Continue to be disappointed by MCh offerings

JerryLove

JerryLove

Audioholic Samurai
Having been sorely disappointed with the The Police SACD, I ordered Hotel California. There are some others I'd love to get, but everything is no longer in print and the market for used/NOS ones is expensive [note: If there's no demand, hence why printing stopped, how do they sell for so much].

Anyway. The guitars opened up at the beginning of the Titular song and I got excited. The DR wasn't super high, but there was interesting positioning going on and the recording was solid... then the vocals came... out the LR speaker evenly and not out the center. Once again: they just copied the stereo mix and it was terrible [hint: if you have one singer, they should be in one place, and that one place should not be "both left and right of you without being in front"].

When I sampled some other songs from the CD, I didn't even find a repeat of the opening. It sounded like the stereo mix [and indeed: the vocals don't sound as well recorded as the instruments].

I'm beginning to think I'm going to be forced into buying records for DR (which I'll likely immediately rip) and not finding MCh at all. Well crap!

On the up side: I'm *this close* to getting streaming MCh working.
 
JerryLove

JerryLove

Audioholic Samurai
Is that an older quad/4.0 re-release?
There's some decent center-speaker activity on the opening of Hotel California; so that bit, at least, was remixed for 5-channel.

Beyond that I don't know. It would explain the otherwise terrible misuse of the center channel... something quadrophonic didn't have.

I've heard good things about the 5.1 of Honky Chateau. I'm hoping I can find that at "not an exorbitant amount".
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I've just run across such re-released on multich formats, so wondered and it is of the right age but didn't look up the provenance of the recording....after the overplay that album had I'm still not ready to listen again :) I'd certainly like more/better multich choice myself....it is limited unfortunately.
 
Ponzio

Ponzio

Audioholic Samurai
Sadly SACD's has reached mythological proportions in the audiophile world, combined with the limited catalogue of recordings, the expensive & limited number of players that can read them and hence the price rise. Personally I still think whoever remastered the recordings is more important than the audio layer/format. Add in the "surround sound" aspect to the whole endeavor and you're just asking for more disappointment.

It reminds me of the whole Quadraphonic vinyl craze of the 70's which crashed and burned for various reasons; the need to purchase new audio equipment to support reading the various decoders from different companies, another two speakers, etc.

Until the general public, non-audiophiles, buys into a new format and is affordable, death is just around the corner.

BTW, the 2003 stereo remasters of the Police catalogue by Bob Ludwig are the best I've heard to date and quite affordable in the used market. For example...
https://www.discogs.com/The-Police-Ghost-In-The-Machine/release/3835996

A good resource for researching the various reissues & remasters of CD's is the Steve Hoffman forums. The members over there are fanatical on the subject.
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/forums/music-corner.2/

Personally I loved the HDCD format vs. the more common ADD or DDD formats on CD's but that catalogue is limited too.

Good luck.
 
JerryLove

JerryLove

Audioholic Samurai
Personally I still think whoever remastered the recordings is more important than the audio layer/format. Add in the "surround sound" aspect to the whole endeavor and you're just asking for more disappointment.
To your first point at least: I agree completely. Redbook is better than I can hear and the real problem is with mastering. What I'm after is multi-channel... where the real problems are mastering and a lack of availability.

It reminds me of the whole Quadraphonic vinyl craze of the 70's which crashed and burned for various reasons; the need to purchase new audio equipment to support reading the various decoders from different companies, another two speakers, etc.
Except for a major difference. We already have players capable of reading DVD (and often SACD) and we already have 3.1 and 5.1 speaker setups.

The disk caught on, and so did surround sound. I'm just wanting them to put out music on it.

A good resource for researching the various reissues & remasters of CD's is the Steve Hoffman forums. The members over there are fanatical on the subject.
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/forums/music-corner.2/
Thanks, I'll take a look.

Personally I loved the HDCD format vs. the more common ADD or DDD formats on CD's but that catalogue is limited too.
I think that's apples and oranges. The former discusses the encoding format for the media and the later discusses whether recording and mastering was in an analog or digital space (there's also AAD BTW).
 
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