Pink Floyd - The Early Years Box (2016 Remixes only!)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by nexus5, Nov 17, 2016.

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  1. I'm still not sure why Obscured By Clouds even warranted a remix. It already had/has an excellent stereo mix.
     
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  2. Six Bachelors

    Six Bachelors Troublemaking enthusiast

    It warranted a 5.1 mix though...and we know it got one...but we didn't get it!
     
  3. drevil

    drevil Well-Known Member

    Well I tried de emphasis on pompei using foobar according to this link
    How I manually apply de-emphasis to CDs that have pre-emphasis. : headphones

    I must say that it really improved listenability. Before it was unbearable.

    Great result and thanks for pointing into this direction. I always loved the recording and played the dvd countless times. However it needed a lossless release, finding it as it was in the box was such a disappointment. Now I can properly enjoy it!
     
    Max Florian likes this.
  4. Sytze

    Sytze Senior Member

    I think they didn't know what else to fill the 1972 volume with. Maybe they should have just included Pompeii with the 1971 volume (which is just one cd now) and called it '1971-1972'.
     
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  5. Leigh Burne

    Leigh Burne Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    I'm the last person in the world you'd label an audiophile, but even to me, the remix of Obscured is absolutely atrocious. I honestly couldn't believe it was from an official product.
     
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  6. JulesRules

    JulesRules Weaponized, Deranged Warthog Thug

    Location:
    Germany
    Did you delete your tweet? Is Andy still on Twitter? I missed this thread.
     
  7. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Gently weeping guitarist.

    Location:
    Odense Denmark.
    I didn’t.
    No idea if he is on twitter, haven’t checked since he blocked me.
     
  8. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    All this talk about OBC, which didn't need a stereo remix in the first place, but what about the poor remixes of "Vegetable Man" and "Scream Thy Last Scream"? They could have at least included the previous mixes of these lost tracks.
     
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  9. terrencereardonandfriends

    terrencereardonandfriends Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Norton, MA
    The US 1975-1987 remastered CDS released in 1997 were CD versions of the 1994 Remasters done for the short lived Mini-Disc format. The US release of the 1967-73 remasters were in 1995 and sounded leaps and bounds better than the UK remasters. The 1994 remaster of WYWH UK was 1980s CD while the US 1997 was the 1994 remaster done for the Mini-Disc format and sounded amazing.
     
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  10. Scope J

    Scope J Senior Member

    Location:
    Michigan
  11. Scope J

    Scope J Senior Member

    Location:
    Michigan
    Yup!

    and the mono Saucer
    should have been included!
     
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  12. cwitt1980

    cwitt1980 Senior Member

    Location:
    Carbondale, IL USA
    The new mixes really took the mystique out of those songs. It started as 'I can't wait to hear these tunes in good quality' and went to 'I can't really stand hearing these songs now.' I'd rather listen to the bad quality boots. While I haven't bothered listening to them for awhile (why would I?), it sounded like they were doing stereo reprocessing on a stereo mix. The same goes for Obscured. It really seems odd that this kind of thing happens with Pink Floyd. They're the rock audiophile's band. Remixes shouldn't be shabby. Maybe everyone involved just got old and can't hear certain EQs anymore.
     
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  13. Leigh Burne

    Leigh Burne Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    I'm not an audiophile by any means, but I was amazed how bad that remix sounded. To the point where, if I hadn't known better, I would've said something had gone badly and unintentionally wrong.
     
    JulesRules likes this.
  14. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Gently weeping guitarist.

    Location:
    Odense Denmark.
    I am sure that’s what happened.
     
  15. Sigma6

    Sigma6 Forum Resident

    Location:
    BNE
    I don't think anyone from the organisation has commented publicly. But I agree, something went wrong...
     
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  16. surfling

    surfling Forum Resident

    Location:
    NGC 891
    This is just so strange that even 6 years later we have not heard from anyone in or close to the Pink Floyd estate what the hell happened with the EQing issues...

    Really a shame the way the band handled the problems with this box.
    I'm still very happy to own it and love the video content, but as they refused to exchange my BluRays I'm always a little worried they'll stop playing. What a royal f***-up...
     
    rnranimal likes this.
  17. rnranimal

    rnranimal Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    I can only speak for the Syd volume but everything on it aside from the 1965 tracks has an extreme treble boost. Those 1965 tracks use the exact same mastering which showed up briefly on iTunes around the same time as the 2x7" release. So it's interesting that the mastering which was already in the can avoids whatever was done to the rest of the Syd volume. The other thing I find interesting, which I've brought up before, is that the mastering of the singles also featured on the videos have normal EQ on the video soundtrack. So it seems like these tracks received normal masterings before being subjected to what would end up on the CDs. Something obviously happened. I'm just not sure what could explain this.

    I did an experiment. Since Matilda Mother 2010 previously appeared on Introduction to Syd with a normal EQ, I decided to work out the tonal curve difference between that and the mastering on Early Years. I then took that curve needed to make the Early Years mastering sound like the Introduction mastering and also applied it to the other 2010 mixed tracks. It made them much more listenable. I still think the Vegetable Man 2010 mix is absolutely atrocious. It sounds like we are listening to only a couple channels of a surround sound mix or a mix that was done to make it sound like the song is playing from the next room. I also still don't like the effect put on Syd's vocal in Jugband Blues, but otherwise the track now sounds much better. For me, Scream is the big winner with this new EQ. Though I still think the older mixes are superior, I can now listen to the 2010 mix without shutting it off in disgust.

    This EQ curve difference between the MM masterings was not similar enough to de-emphasis for me to conclude that's what happened here. This doesn't rule it out, though, as we don't know that that they started with an MM that has EQ equal to the Introduction to Syd mastering. But this experiment does bring us closer to a normal mastering for these tracks on Early Years. I have not yet tried the EQ out on other tracks. I did however do some more experimenting with TEY single tracks on the CDs vs the DVD/BR and vs the Shine On Early Singles set. This also showed, to no surprise, a similar extreme high end boost on TEY CDs. Similar but not exactly the same as the curve I deduced from the MM masterings. But sadly, I am still not able to conclude anything about what I think went wrong (but clearly, something went wrong) as I can't know if the same high end boost was applied across the board to TEY CD tracks (aside from 1965 tracks) or if they applied varying degrees of high end boosts to TEY tracks. If I could figure this out, we'd pretty much have an answer as to whether this was an error or intentional. I have more experimenting left to do whenever I pick this back up.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2022
  18. rnranimal

    rnranimal Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    I did some more messing around and have a bit of a breakthrough update...

    I realized I never compared the 2010 Creation tracks to TEY. Assumed they would be the same. Just did that and it's pretty interesting. The 2010 mixes on Creation- Jugband, Beachwoods and Matilda Mother do not have the extreme high end boost as found on TEY. And the curve difference between these tracks on Creation and TEY is pretty near exact the curve I deduced from MM Introduction to Syd vs TEY. So I feel pretty confident in concluding that pre-emphasis accidentally having been introduced is not what happened since the difference between the Creation masterings and TEY is not the same as de/pre-emphasis.

    Also, there's another difference between the 2010 tracks on Creation vs TEY. There are strange volume adjustments having been made to certain sections/channels of the tracks. This looks very deliberate so I'm really starting to think the high end boost was deliberate. We can't rule out an issue with monitors or playback calibration or something like that.

    However, there's something else I find odd. The two single tracks I compared between Creation & TEY- Arnold and Paintbox- are the exact same treble boosted masterings. Yet both of these tracks are found without this boost on the soundtracks to the videos on the DVD/BR.

    I don't have a guess for why some of the tracks on Creation already have the treble boost but others don't. I also have always found it strange that Creation was made available in 96/24 but TEY was not- only in 44/24 as highest resolution.

    I'm going to go back and see if I can tweak my EQ curve to become anymore accurate between the Creation and TEY tracks now and use that for Vegetable Man and Scream.

    Btw, the Creation I have is the 96/24 download. It's a fair assumption that the CD is the same mastering but worth confirming. Will see if my library has the CD.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2022
  19. rnranimal

    rnranimal Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    Got the Creation 2CD from my local library and was a bit surprised to find that it does not match the Creation 96/24 download. The 2CD has the same boosted high end masterings as the Early Years while the 96/24 has the 2010 mixes without this extreme high end boost.
     
  20. Six Bachelors

    Six Bachelors Troublemaking enthusiast

    @rnranimal, thank you very much for your efforts. TEY is the box one loves to hate and hates to love...so much incredible stuff and so many inexplicable errors and issues (with the audio, that is - the video is excellent...except for Pompeii which is a turd, top to bottom.)
     
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  21. Kristofa

    Kristofa Enthusiast of small convenient sound carrier units

    Location:
    usa
    I remember one of the movies stutters super bad and is unwatchable. Such a shame.

    As for the remixes, I have grown to enjoy OBC. Why Jackson chose to bury Nick in the mix of Pompeii will never make sense to me. I don’t see why Nick would have signed off on that. It is just wonky and destroys the power that Pompeii had for me.
     
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  22. TAF8184

    TAF8184 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Durham, NC
    I'm hoping that someday the individual cds get rereleased without the dvds. I'm not interested in those.
     
  23. rnranimal

    rnranimal Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    You're welcome. I really wanted to love this release but too much was botched. There's still some great stuff I'm thrilled to have. The video side was definitely better but some issues there as well. Again, I can only speak to the Syd material.

    Gog Magog Hills- Incomplete. Complete footage on Syd's First Trip DVD.

    Outside EMI Studios- Incomplete and strangely goes in and out of a slow-motion effect that is terribly annoying. The full footage with natural motion is on Syd's First Trip DVD.

    Arnold Layne- They improperly handled the 25fps transfer used as the source. The original film was 24fps but transferred to 25fps (PAL) video by speeding it up by 1fps. This is why the audio always sounded speeded up in broadcasts. When shown on US TV, they usually used PAL>NTSC conversions of this speeded up transfer. This conversion bakes in the faster, improper speed and the song is too high pitched on there as well. They did the same thing on the Early Years video. Except after doing a 25>30fps conversion, baking in the improper speed, they replaced the speeded up soundtrack with the correct speed remastered audio of the track. Now the video and audio run at different speeds and the proper sync is no longer possible. Not an obvious problem since they aren't miming the song in the video but the song is not running along to the footage as originally intended- not even close. All of this was easily avoided if they simply slowed the 25fps speeded up transfer back to the 24fps of the film and converted that to 30fps, which would have it all running at proper speed/pitch and the audio would've been able to be properly synced.

    Scarecrow- Same issue as Arnold Layne. I fixed both of these by adjusting the playback speed of the video so that the audio syncs like originally intended. However, this leaves the frame rate as non-standard and would need yet another frame conversion to be DVD/BR compliant. Again, all of this was easily avoided.

    Jugband Blues- They speeded up the audio for the first minute of the song by 2.5%. Then the audio returns to proper running speed/pitch. I assume this was done to better sync the audio to the video but IMO allowing pitch to change for part of the song was not the best choice to accomplish this. At the very least, the speeded up audio should've been processed to keep original pitch even though speed was being altered. Which is what I ended up doing to fix it- I selected the portion that was speeded up and processed it to return that section to proper pitch while leaving the faster speed to maintain sync. 2.5% increase in speed itself is not likely noticed but I could easily hear the pitch was off, especially with the contrast against the original pitch when the song returns to that.

    Scene Special- There is audio of IO without the voiceover but they used the audio marred by the voiceover. I will eventually get around to doing my own syncing.

    For the DVDs, they encoded 4:3 material into 16:9 anamorphic video. This makes no sense and reduces the amount of resolution used for the picture by taking up resolution with black bars (the exact thing anamorphic video avoids when encoding actual 16:9 material). The blu-rays don't have this issue as the video format contained is native 16:9 video so it just simply has black bars added to 4:3 material to fill the sides without compromising anything. But then they took this hi-res 16:9 video and instead of cropping the black bars to get back to 4:3 for the DVD since it's a native 4:3 format, they encoded it as if it were 16:9 material. Which on DVD means the widescreen video is squished into a 4:3 frame and stretched back out upon playback. This is great for actual widescreen material, but terrible to do with 4:3 material. Those black bars now take up resolution the picture should've gotten.


    Now to be fair, here's what I like about the set:

    The 1965 demos.

    Finally got to hear John Latham even if it's something I'll likely never listen to again.

    The Arnold Layne 2nd film is great (On Continuation).

    Despite the audio quibble, I'm thrilled that the Jugband Blues film has been made available in this quality.

    Nice to have the Bandstand footage without a time-code.

    The See Emily Play TOTP edit using only the undamaged footage is nice to have.
     
  24. Six Bachelors

    Six Bachelors Troublemaking enthusiast

    That is an impressive amount of information. Really puts into context the amount of fiddling that went into this box, much of it unhelpful and unnecessary.

    One of my favourite things about the box is also one of the most botched - the Stockholm '67 show, out of phase with a bad edit at the beginning of Pow R Toc H. It is very easy to fix but it's mind blowing that I had to do it for a box that cost several hundred dollars.

    What else do I especially enjoy? The Paradiso recording, even if it does have NR. The Essen footage. The Zabriskie Point material, even though it sounds pretty darn digital and bright to my ears. One of the best things on the whole set was dumped on Continu/ation - the Amsterdam '72 footage.

    If nothing else, it's a convenient location for a lot of great Floyd material. An even more generous characterisation is that it's the music lover's version of a fixer upper/renovator's delight house.
     
  25. rnranimal

    rnranimal Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    Oh, yes, the Stockholm show. What a botch that was. How does it end up out of phase and how do they not catch that? Or was this possibly done on purpose? I'd normally not even pose that question, but from what else we've witness from the set...

    And then to edit out things like "This number is Matilda Mother". Why? There's surrounding tuning and talk left in, but the song introduction gets removed. It's like they just can't bring themselves to present something unmolested.


    Yes, quite generous but apt. I have a list of stuff I plan to fix on the set. I should add them to my home improvement list...

    #1. Fix the leak in the gutter and the dropout in "Lucy Leave".
     
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