tube microphone pre-amps, and I try to bypass the solid-state consoles as much as possible. It's more open, it's rounder, it has more depth. I can give you an example. If you take a room that has some reverberation not a chamber, just good clear liveness and you put an earphone in the middle of the room with a click going through it, so you hear the “tick, tick, tick.” Plug up a good microphone, maybe a (Neumann) U-67 or something like that, split the signal so it goes into a tube microphone pre-amp, and then the solid-state pre-amp, bring them both up on the console, and switch back and forth, and listen. With the tube, you'll hear all the reverberation in the room; the solid-state will close down. Ten times out of 10. So that's somewhat what you're hearing. Even the equalizers back then were tube; we had Pultech EQ-P1A's. MG: What's your opinion of digital multi-track recorded sound, and your opinion of digital recording, period, compared to analog? Which do you prefer? BB: I would venture to say that 95% of the music that I've recorded in the last eight years has been all digital. Digital does not basically sound better than analog, but what it does do, is that the sound doesn't change from what you're recording. With analog, you record it, and when you play it back, you will get a fair representation of what you heard on line-in. Play it back a half an hour later, and it will have changed, there are less highs. Play it a day later, and it will really have changed. The high end just changes, it's a natural process of the magnetism of the particles, and when you magnetize, record them, they change. The magnetic particles have a memory and want to go back to their original inert state. It's just the way it is. In digital, you record it, and it doesn't change. The problem with digital is the quality of the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. At this point in time, the A-to-D and D-to-A's are getting where you can record on it and it doesn't sound “digital” anymore. “Digital” meaning that it sounds cold. “Cold” meaning that digital doesn't show you all of the details, like the depth of the reverb and harmonic room tone. Because there's lack of detail, and especially lack of harmonics going way out, that sound would seem colder, and "digital." Right now, I'm recording 96 K, 24 bit, and whew! It's good! I mean, you're really, really hard pressed to tell it from the source.
The stereo remasters are from the 2-track master tapes that were digitized to 24bit 96kHz years ago (circa 2003 or earlier). Those original 1/4 inch master tapes, by David Gilmour's own admission in an interview, are worn out - practically no oxide left.
Subsequent *remixes* (ie: surround sound) are from the earliest generation 16 track multi-track tapes, which you can bet were also digitized and used as the source.
The quality of A-D conversions and digital processing is what has improved hugely since the first CD release versions, the first having come from 2nd generation EQ'd-for-vinyl master tapes with audibly more mid range than latter remasters. Arguably the "best" remaster is Doug Sax's for the 30th anniversary edition.
How come all new reissue being mastered horrible compared to the original records? These engineers have no skills these days. 95% of reissues released today have no chance.
@@rabarebra largely they are over-processed, including needless high pass filtering, and/or from poorer quality sources than the original cuts made from master tapes long before they were worn out.
50 years…..Wow! Congratulations on your anniversary. I saw that concert too. Here in the states though. Absolutely amazing.
Utter confusion! Remasters are supposed to be performed on the stereo mix. When you work on the separate tracks then that's considered a remix.
True. There's a confusion here.
You are correct. A lot of people seem confused by this as does Paul McGowan. This is the second time he has published this video. The first time I remarked about his error and he ignored me and then republished the same video without any corrections! 🤣🤣🤣
Absolute silence again! Lol 😂😂😂 self proclaimed experts with UA-cam channels crack me up!
Paul is just a salesman.
Yes, the question was about the '50th anniversary Remaster' .. Remaster being the important word. He then proceeds to give an explanation of doing a Remix which is something else entirely..... So in the end does not answer the question that was asked 🙄
I saw that same premiere tour of Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon at the DU arena in '72. Amazing concert. I acquired the 2003 release of the 5.1 "high-res" version a couple years ago and played it on my 5.1 DSD system and it blew me away and everyone I shared it with. I'll have to look out for this new release. Love your videos, my friend. Still want to get down there and tour your wonderful facility. Blessings!
I was 13 when the album came out. Opened up my parents huge console stereo cabinet, unhooked the speakers wires, ran new wires around the corner of the room, up the stairs and into my bedroom where I had 2 speakers without cabinets, and cranked it as loud as I could. My dad almost killed me.
😂😂🙏👍
Yes. The remastered album is amazing to listen.
Is it on Amazon? I can't find it.
It's incredible that they can take a 50 year old recording & seemingly improve on it at every anniversary? 🤔
Looks like Paul uses the ATC SCM 50s in this room. Extremely accurate and transparent speakers for mixing. Great recordings/mixes sound spectacular, bad recordings/mixes sound rough.
Ive always been interested in the audiophile community’s thoughts on ATC. They are a tried and true gold standard used by many of the best studios in the world. I believe their founder Billy Woodman is credited with creating/popularizing their famous mid range driver dome.
As a musician myself, I think that listening to well recorded music on a pair of ATC speakers like these, in a well treated room (corner bass absorption, good amount of diffusion) - is heaven. Just my opinion.
How does the audiophile community view these speakers compared to your similarly priced (circa 15-17k) B&Ws, Bang & Olufson, PS Audio speakers etc? I’ve seen a few audiophile UA-cam channels that look like they use six figure rigs (amps, DACs, cables, etc) but do use these or even larger ATCs as their main monitors. Seems like the ATCs have a reputation outside of the audio engineering/musician community.
Curious to hear people’s thoughts.
I have owned active atc 10 and passive scm 20 that were much better but maybe I didn’t find the right amps because they never really came alive here. Sold them ten years ago.
I own a pair of ATC SCM 50ASL and I can only say that the sound that these speakers can reproduce (depending on the source material quality) can be extremely impressive. I use them solely to “enjoy” music and the way that musical details, textures etc. are presented is extremely addictive…
The most impressive Session of Dotm I saw in Hamburg Germany in the Planetarium Hamburg. They owned a huge professionel JBL Surround set up and of course amazing possibilites of 3d projection. On the 2nd place is in my own 5.1 SACD Setup with the 30th anniversary mix. Just if you own the right Equipment and room, you are able to hear and feel the deep bass in this recording. Greets from Germany
With software from companies like Isotope it is possible to isolate frequencies (and thus instruments) from mixed tracks. It can be done quickly with less quality or painstakingly with shockingly good quality. So that which was not available as separate tracks could be isolated from the master mixes. DSotM is certainly an album worth this extended effort.
That always sounds artificial.
If you've hear Dark Side Of The Moon 230 times; you've heard it enough. I played it too much in my younger years. Wish You Were Here sounds fresher; and maybe just maybe it's the better album.
I agree. I prefer Wish You Were Here too
To me they're different, but neither is better. I will say they are the top two albums the band ever put out, followed by The Final Cut (arguably by a different band).
Better is a subjective word. If I had never before heard either Dark Side or Wish You... and was played each one several times; I'm not sure which one I would have taken the better liking to. My overplaying Dark Side when younger biases me toward Wish You. The original U.K. pressing of Wish You is so much more natural sounding than the US pressing. It almost sounds unplugged compared to the US version. I have always thought the vocals on Dark Side were synthetic and electronicy sounding. There is a Capitol XDR Extended Dynamic Range cassette which sounds good for those with top flight cassette decks. You can't accuse tape of brightness very often. It has a very smooth liquid sound with real continuity. With reel tape being the ultimate, because of the wider tape and higher speeds.
Give me Meddle or give me death!
@@philerwin4656 One of These Days
I have always used the track "Cross eyed Mary" from Tull's Aqualung album on 180g vinyl to demonstrate that there comes a point that remastered vinyl blows most other sources away. I have a gold remastered cd version that doesn't even come close even through my Esoteric P-03/D-03. People are literally bowled over at the difference.
People say that equipment is better than in previous decades. But I've heard recordings from the 1950's that sound amazing. I'm guessing it's not just the gear, but the person using the gear as well. Put a Stradivarius in my hands and I'll just make noise. In the right hands, this beautiful instrument sings.
Jazz recording engineer Rudy van Gelder worked his magic on many recordings using such equipment. Many albums done today using far "better" equipment sound much worse.
There were some amazing engineers back then definitely, RCA, Philips, Mercury, Decca, Capitol...
live classical recording demanded the most from everyone & everything in the loop... from the conductor to the master cutter. & they usually delivered. many recording engineers also happened to be jazz fans & naturally took their hw & quality standards to those gigs. the mass market of the '60s gave us the Beatles & Beach Boys quality recordings... + a lot of dreck. good-enough-to-make-a-quick-buck won over as-good-as-it-can-be. we've been recovering (& re-mixing/mastring!) every since. for all its sins & weirdness, high-end consumer market & hw has made that possible by revealing so much good & bad on the creation/ production side.
My favorite sound is from the 50s mono
But it has to be played with mono equipment
Ultimately if you could use a 50s Cartridge very nice
@@louissilvani1389 I love stereo and what it can provide when used well, but mono has a magic of its own.
I saw them at London Rainbow Theatre. With surround , it was awesome.
the 50'th re-mastering is simply too expensive to even consider buying.
I'll stick with my 30th anniversary 5.1 SACD. Still my favourite demo disc for people that want to see what surround music is all about. The opening to Time blows their mind every time ;)
Modern recording tou can save the stems, which are the individual tracks, and you can also record direct inputs from instruments that can be reamped for different tones from the original recording . They can easily re remoxed and mastered at any time in the future.
I think the point here has been completely missed; this is a re-mastering of the original, not a re-mixing (though I admit, I could be wrong, I can't see a definitive answer on the 50th version, but they usually claim to be 're-masters' rather than re-mixes'. In my opinion, the reason for the sound being much better, and probably more 'hi-fi' or high-fidelity, is that mastering trends have changed, especially for classic albums such as this.
A while ago the pinnacle of mastering was for the sound to be as 'loud' as possible, with this album, I'd imagine that has been stripped back and a much more dynamic and exciting sound is able to shine through as there is more headroom to allow instruments to breathe through.
Dsotm got me into pink floyd. I remember when I first listened to it. It just captivated me
I'm a fan of the 50th anniversary remaster. It amazes me that so many years later we are still able to remaster an album like this! But I am glad we can, it sounds spectacular.
This pink Floyd Konzert was in Hannover 1986. Best Surround I ve ever heard...I was there too :)
and yes, I saw the 100 feet, dancing Pig, above the people, hanging on cablecars....
We bought the album again for my Dad, but he prized it so much he never opened the vinyl package and refuses to play it. He says we can put it on when he is gone!
what is the point of having a record and not listening to it?
🤔Wow, how much could he have liked the album or have a decent system to play it on if he feels that way?!
@@designxyz5007 He grew up very poor, so he has issues with hording things. He said we have to wear out his old vinyl version before he will open it. 😅
@@chungang7037 So, START PLAYING, wear out that old vinyl.
@designxyz depending on the pressing, it may become a collector's item.
That record changed it all for me, for that time I was a popmusic lover. After buying that record I went for more complex music and I bought all of their records. I have this album in various recordings but no longer in vinyl (record was played to,to many times) and it was badly pressed as all of their recordings in vinyl that I could by in Belgium. The only regret that I have is not been able to see and hear Pink Floyd live in a concert. I will be looking for this new version.
If you want to hear “complex” music look into Simon and Garfunkel
@@shangrilaladeda
I have that music in house as more other like world,much classic, blues and so on.
@@1959ludo okay
@shangrilaladeda
No such thing as "complex music"
Only music.
Art is Subjective.
A simple piece of music can stir the soul more than the most complex piece.
Ella Fitzgerald didn't write her songs, YET she's an "artist' with very very few peers.
And THAT fact may be too complex for your limited brain.
@@1959ludo
No such thing as "complex"
The simplest piece of music can stir the soul more than the most complex.
Ella Fitzgerald didn't write her songs, YET she is LIGHT YEARS above most others.
Paul, my hope with the equipment in the Octave Records studio is that, if there is ever downtime from recordings, that the equipment is put to good use digitizing old awesome recordings in analog into DSD format and made available to people.
Are you familiar with Steve Hoffman. That’s what he has been doing for years
@@Oldcrow77 I am not. Will look into it, thanks.
@1:44 "I have taken some pretty bad sounding recordings, and really made them sound great."
Sadly, countless engineers take some pretty great sound recordings, and make them sound really bad.
They usually make them worse, exactly.
They came to Waterbury CT in '73, talk about a trip.
*I _ WAS _ AT_ THAT_ CONCERT* _with 9 other GIs. We had 300 GRAMS of HASH and we smoked it in less than 1 day. -- I was there till the END :) sleeping in the bicycle stadium!_
*I WOULD LOVE TO TALK ABOUT THAT CONCERT!!!* _while I can ;) lol Draft 72/74 Germany S&S ARMOR._ -- They wanted to make me a SGT in my 18th month... I was like, "are you crazy"
..... I just wanted my Honorable ;) - m.
The 1992 CD has always been my favorite
Haha. I attended the first show of the American tour for Animals. They had a quad system there. About 30 minutes 'before' the show you could hear a tractor faintly off in the distance which got louder and louder in the sound field. There were also birds in the track, darting across the sound field. Being in the altered state typically associated with a Pink Floyd concert certainly enhanced the experience. Miami Baseball Stadium, in 1977, I believe.
My issue is with the DSD resolutions above the recorded resolution. If a release was done originally recorded at 24/96, into the board and upsampling doesn't do any good, because you can't get more than what was put into the system, then why are they selling DSD 128, 256, 512, and even 1024? What gives?
On my mfsl disc, there are some unmusical subterranean frequencies going on that sound like somebody jumping on a wooden floor listening to an unisolated turntable. It's weird.
What you describe is remixing the album, whereas the question was around remastering. Maybe it was remixed as well, but the two processes obviously have different purposes and limitations.
Obviously he doesn't know what he's talking about, it's s bit embarrassing
@@crazyprayingmantis5596 He just answered the dumb question he received. I bet this PSaudio guy haven't even checked out the 50th anniversary of that album so he doesn't know the facts. It is the guy asking who should be embarrassed. He probably asked on behalf of the old 5.1 mix done 20 years ago. Nothing new in this set apart from the remaster of the 2-track.
You already uploaded this video last week. Or is this the remaster?
Their first performance, I think, was in Brighton, England and there were continual equipment problems.
It's nice when "remaster" isn't synonymous with "hack and slash butcher job with compression".
Are you familiar with Steve Hofmann and his forum ?
@@Oldcrow77 I have read the protracted discussions over the The David Bowie albums. Rarely total concensus.Especially with The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust CD. Historically the early RCAs were/are considered best. However asking prices for preowned are crazy money. Some prefer the 1990s Ryko /EMI described as thin sounding but wider dynamic range, including rape hiss which come with bonus tracks. The 1999 24 BIT remasters are disliked by purists but preferred by a few for the clarity, also the source tape is said to be decent..
Then we had the 2012 remasters which some listeners describe as least fatiguing & best of the bunch, whilst others say are dull & lifeless !
The fly in the ointment is a 2012 DVD - Audio only disc that only came with the new vinyl release - said to better all the cds & even SACD. £50 to £100 of our UK 🇬🇧 pounds being asked preowned albums that come with this.
As people have said why was the DVD - A packaged with the vinyl but not the cd release ??? 🤔
Will have to compare it to the MOFI cd.
I stick with my harvest blackface from Japan 84
Same pressing as the black triangle non TO and many consider the best sounding.
Best Dark Side Of The Moon pressing MADE IN GT BRITAIN SHVL 804 A-2 B-2 and 2nd pressing A-3 B-3
My understanding of remastering is cleaning up the original master but not changing the mix at all. For example, running the old master through Dolby to get rid of tape hiss. Once you start twiddling with individual tracks, therefore changing the original recording in some way, then it becomes a remix. I am all in favour of remixing classic albums, because the sound can improve overall, especially in bringing the bass forward or toning down the treble. But it has to be recognized, that a remix is a remix, and it is not the original album any longer.
Almost. Dolby NR works only if the tape is recorded (encoded) that way. It's an encode/decode (frequency selective compression/expansion) process. The Animals album, for example, was recorded at Floyd's own studio with DBX NR and so was played back (mixed) via DBX decode, which seems to have been slightly off in its calibration (which was easy to get wrong). On the remix edition of that album the DBX encode/decode stage in mixing was able to be bypassed entirely.
@@TWEAKER01 Thanks for that information - I am certainly not an expert. I guess what I was trying to get across is that remastering, to me, has become a grey area. Buying a remaster may not get you better sound, in fact, I think it is a very iffy situation these days. But in a lot of cases, when a remix is presented as such, I like what I hear. Giles Martin's remixes of Abbey Road and Revolver I think are extraordinary for example.
Is this person referencing the Dolby Atmos mix or the stereo mix?
Glad to see Octave/PS knows their Studio Monitors. ATC = no substitute
50/50 Wow. Both the Album and Paul have aged well. Paul how about going for 60/60. Would love to be there for that, because we are the same age.
But Paul refuses to listen to multichannel DSD. Please help.
PLEASE!!.....would be fantastic if an engineer could listen, side by side, a couple of tracks - comparing the original remaster with this remaster. Let us know what differences you hear!
I have a mofi uhqr darkside, can't wait to compare with the 50th. I have a 30th too, also fantastic.
Love those loudspeakers behind you, Paul. What are those? :) Cheers!
ATC scm 50
I have the Guthrie, early 90s remastered CD. It's not very good. I want to re-buy. Which is the best CD version of DSOTM?
The 1983 cd is still the best. The "Black Face" or "Black Triangle"Japan cd
You have to eat some shrooms and listen to both sides
Pink Floyd, ampzilla,ads 910s almost caused my dad and i a falling out in 1980. 😆 he would just like to hear his double klh 9's while listening to classical music.
What monitor speakers are in this room?
ATC
What speakers are in the background?
ATC's
But the 30 anniversary is DSD 5.1.
The 50th pressing is in Atmos 24 bit / 48khz and PCM 5.1 24 bit / 192 khz.
DSD multichannel is superior to Atmos or PCM 5.1.
Technically true: DSD and PCM are lossless. Atmos is lossy (max bit rate 768kbps. Stereo CD quality is 1,411kbps).
@@TWEAKER01 Not on the provided blu-ray, the atmos is lossless. What you mention is through streaming, Apple etc..
How many times can that thing be remastered?
Yeah, I’ll stick with my harvest blackface from Japan 84
Till it breaks.
I have the originally released vinyl, the 1980's CD release (I think they used the same masters as the vinyl) and a SACD remaster from 2003. The first two sound great but the 2003 SACD was a big disappointment as the remastering reduced the volume on the clocks on 'Time' and bloated the bass such that it overpowers the music. Very expensive for a disc I don't play. Still like the original 70's mastering.
Any remaster that fails to faithfully emulate the original version's mix balance throughout, alters what the artist(s) or recording company, wanted others to hear, and what I found and still find, enjoyable to listen to.
Seems to be some confusion here. The Stereo 50th was NOT ReMixed - only Remastered. Rob- if you think that sounded good - try to find the Pre-Emphasis 1983 CD. In must peoples opinion still the best digital master.
I have the Blackface, same pressing as the Triangle non-TO and love it!
@@Oldcrow77 Yeap - That's the Pre-Emphasis Dark Side - Sounds Great
You certainly was in the right.
Whatever happened to Gus? Doesn't seem like he's as involved as he used to be with Octave.
I bought a MFSL UHQR version directly from the company back in the '80s. I always thought it sounded fantastic. I'd love to do a comparison, but at that price, it's not happening.
A great album obviously, but I have never been overly impressed with the recording. Steely Dan's Aja, for example, is superior in sound among others. I'll have to check out this remaster. A lot of times, these remasters just end up being highly compressed so they sound much louder which translates into 'better' for many. Have to give them the benefit of the doubt though and check it out.
You're correct about the original recording but the 50th anniversary remaster is fantastic quality, the recording sounds fresh, check it out you won't be disappointed and if you disagree feel free to come back to ridicule my comment.
Is there really any significant difference between the 50th and the 2016 remaster? If the 50th is actually better, then why wasn't it done better in 2016? The technology couldn't have changed much since then. Sounds like an audio engineer could increase a frequency by half a decibel and call it "remastered".
The sound quality is like a food , everybody afford that some things are delicious, but ,with more or minus salt, Pepper, sugar, the same food can be better for different peoples. Sorry about my english
Very good analogy
that didn't really answer the question. Remaster isn't a remix. Also, somehow everything ends up revolving around Paul and the studio.
I wonder if they skipped the physical echo chambers and used modern electronics.
It is "simple" (in concept) but not "easy" (in work effort).
Personally I’m not overly impressed with 50th. The treble seems a bit subdued as does the lead guitar on occasion making it sound a bit muddy or dull sounding in parts. Whereas Animals really benefited from extra bass, there was not a thing wrong with the bass on DSOTM in the first place.
Bit low on information as to how it got improved
C’mon Paul. Some remasters have clarity to an unnatural fault. It’s almost as if they’re for people with too much high frequency hearing loss (or an under revealing speaker system!).
Rock/pop songs were never meant or envisaged to last more than a few months. Budgets reflected that.
Paul talks more about the Germany Pink Floyd experience in 99% True
Shouldn't we be calling them remixes instead of remasters?
Congratulations Nuggets 1st championship
COMPRESSION!
Not as bad as the Red Book layer $ony squashed on the 1st SA-CD. Compression makes you think you hear more detail.
you're confusing compression with the over-use of peak limiting. Compression was used extensively, aesthetically, during the *recording and mixing* of the album. Compression works more within the body of the music. It can increase sustain and those "warm" overtones, and yes: low level detail.
Peak limiting affects peaks only and is often applied (sometimes judiciously) on certain tracks during mixing, and in mastering, and again in broadcast. Overdone, it punches holes in the music and can cause high treble distortion (modulation).
Compare the early DSOTM CD editions against the 30th anniv edition at *matched level* and you'll hear that the latter sounds "warmer" largely due to Doug Sax's judicious mastering.
Couldnt they haved remastered an album that actually needed it. I understand PinkFloyd is gonna be ultra profitable, but can we get another mastering engineer to look at Vulgar Display of Power. Pantera, great musicians, and a good album, its just clipped too hard up top with thin mids and ok bottom. The other 5 platinum records sound great.
Are you familiar with Steve Hoffman or his forum?
@@Oldcrow77 I have seen some videos of his over the years but i dont follow too closely
This is another remastered video, but it's not better😐
the ORIGINAL wasn't good enough - so they HAD to remaster it ... that wasn't good enough - so they had to remaster it AGAIN ?? ... how many times do you have to do it to get it RIGHT ??
It was remastered not remixed - completely different things.
Alan Parsons was known for really compressing all his recordings. I guess digitizing the original recording and manipulating the 1's and 0's can really breath new life into old recordings if you like that kind of thing. I'll stick with my original vinyl album that has entertained me for 50 years, compression and all.
Are you familiar with Steve Hoffman and his forum ?
@@Oldcrow77 Sorry no
I've heard that you can synch Dark Side of the Moon to the movie, The Wizard of Oz. Never tried it, I don't really like the movie.
The story I heard about this was Deep Throat, not The Wizard of Oz. I've watched it, and I liked the movie.
Most of if not all of remasters are just more loudness.
many are from sources not previously made available, and/or via better noise reduction decodes (eg: "Animals"), and/or via better A to D conversion than in the 80s or even the 90s.
Just crank the treble
AArrrrgh!! Get the terminology correct please! If you're using the original 16-track tape. and adjusting all the instruments, then that's a REMIX. If you're processing the 2-track masters (the stereo mixes), then you are MASTERING. If you are re-doing the mastering again for some reason, then you are REMASTERING. There's a BIG difference between a remix and a remaster. I have no idea what the new Pink Floyd album is.
Studer +1
OKAY! It's been 50 fawking years! Anyone think that's ENOUGH Pink Floyd yet??
Nope
Creating these silly remasters using digital tools is like producing genetic foods. The real thing is always best.
I know this would be sacrilege. But if a new band with today’s instruments in recording technology, and a great vocalist can remake Darkside of the moon..
That was recorded for audio files, and not recorded specifically for radio and headphones.
As a young teenager, I remember hearing dark side of the moon on a friends uncles stereo system that was European high-end stuff, speakers and amplifiers in preamplifiers and turntable .
I remember hearing all the instruments and sounds pass from the left over my head to the right, sounds coming from the rear and shooting to the front in the back of the room .
Sounds in the music that I never heard reproduced hearing it on the radio . Or hearing it out of a cassette on anybody else’s stereo.
A system, make such a big difference .
That’s how I got turned on to class A amplifiers and tube preamplifiers.
Yeah let's re-paint the Mona Lisa. We have so much better paints and colour today
The part about all these remasters is that way to many of them utterly fail to maintain/keep the originals MOJO, they end up sounding like some flat crappy thing you've never heard before. All of that stuff was created on the technology of the time and that simply does not translate through a remaster to todays standards and equipment. Streaming services are chock full of shitte remasters.
Buy your own mixer..😀
Mix your own music. 😀
Classic rock was recorded by the best producers and engineers in the world. It doesn't need remastering.
Not always the case, are you familiar with Steve Hoffman or his forum?
@Old Crow there are always exceptions. Alan Parsons did Dark Side. I don't like most remasters. They eff with the mix and I don't like it. The band recorded and mixed it the way they wanted it to sound at that moment.
Wrong! Recording equipment was much better back then.
You’ll not beat the original. The best of this album was and still is the Toshiba EMI Pro Use version SHLV 804AH. The Mobile Fidelity UHQR version is a close second. Remastered is a bastardization of the original. There has not been one that is as good as even the original one. Try and find a near mint copy well taken care of by it’s previous owner. Just say no to remastered! Doesn’t make the cut pal!
digital recording ruined real music because it gave them the choice to keep adding and layering AND analog recording you had only so many tracks to work with and the music was awesome real rock n roll blues not like this new hiphop rap country crap of today
Absolutely Correct
Absolutely Agree.
(SHINE ON 💎)
🎼☮️👊🇨🇦
🌗
Good on Roger Waters for continuing to do live performances and not giving into the incredibly stupid dumb mainstream media.
His lack of support for Ukraine is very short-sighted. It’s sad that he is not condemning the aggressor.
@@craigaust3306 I would be condemning Ukraine for starting the war when they started murdering Russians in Ukraine. Ukraine only have themselves to blame and they're going to lose big-time.
@@craigaust3306 Which you misunderstand. You clearly do not get Waters, and what he says.
@@rabarebra Nope. I saw what he said (or didn’t say).
Precious noise. I defy anyone to explain the "musical" value of the sound on this album. Listen to it with a sober mind and see if you don't realize you are a moron for liking it.
You're 100% right. Everybody who likes this album is wrong. Congratulations.
Please tell me, when was the last time you had a big satisfying crap?
I listened to my 70's original record recently. It did make my speakers dance. But it's worn out and I don't think I would spend $40 to replace it.
I don't like Pink Floyd either, but damn
You must be a lot of fun at parties
Hard to tell what sounds better. The old or the new. I actually didn’t have the album until the early 80s. It was a half speed mastered disc played on an entirely different system than I have today at 66. Like many, I got rid of my records and went the CD route. Over the last 8 years or so I got back into records (about 800 now) and just bought the remastered one. So why can’t I tell you if there’s a difference between the two? Cause I was always stoned when I listened to music 40 years ago 😜😜. But I can tell you the new one sounds fantastic. 😂😂😂😂😂
Here is proof that the rip off of remastering the 1973 RECORDED The dark side if the moon every 3 years is a terrible sounding album. Most of my records were recorded in 1971 & before. In 1972 I thought the sound on all records were was more harsh, that the sound wasnt as good. I was suspicious that something solid state transistor digital was added, but 2 sound engineers swore I was wrong. You here all this talk that digital didnt start till the very late seventies. Michael Fremer from Stereophile confirmed I was right all along. Fremer JUST said this, so I googled it up what he said.
The Doors and The Elektra Records Sound Part 1. Also below when it is talking about DISCRETE recorders, it's talking about tiny tralnsistor Integrated integrated IC transistors that dont sound as good, for example early seventies Sony stereo amps with more expensive & complicated hand wired transistors sound better than today's IC amps, but still tubes recorders sound better. Guitarists today love guitar tube amps better.
Analog Planet
www.analogplanet.com › content › doors-and-e...
Apr 30, 2010 - When I came back to do some mixing in 1970 it was still the same, except that they changed the console to solid-state. The whole control room was all brick, and it had individual panels of acoustical tile to deaden it down. Basically it was a very live room. The console sat on a platform, which was about six or eight inches off the floor. The tape machine sat behind us; we had an old Ampex 200 three-track, which had separate record and playback electronics so that you could select separate record or playback curves. They had a thing back then called A.M.E., which was Ampex Master Equalization, and then they had N.A.B., so if you recorded A.M.E. and played it back N.A.B., it would come out brighter. It's like recording with Dolby and not decoding. We also had an Ampex 300, I believe, three-track, which I converted over to a four-track with sel-sync (the ability to perform overdubs).
BB: No, the room stayed the same from the day I walked in the door, which was about 1963 to 1968. When I came back to do some mixing in 1970 it was still the same, except that they changed the console to solid-state. But anyway, back to the console. Tutti used to go to England a lot, and he purchased a solid-state console over there. For the life of me, I can't remember the name of it. We all thought it was kind of cool. It had a lot of features that the tube console didn't have. It sounded different, you know? Tubes still sounded the best. Anyway, Jac Holzman purchased one as well, and we had it customized for our needs at Elektra Studios. So, that's how the console got there. BB: I still like mono to this day, because there aren't any distractions. It's like a black and white movie, where you can create incredible dimensions, depth-wise, and hide things. That's very hard to do in stereo. That's because we don't record in stereo: We record multi-track point-source discrete audio. The difference in the mix was when we would open it up to stereo, we would have to change things, because it didn't fall in the same place. Spatially, things would fall into other places. MG: It sounds to me as if the first Doors album had the best high-frequency extension, transient snap, and overall transparency, and that with each album sonically fine as they arethose qualities seemed to diminish. Would you agree or disagree?
BB: I'd agree with that to an extent, because the first album was all tube. Strange Days was done on a tube console, but with a solid-state eight-track. From then on it became all solid-state consoles and solid-state tape machines. There was also this direction that Paul wanted to take it, a more intellectual kind of a sound, not as raw as the first album. The sound started to become more scientific as it went along, a little more clinical, because studios, by and large, are hospitals, they're not places to record music. Technology is the evil person here.
MG: I guess that's not fighting technology, it's kind of going around it.
BB: Sound since the 1960s has gone backwards instead of forwards, in my estimation. In the recordings that I do today for motion pictures, I use tube microphones, tube microphone pre-amps, and I try to bypass the solid-state consoles as much as possible. It's more open, it's rounder, it has more depth. I can give you an example. If you take a room that has some reverberation not a chamber, just good clear liveness and you put an earphone in the middle of the room with a click going through it, so you hear the “tick, tick, tick.” Plug up a good microphone, maybe a (Neumann) U-67 or something like that, split the signal so it goes into a tube microphone pre-amp, and then the solid-state pre-amp, bring them both up on the console, and switch back and forth, and listen. With the tube, you'll hear all the reverberation in the room; the solid-state will close down. Ten times out of 10. So that's somewhat what you're hearing. Even the equalizers back then were tube; we had Pultech EQ-P1A's.
MG: What's your opinion of digital multi-track recorded sound, and your opinion of digital recording, period, compared to analog? Which do you prefer?
BB: I would venture to say that 95% of the music that I've recorded in the last eight years has been all digital. Digital does not basically sound better than analog, but what it does do, is that the sound doesn't change from what you're recording. With analog, you record it, and when you play it back, you will get a fair representation of what you heard on line-in. Play it back a half an hour later, and it will have changed, there are less highs. Play it a day later, and it will really have changed. The high end just changes, it's a natural process of the magnetism of the particles, and when you magnetize, record them, they change. The magnetic particles have a memory and want to go back to their original inert state. It's just the way it is. In digital, you record it, and it doesn't change. The problem with digital is the quality of the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. At this point in time, the A-to-D and D-to-A's are getting where you can record on it and it doesn't sound “digital” anymore. “Digital” meaning that it sounds cold. “Cold” meaning that digital doesn't show you all of the details, like the depth of the reverb and harmonic room tone. Because there's lack of detail, and especially lack of harmonics going way out, that sound would seem colder, and "digital." Right now, I'm recording 96 K, 24 bit, and whew! It's good! I mean, you're really, really hard pressed to tell it from the source.