What past recordings would make good 5.1 mixes?

My votes would go to Pink Floyd: DSOTM, The Wall, and Wish You were here.
Anyone else have suggestions of what would make good 5.1 material?

 

How about:

The Final Cut - Pink Floyd
Crime of the Century - Supertramp
So - Peter Gabriel
Moving Pictures - Rush
Sheer Hear Attack - Queen


All have little nuances and details that could sound neat in a 5.1 mix. I just love the Night At The Opera DTS 5.1 recording and would love to hear Brighton Rock and Now I'm Hear off of Sheer Heart Attack.

 

Gary, how about some William Shatner?

Matt

 

The--

The Beatles, The Beatles, The Beatles.

 

A lot of past Quad featured mixes still sound great to this day. I just listened to the DTS conversion Tab did to Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and thought it was really neato.

Pink Floyd, sure. Would love to see more classic Jazz, if the muilti's are still available to some. Betcha Miles Davis "Bitches Brew" would sound wacked in DTS or 5.1!

 

Yes, and bring on 'In A Silent Way' too. That's gotta be awesome. Was there a quad mixes recorded for these sessions?

 

Billy Thorpe's Children Of The Sun would be incredible in 5:1. The 3 dimensional sound of those UFOs would be mind blowing.

 

How about some Jimi Hendrix, maybe Frankenstien from Mr. Winters, or how about of the pyschodelic rock?

 

"Frankenstein" as well as the album "They Only Come Out At Night" (The Edgar Winter Group, Epic) was available on Fostex Q8 and SQ (Vinyl). I have the Q8 to DTS, and it's just weird, man. A lot of what you'd expect in the mix of "Frankenstein" either comes in very early, or gets panned in strange ways. It might make you see spots!

 

"Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall"?

 

virtually any Pink Floyd or latter period Beatles deserve the 5.1 treatment, of course. I would also say:
anything from the psychedelic era, early prog rock era or other conceptual stuff deffo needs the surround application
I'd like to hear Gong-Camembert Electrique in surround....I was on acid the first time I heard it in stereo (winter camping in a friends car early 70's....ah, 8-tracks

 

If heard the four channel mix of Ten Years After's "A Space in Time" and it is stunning. It has been long rumoured that there was a quad mix of Hendrix's Crash Landing prepared, not necessarily one of his best but would be cool never the less.
I remember reading an interview with Eddie Kramer around 72, where he said that you could take the multitracks of Electric Ladyland and by remixing it come up with an entire new album, because there was so much buried in the mix. That album would be my number 1 pick for a 5.1 edition.

 

How about Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska"? I have no clue as to why anyone would want Beatles albums in 5.1 when most of them were originally intended for mono. Adding cheap effects to good songs defeats the purpose or original intent. Same with the Stones. Next thing you know we will have 50 channels and there will be re-issues in 50.1 where each guitar string will have it's own speaker. I find these pop songs work best in mono or "fat mono" stereo. For instance, I would not want to hear a Phil Spector production broken down into individual parts.

I think the Floyd stuff would be good, maybe some Andreas Vollenveider, Brian Eno or Tangerine Dream.

 

I would think some metal albums, especially with two lead guitar players would be cool in 5.1

 

I don't want any older recordings remixed to a 5.1. It all sounds a bit fake to me. I heard some new classical stuff at a demo given by a dutch audio mag in cooperation with the recording company Polyhymnia. Polyhymnia makes classical recordings in which they place 5 mikes in a hall to correspond with the five full range speakers in a SACD setup. Doing it this way you get the "feel" of the room in which they recorded. This was quiet a natural effect.
The other recordings they included in the demo were some pure DSD recordings by a singer called ML and by Guano Apes and stuff was flying all over the place. Backing vocals behind you, in front of you, from the left, from the right. All in all a really irritating experience, there was never any sence of balance in the recording. Surround just for the fun off it, is just a waste of time. If one uses it to make a recording more natural it's fine by me. Question is off course, are pop and rock really the right choices to do so? I don't think so, but hey that's just me.

 

Lou Reed-Metal Machine Music
kidding!

I'm old school. Two ears, two channels max.
I did have a quad 8 track system in the mid 70's though. My favorite four channel tape was Tres Hombres-ZZ Top.

Joe

 

GREAT ALBUMS FOR 5.1 REMIXING:

1)The Jimi Hendrix Experience-Are You Experienced,Axis Bold As Love,Electric Ladyland

2)Pink Floyd-DSOTM,Wish You Were Here,Animals,The Wall

3)Radiohead-O.K. Computer,Kid A

4)Emerson,Lake and Palmer-Trilogy

5)Yes-The Yes Album,Fragile,Close To The Edge

6)David Bowie-Ziggy Stardust,Aladdin Sane,Station To Station

7)Roxy Music-Avalon

 

It's kind of funny that many of the albums that have been mentioned so far have already been released in quad:

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
Edgar Winter - They Only Come Out At Night
Tangerine Dream - Alpha Centari, Atem
Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music

As for stuff originally released only in stereo being remixed for 5.1 sounding "fake", I must wholeheartedly disagree. What was true in the quad era is just as true (if not more so) today: it's in the mix!

If the engineer has access to the multi-track masters, some very spectacular surround-sound mixes can come out of it. Here are some INCREDIBLE multi-channel DVD-A titles that were originally STEREO ONLY. Even if you don't have a DVD-A player, most of these titles have DTS or Dolby Digital tracks that will, at a minimum, give you a decent taste. These are all well worth checking out:

America - Homecoming
Doors - L.A. Woman
Eagles - Hotel California
Foreigner - 4
ELP - Brain Salad Surgery
Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
George Benson - Breezin'
Grateful Dead - American Beauty
Grover Washington Jr. - Winelight
Metallica - Metallica (black album)
Natalie Merchant - Tigerlily
Queen - A Night At The Opera (second mix)
Randy Newman - Little Criminals

On the other hand, the engineer can just as easily ruin a title with a lousy surround-sound mix. This is especially true if he doesn't have access to the original multi-track masters. There are quite a few titles out there that are "synthesized" surround from stereo source, and these are, naturally, quite disappointing. This was true during the quad era as well. Luckily, today, the crappy surround mixes or synthesized surround mixes are a vast minority. Most of the stuff coming out on DVD-A or multi-channel SACD is stunning, whether they are entirely new mixes or straight transfers from the original quadraphonic mixes.

And if surround-sound just ain't your cup of tea, don't dismiss the new hi-rez digital formats since they almost always have hi-rez stereo tracks as well. You really owe it to yourself to check out "Hotel California" remastered in stereo at 24-bit, 192 kHz. Warning, though, it just might make you reconsider your investment in vinyl...

Anyway, if you're interested in getting more info on surround-sound stuff, I recommend the highly informative "Quadraphonic" ezBoard group at http://pub9.ezboard.com/bquadraphonicquad where both vintage and modern surround sound titles and technologies are discussed.

 

Hi Vex,

I don't dismiss highrez audio, I own a SACD player. Just don't like most off the MCH stuff I heard so far. Well except for the classical ones they used at the demo, but since I am not into classical I see no reason to invest in a MCH setup.

 

I belong to an audio club here in Seattle and a majority of our members are hardcore stereo guys who are quick to dismiss anything beyond two channels. It has become something of a side-hobby of mine to convert them, or at least get them to admit to the benefits of multi-channel. So far I've been 100% successful. Most of them simply haven't had the opportunity to hear a proper multi-channel setup before.

I find the resistance to multi-channel interesting. I believe stereo received similar resistance from mono hi-fi guys way back when...

 

«Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim», mixed to 5.1 using Steve's "all 4 channels up"- tape.

 

What's the story behind there being two mixes for this? I recall reading breathless articles a few months back about the first one (including a portrait of Roy Thomas Baker's work on it, in one of the recording mags) --- saw a prerelease review or two -- then the next thing I hear it's gone back for tweaking under Brian May;s
supervision. Finally appeared in stores last month. Anyone know what happened?