Quad playback for Surf's Up CD using Dolby Pro Logic

Ive been told and as far that I can gather that Steve Desper mixed quad versions of Beach Boys material and encoding them at the same time. Ie listening to play back by decoding.
So I gather that a true discrete 4 channel version was not the end result.
I do know for a fact that Surfs Up has been restored and remixed in 5.1.

Apart from one or two early albums, none of the Beach Boys Capitol output was released here in the Uk was actual stereo.
They were 'stereoised'.
It was only in the early 70s and the Brother Records releases, Sunflower, Carl, Surfs Up and Holland that we actually heard them in glorious stereo.
Pre Dolby Pro logic, if you had a second pair of speakers, one could wire them up using the 'Hafler' technique.
Any out of phase information would create an amazing 'quad' effect.
Beatles records especially sounded weird to say the least. The actual mix balance on some tracks would be all over the place, ie backing vocals louder than the main vocal and you could hear all sorts of things that you never knew were there.
(This was at the time of Paul is dead, messages to Manson, messages to us?? et al)
I must say that it was a different way of listening to music, not hifi of course, but different never the less and a bloody good laugh as well.
As far as I was concerned at the time, 'A splendid time was most definitely guaranteed had by all'!! sic.

 

Very little of their output is actually stereo anyway. From at least 1964 until 20/20 (a period that includes Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and Friends) the "stereo" releases are various combinations of lazy rechanneling and primitive stereo. Stephen Desper was initially brought in to do parallel stereo mixes of Jim Lockhart's Wilson-directed engineering, but took on touring sound duties, then gradually replaced Lockhart.

I bring this up only so you can see how tragic the UK releases are. Most releases, including the mono versions, were made from a dub of the US rechannel tape master. Realizing that the Pet Sounds mono reel to reel was actually a Duophonic folddown was one of the most disappointing things I've ever heard.

 

That's interesting that the British mono Pet Sounds was a mix down of the Duophonic. Loving the album as much as I did, I noticed in a 1967 catalog that the original British stereo album had stereo on the cover and almost ordered it in the hope that it was real stereo. Good thing I didn't!

 

"Stephen Desper was initially brought in to do parallel stereo mixes of Jim Lockhart's Wilson-directed engineering."

This is intriguing, for Wild Honey and Smiley Smile?

 

Friends was true stereo.

 

That's kind of what I was getting at with the "primitive" stereo - it was recorded and mixed using BW's "mono" conventions, then Desper did the stereo mix using that mono as a guidepost. 20/20 was intended from the onset to be a stereo album, with that goal informing the production decisions in the studio. That represents the first time that BB tracks were laid down with stereo in mind (which, if you've studied Desper's work, is pretty critical to his methods.)

The stereo approach during the surf/car period (through All Summer Long) was done in a very similar fashion to Friends, but under the supervision of Chuck Britz or whoever was the engineer at Capitol's in-house studios (where the first two albums were done.) Today, Summer Days/Summer Nights, and Pet Sounds all have terrible, terrible, terrible Duophonic. Wild Honey and Smiley Smile used some kind of dynamic/tweakable rechanneling that I'm not going to pretend to care enough about to research.

The "originally brought in to do stereo mixes" quote was something he said to me during a conversation, which took me by surprise. Looking back on it now, I must have had my wires crossed - it only makes sense interpreted as "brought in (from the road to the studio) to do the stereo mixes", since it's the only way the timing lines up.

I think for SS/WH, BW still had enough pull to shove mono-only masters down the label's throat, which is how they ended up rechanneled (don't believe the ST- prefix.)

However, I do know Desper ran the following SS/WH/Friends tracking sessions when Lockhart couldn't make it:
Hereos and Villains
Vegetables
Fall Breaks and Back To Winter
She's Goin' Bald
Wind Chimes
Whistle In
Mama Says
Friends
Wake the World
Be Here in the Mornin'
Anna Lee, The Healer
Little Bird

Unfortunately, Desper was also pretty instrumental in driving the use of reamplification for WH's mixdown, which makes the odds of a true stereo mix pretty remote.

EDIT: A short note in case any non-Beach Boy fans reading this don't understand why they insisted on doing mono releases: Brian Wilson has been deaf in one ear since childhood and has never heard stereo.

 

Also, Brian wanted to control the listening experience and not have it be compromised by somebody's bad speaker placement. It's too bad he didn't have enough influence to prevent the rechanneling of his artistic intention.