Waring-FDS sound

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Ed Bishop, Sep 11, 2004.

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  1. Ed Bishop

    Ed Bishop Incredibly, I'm still here Thread Starter

    Those of us who were buying CD's back in the mid'80s have not forgotten the awful sound quality of the early Original Sound and Priority CD's, which used Hank Waring's 'Waring-fds' technoogy. Although I'm not sure how the process worked, haven't forgotten the end result! Regardless of the quality of the sources, fds essentiallly obliterated the high end, exaggerated the bottom, and pretty much minimized whatever midrange a tape or disk might have once had. Further, because Fds was meant to process things stereophonically, most anything that went in mono not only came out as described above, but in essence, rechanneled, with a hollow kind of sound on top of everything else.

    Fds could do curious things with stereo, however. Aside from some kind of NR employed, the process would also widen out certain recordings. OBG VOL. 4 was the one with "Proud Mary" artificially separated to wider stereo, but not much of a blessing, since everything else was so bad it was rendered unlistenable.

    With a little research, I found Hank's website, which has plenty of links and information about what they're into these days.

    Just wondering what some of you think of all this.....I'm saddened, to a degree, but not surprised...just click that DVD-Audio link! :eek:


    :ed:
     
  2. indy mike

    indy mike Forum Pest

    FDS = Frequency Destruction System (Both Sides Now from a wacky wag)...
     
  3. My guess was "Feminine Deoderant Spray", but that would just be silly. I'm checking out the links.
     
  4. This is some wacky stuff.

    "FDS Labs uses your existing stereo or mono mix to create a genuine 5.1 surround. Come hear the sound clients have been calling "the best out there".

    NOTE: At the time of this writing, more than 200 projects have been completed."
     
  5. Ed Bishop

    Ed Bishop Incredibly, I'm still here Thread Starter

    Reading that Fds Labs also does movie 5.1 soundtracks gave me more than a little pause....I keep thinking of some of the appallling 'Chace Surround' mixes that have been made over the years. Don't know if Fds is doing essentially the same thing, but I do know that some Silverline DVD-Audio discs were done with that concept in mind, only worse: start mono and THEN 'spread out' to 5.1. And I still don't see the point of any of it, really....


    :ed:
     
  6. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Ed,

    I just remember the little interview Stereo Review or CD Review magazine once did with Hank Waring. In it, he said that the original goal was to digitally seperate the instruments from mono tracks to make better stereo mixes. Hmmmm...where have we heard of this before? Anyway, they never achieved their goal, but by accident, fornd out that their process eliminated every bit of noise from recordingd, hence the first no-noise-type system used on CDs. Ugh! What's worse about the infamous FDS is that they didn't even bother to get good tapes. They just used any old tape in the hopes of cleaning it up for CD. I personally can't believe that anyone could approve of such ****...yes, that's what it sounded like...for commercial release! A teenager with Cool EDir or Sound Forge could do better they what they did! And, those CDs are STILL on the market!
     
  7. John Carsell

    John Carsell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northwest Illinois
    I know some of the later Priority CD's didn't use Waring's FDS but the "Kickin' Back" "FM Hits" and "Rough And Raunchy" collections from the early '90's sounded like they were each mastered by four different engineers. Some were no-noised, some not. Some tracks sounded good but many others didn't.
     
  8. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I know that they removed the FDS logo, and some say that they stopped using the process, but *I* still hear it on those CDs.
     
  9. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Geez, this is like digging up the dead!...we've moved onto to bigger and better things, like MAXED OUT NoNoise, wonderful mastering engineers that suck the life outta our precious legacy of classic recordings...Hmmm, Hank doesn't seem that bad after all:laugh:
     
  10. oxenholme

    oxenholme Senile member

    Location:
    Knoydart
    How fascinating.

    I have that wonderful Raw Energy Beatles bootleg. It has highly informative notes with it -

    "John, Paul, George and Pete drove down to London to audition for Decca on January 1, 1962 after a year of touring the clubs of Hamburg and Liverpool. They played a set of rock songs and ballads which displayed the talent and raw energy that made them the most exciting club band of the time. The Beatles passed the audition. Decca signed them to record these songs as singles and released them in England over the next few months."

    There is then a load of blurb about the FDS system.

    I've got these Decca tracks on an Audiofidelity* LP, on this FDS bootleg, and on a Vigotone bootleg - they don't sound wonderful on any of them. It all depends on whether one prefers mono with a little more fidelity but flat as a pancake, or with a stereo effect but curiously constricted.

    *Audiofidelity was a company with an address in London - the LP was attributed to The Silver Beatles.
     
  11. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Waring-FDS? Geez, I'd thought this was about a Fred Waring LP on Capitol from the 1950's in Full Dimensional Sound. Oh, well . . .
     
  12. posieflump

    posieflump New Member

    Location:
    .
    So did I, W.B.!
     
  13. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Hey Michael, those FDS CDs are STILL worse IMO! The only CDs I can think of that are even WORSE were the ones made by Priority Records in it's early days. They also used that FDS system and oh GAWD!
     
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