I am adding this in after the fact -- hope you haven't read this yet -- but I understand now your skepticism. The left-on DolbyA encoding isn't from the original mixdown, but how the record companys treat the material. The stuff had probably been digitized years ago without decoding, and it is a pain in the butt to convert back to analog to do a DolbyA decode. My decoder fixes that problem -- it is TRULY better than a real DolbyA for decode only (and it sounds closer to a DolbyA than a Satin.)
Okay -- you kind of irritated me with your skepticism: I put up a purposefully degraded version of waterloo from ABBA onto a working repository. It is encoded mp3 very tightly, but you can still hear the HF emphasis and of course -- ABBA is compressed anyway, even on a master. This is the version from an ABBA gold master -- I also have the albums on DolbyA. (Bread, Nat King Cole, and so many artists that it is amazing with DolbyA encoding -- it means having access to MFSL quality material all of the time -- IF YOU KNOW HOW TO DO IT!!!)
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* I also have a decoded and finalized copy of waterloo that I just did. It was a slightly different source, but came from the same master -- the one that I fully produced required A LOT of work. It is going away in a day or two.
Classical would tend to be a little more boosted sounding -- but I have some stuff under NDA that is traceably DolbyA and it isn't all that bad (it is singing in a church) and a few other things -- that stuff has tones.
Since ABBA is already compressed -- it tends to decrease the DolbyA gain/EQ boosts, listen to the file wda.mp3 on the repository. This is from an old non-US cheaply made ABBA CD -- they just stupidly played out the master
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The 'powers' blindly don't want me to post a link -- so add https:// in front of the below and click on it. Geesh, I wrote part of the damned internet, and they treat me like this... The repo is in there:
spaces.hightail.com/space/ko2yTjF5YY