XXHighEnd

Some rock albums of the seventies (Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson) were reissued through the years in various “remastered” editions.

For me, most of the digital reissues were never satisfactory and I stopped listening to most of them. At the time I mostly blamed it to a shift in my musical taste (to jazz and modern music).

Recently however I read about reissues of some classic rock albums (prog rock if you like) that were really outstanding according to the reviews. These were remixes by Steven Wilson (of Porcupine Tree). According to the information these are *remixes* and not *remasters*, which means, as far as I understand it, that no compression, equalization, reverb and the like were added.

The albums I got, Jethro Tull’s “Benefit”, “Thick as Brick”, “Passion Play”. Gentle Giant’s “The Power and the Glory” and Yes’ “The Yes Album” and “Close to the Edge” are so much better than the former reissues. For me, they give the original “life”, "timbre" and “sparkle” and remind me of the albums I heard on LP when they first came out plus some extra.

Steve Wilson also did the King Crimson 40th anniversary box set, but I have not heard this. There are more remixes to come.

Has anyone heard these and what do you think.

See also:  http://stevenwilsonhq.com/sw/cover-version-tim-bowness-no-man-and-classic-remixes/.

Regards,
Stanley

Nice Stanley !
I love progressive rock and in my younger days I had almost nothing else. And there is so few on CD of it to begin with.
Also : so hard to bring up all the artists from memory because it is such a long time I played it (had hundreds on cassette tape - still have actually).

Thanks !
Peter

Hi Stanley, thanks for sharing. I've taken a look at the site you linked to and it seems you have two choices:

1. Blu-ray + CD
2. DVD-A + CD

For the CD, it says "features a new stereo album mix", which I suppose is what you referred to in your OP.

For the Blu-ray, it says "DTS-HD Master Audio stereo (24bit/96khz)".

For the DVD-A, it says "5.1 DTS Mix and High Resolution Stereo mixes" and "5.1 Lossless audio mix (24bit 96khz)".

So my take on all this is that if I want a 24/96 stereo PCM file, I will have to rip the 'DTS-HD MA' file from the Blu-ray or DVD-A, and then convert this to 24/96 PCM. This seems like a lot of work and additional expense (having to use DVDExtractor, or something.)

I'm interested in getting just the CDs, but am not sure from where. I've sent an email to Headphone Dust to ask them. Will let you know once I have an answer.

Mani.

Related: https://www.burningshed.com/

Ahhh, I love prog rock of the 70s. I spend my childhood listening to it, and still does. Not a day without classic prog rock!

Sound quality is usually average only, though. This is in fact the "dark age" of recorded sound quality.

In terms of sound *production* it was the best, combining the artistic freedom and expressiveness of the early 70s, with the newly developed LP format and multi track studio recorders.

However, while A Night At The Opera and Dark Side of The Moon are artistic masterpieces, they will NEVER sound good because of too much use of over-dubs. The artists had more ideas than available studio tracks. When finalizing those albums, the tapes were so worn out, that you could almost see through it! Adding Dolby NR in an attempt to reduce the noise, just worsened it.

The early generations of analogue mixing consoles where very bad too, sound wise, the music signals passing through numerous cheap potentiometers and early generation Philips op-amps.

This is why REMASTERS can't improve much. The damage is already done on the original 2-track master tape.

To put this in perspective, we have stellar recordings from as early as the late 50s. (Except for some audible wow and flutter) the legendary productions of people such as Rudy Van Gelder, carries astounding SQ. But it was more or less recorded "live in the studio", without post production.
In other words: Microphones and tape recorders have been up to the task for a long time, given a minimalistic production. With complex multi track productions, the recording/production chain didn't become transparent until resent days of high quality digital technology.

Personally, I have solved above problem by simply not listening to 70s prog rock on my living room Hi-Fi. I have a dual music life: At home I mostly listen to well recorded music (mainly jazz and folk). But in my car, when jogging or when traveling, I always carry my two iPod Classic 160GB. They are synchronized with my iTunes library where I have stored thousands of classic prog rock albums in lossy AAC, (256 kbps). (I keep this "Low-Fi" setup on a separate PC, not connected with my main XX/High end PC-rig where all music is stored in native uncompressed formats).

-----

Visiting 2L studio here in Norway and listening to their 5.1 monitoring system some years ago, changed my whole perspective on SQ of "old" music favorites. Listening to Yellow Brick Road, Gaucho and some others, was a revelation: It was a total knock-out. The usual 2.0 remasters were outclassed by the remixed 5.1 versions. (On that very day I swore to get me a full blown surround system in a large enough living room. If Peter can make a 6-channel version of XX, it will feature a trio of NOS-1 DACs).

Paradoxically, 5.1 releases of 70s prog rock often sounds better than 2.0 stereo versions. Creating a 5.1 mix from the old multi track tapes can be done by an outsider, because there is no reference. But when remixing in stereo, you must be extremely accurate, otherwise the final song will sound "wrong" compared with the original stereo version owned by millions of fans. For this reason ( and probably many more) we seldom see stereo remixes of old favorite albums.

But super-pro's like Steve Wilson are changing the game, thankfully.

Any way, to get my response back on topic, I have to say that a proper REMIX of old favorites, is such an improvement that they qualify for listening through my main system.
 
I bought all the hi-Rez available from the beginning (DVD-A, DualDisc, etc). Today the hi-Rez market is blossoming with an increasing number of both remasters and remixes of classic albums. I still buy a lot, but its  becoming hard to keep track on all the titles available.
The first example of successful remix was the DVD-A of ELP/Brain Salad Surgery. The original album stereo tracks was "only" remastered, but the remixed bonus track Lucky Man is a stunner, sounding like it was recorded today. Also the King Crimson DVD-A's are a revelation in stereo remix. I haven't purchased the YES titles yet, but I guess they will satisfy, too.

Hopefully, more titles will follow in the purist spirit of Steve Wilson, (but not in the way of Nick Davies/Genesis 2007 re-mixes with too much compression and deviation from the original mixes).

My apologies for writing too long an answer. Too my defense, it was written under the influence of a bottle of Remy Martin Cognac and In The Court Of The Crimson King heard through my trusty iPod/Tivoli mono radio in our mountain lodge.

Hey iPod man in your mountain lodge ...

To me it almost looks like you have your remixed classics mixed up. To me the albums from around 1970 sound the best and are progressive rock. But DSOTM ?!? Ok, I am too old. But then we both are.

So for example, yesterday I played the whole of Triumvirat's Spartacus. There's one description possible only : the sheer beauty and the recording possibilities of that time with the combination of everything which can be called literally sweet. Never forget to listen to the lyrics.
Not that Triumvirat uses it, but otherwise look for all using flutes (a bit hard to translate, but concert flute / transverse flute / German flute).
Already the fact that such a flute is (seems to be) the main instrument to imply progressive rock ... what "progressive" ?

But I don't need to tell you because I know you know what (your !) progressive rock is !
(like King Crimson sure is that and I think overdubs had to be invented yet)

Otherwise how is your illegal distillery going on there ?
Thank you for such a nice read and have a nice time !
Peter