Eclectic Remain In Light Downmix
The 5.1 downmixesObviously, being a fan of the MiniDisc, I enjoy experimenting with new equipment, techniques and manipulation. The Talking Heads remasters, whilst sadly brickwalled to an extent (see: LOUDNESS WAR), were still well presented and restored. The clarity of the 5.1 mixes in particular was appealing. At last, you could hear the smallest handheld wooden percussion instruments - I'm sure their African names are recorded for posterity elsewhere - alongside eerily clear vocals. Many other details emerge, unheard on both my dusty old vinyl and '80s issue of the CD:- perhaps mastered from the same tape as the original vinyl mix, as was the practice in that decade. |
Downmixing
So! What I set out to do was press into service my new Onkyo 105FX and utilize its unique ability to record digitally directly to LinearPCM, better known to you as CD quality. The Talking Heads remasters were presented in DualDisc format. One side was the original record, remaster-compressed, and presented in the same manner as the old CD: 44kHz 16bit stereo. The otherside contained a DVD interface with the album presented in DVD Audio stereo and 5.1 surround. The 5.1 mixes were brand new and no doubt contained individual instructions for all 5 channels and a low frequency effect (LFE) output.
To Hell with you SCMS!
The Serial Copy Management System employed on MiniDisc prevents a further digital copy being made from any digital copy (by simply adding a "copy" bit to the first copy). Although I lack a true 5.1 (or above) system, I played the 5.1 mix anyway, but on my laptop. Via an affordable Creative Labs SB0490, I set it to output in 48kHz, yielding a pure stereo optical out signal. This was then fed via a cheap optical cable to the MiniDisc unit. The Onkyo's sampling rate converter then mixed all 5.1 channels into two channel stereo. Seriously? Amazing! So what does it sound like!? Patience, my friend. All I had at this stage was a dark blue, now obsolete, 1GB HiMD disc, with an album's worth of LinearPCM, un-indexed, trackmarked, and all the rest of it. But there was a key difference between this audio and the audio on the Official stereo issue. It wasn't limited or compressed during the mastering process. Read on:
Transcribing
From the Onkyo 105FX the blank was passed to one of my portable HiMD units (the specific model number was not noted down). The portables have an advantage over the deck: they can upload the pure data via USB. This data is then stored as a lossless LinearPCM file within Sony's much-maligned SonicStage software. Thankfully, it can do an easy convert of the files to wave format. Although the Onkyo is able to add trackmarks using LSync, most of the songs were too close together to be automatically split. Using 'Wavesplitter' software, I divided the track and analyzed the waveform. As you can see, it is a lot more natural than the one taken from the Official stereo side:
'Listening Wind' waveform of 5.1 stereo downmix:
'Listening Wind' waveform from official stereo mix:
As you can see, to make it seem as though loudness wasn't the only intent behind the mastering, they compressed it all and then reduced the overall volume; Certainly not a natural sound, and What a shoddy way to handle such a record!
It was now simple case of loading these converted wave files into Nero Burning Rom, titling them, then preventing the addition of the dreaded "two second gap". Once the CD was burned, it was neatly scribed courtesy of a black Staedtler.
Acquiring
Sharoma is a kind soul, and has created the necessary torrents. When I performed the same treatment on Fear of Music, the effect was also extraordinary. To quote Ted:
Finally got a chance to sit down and listen to the Fear of Music 5.1 downmix you posted. It is astonishing to hear a record I've listened to 1000 times sound so new. Please post any other downmixes you come across. I just love them.
Best,
Ted
I ripped the CDs using Exact Audio Copy, and converted them to FLAC format. These are the files found in the torrents. In the "good old days", you had to be a member of OiNK (Is that guy still in prison or what?). As of writing, Demonoid members can grab the below torrents, providing they seed to at least 100%:
If the links are broken simply search for the torrents by name. They've been out there years now so are probably on other trackers too.
Listening
»»» Sample of Houses In Motion.
This CD already sounds distinctively different to the standard version, even through a 2-channel stereo system. If you have a multichannel receiver, go ahead and try different combinations, but personally, I've found that the trippiest experience is to play the downmix back into a multichannel system by way of the OOPS effect. Since the recording is already a simulation of OOPS (because it includes 5 channels of audio mixed into two), having it 'processed' again yields a much more spacious sound: the vocals are a lot more pronounced, and on the rear channels you will hear, at the top of the mix, instruments and sounds previously relegated to the background. Percussion defines this album, and it is further brought out in this way.
June 2011 Update: Please refer here for a Note of Gratitude.