probably PF doesnt want to have to pay Alan what they owe him for the original work on the album.

The last I'd heard it looked as if there would be no new surround release because PF was flat out refusing to allow any of the expenses to be charged against their royalty account.

Sounds like the label agreed to pick up the tab for doing it in-house but not for hiring Alan.

This is being done a lot. A friend of mine had to really fight in order to get to mix a surround greatest hits version from 15 years of his recording and mixing for a high profile artist. Then he had to fight again to get it mastered by the same person who had done all of the originals.

yeah, a lot of labels are doing this kind of thing. Sony for example has a couple of guys that crank out 5.1 SACD mixes, most times 2-3 a day at cut rate prices and sony studios are slashing prices to make sure it all stays inhouse. It's hard for me to believe that these are being done well but the label is only looking at the bottom line and not at much else.

yeah, a lot of labels are doing this kind of thing. Sony for example has a couple of guys that crank out 5.1 SACD mixes, most times 2-3 a day at cut rate prices and sony studios are slashing prices to make sure it all stays inhouse.

What is sad about the SACD situation is there are so many people who are concerned about the direction of our industry. The "good enough" attitude has taken over all aspects of music from the artist to the consumer. Every "Homer" (my term for bedroom engineers) with a PC and mic thinks most of their stuff is "good enough". And so do their friends. :)

It is my hope that DVD-A and SACD would breath life back into the industry and excite the consumer about what great sounding equipment and talented artist can achieve.

But if Sony is simply trying to crank out product in order to create demand for SACD players then this is a house of cards. If SACD just becomes yet another format instead of a brand that denotes high quality then they are shooting themselves in the foot.

There must be some other ole guys on here other than me that remember the Sheffield Labs recordings. Wow. Those are all about quality and I wouldn't hesitate to buy their product because I knew how they were recorded and the attention to detail.

But sounds like Sony is wasting a unique opportunity that doesn't happen that often in our industry. And this is to raise the bar for engineers and the expectations of consumers by creating a high quality recording standard, but instead on the surface it is just another method for putting 1's and 0's on a piece of plastic.

Lee

Hello,

This is my first post here. Nice forum. Friendly people in a friendly environment.

I run a small mastering studio in Twinsburg, Ohio, and have recently added short run CD duplication to my services. I previously spent 15 years in the retail musical instrument industry. Having just escaped that hostile environment for the confines of my own successful business I have come to realize several things. Customers no longer buy gear because of the job it can do. They by words such as Fat, Warm, Tube, Pro-Tools, Etc. There is no concern for understanding how to operate this gear. It's all about having the name recognition. Sorry for dragging this out but... it does go somewhere. The music industry is suffering a similar fate. I sold music software for recording to people who had the money to buy. Other people came in asking for support on software that was not purchased by them but downloaded from the internet. Music is now being downloaded on a regular basis from sources such as Morpheus and Kazaa. This is all in MP3 format. All of this, in the eyes of the downloader is "FREE." Regardless of quality, it is still "FREE." There is no longer any regard for what goes into the recording from the beginning stages of writing and recording to mixing and mastering. Forget about the industry folks that market and distribute the material. These people know nothing of this. If they do, they simply don't care. It's all "FREE."

DVD-A and SACD are both great formats in their own way. They offer superior sound quality when compared to the 16 bit CD. Unfortunately, downloadable MP3's are, to the common consumer, "FREE."

Well, this got a bit farther off topic than intended. It is certainly a sad state of affairs when someone with Alan's credibility is simply pushed aside in this manner. The recording industry needs to learn a little from the DVD Video industry. They are selling DVD's like mad while the RIAA complains about piracy and CD copying. I completely understand that money is to be paid to those in the loop on each and every project. Why is it, however, that I can buy a new DVD for less than a new CD? The technology has been around longer for CD's, it costs less to produce the physical CD, the recording process is most certainly less expensive than the movie making process. Actors are greedy and all want to be paid a fortune. There are several actors in each and every movie. A band is made up of much fewer people resulting in less overhead. Recording cost is lower than movie production cost. Heck, movies have soundtracks that are usually of better quality than some of the stuff that is put on CD by what the industry is currently telling us is popular. To sum this all up...

Quality seems to be the last thing on peoples minds. Poor music is being produced, converted to MP3's and being played back through cheap computer speakers or headphones called earbuds. SACD and DVD-A will have a hard time breaking through the tough skin of kids who simply want something, at any quality, for free. Thanks for reading. I hope this may provide some insight from someone who's seen it all from a different angle.

Well Jeff, what you said is true.

Here is the sad part. Alan made special 8 track mixdowns especially for the future. They still needed to be mixed and folded into the stupidity realum of a sing sub..but he did do this especially for "double quad" because the Man invisioned an ultimate 8 channel playback.

I have done 8 channel DQ (double quad) myself using 4 stereo amplifiers and the 8 bus out of my console to hear this and it is the most amazing thing you have ever heard. I used 4 of Paul Klipschs' corner horns and four Klipsch LaScalas in this test. As a matter of fact, I am assembling a system now for my own personal DQ setup, because I can.

I worked with Alan for a brief time and the small time we stayed behind the console together, I amassed 20 years of experience in 3 hours. I took me to a higher plane and now I know the Parsons vibe plus my vibe. Pretty good stuff I will admit.

What gives me a huge pit in my stomach is sites like audio asylum and their high rez forum (please do not invite those guys here..moderation is difficult enough) and certain posters bashing the dvd-a format. It has its warts but it is still a BOLD attempt to being higher quality sound to the masses and ANY attempt I feel should be hailed.

I am willing to Bet that AP would have done the mixdown for FREE just to relive and be reinvolved with the release. HE certainly does not need the money.

It is a sad sad shame that this injustice will come to an Album of these lengendary proportions and I for one don't like this happening.

Politics 102A

I am going to try to see if I can (from an insiders view) find out more..it is possible they discovered his 8tracks and looked at them VS the Quad vinyl release and can actually pull it off quite satisfactory, but I bet the 3K will be up and the below 50HZ will be down a few dB and if so..I will bitch bitch bitch.

Look at the horrible mess they did with Toto IV. Totally pathetic. 4 monkees and a chimpanzee could have done better, at least they have better ears.

IF they took the vinyl, surface noise and all to DSD it would have been much better accepted.

Again Jeff, populus does not give an flying fuck but we do and we should count for something.

Lets not let our art die please....

Damn this hurts to know he was not even approached...

I call them engimousers.
A guy came to my place some time ago and he was lauging at me that I did not know the million shortcuts for Pro Tools as he knew. I said, oka, you have lots of keyboard/mousing hours bud.
Then sound was weird and I asked: hey, what about the word clock?
He said what is this? a clock for word processor?
LOL

I blame some equipent that has been released recently for our drowning profession...

The Digi001, the Cakewalk, the VS1680 and similar ones.

It is oka that democracy is healthy, but they should keep this stuff at a maximum of 16 tracks.

You see lots of guys now recording 32, 64 tracks at home, feeling that they do not need engineers to polish their job.

I hav lost the count of how many crappy stuff I have received to "fix engimousers" stupid stuff.

The normalize funtion for them is the built in mastering engineer.

Yesterday I had to fix or try that with a big release of a Samba school. Bill, I was almost sending it to you to give a deeper analysis.

Lots of 125 for the tam tam, telephone quality with the voice, some vocals buried and so...

I think the final resul I gave them improved 60%, but not the 90% I always try to reach...
Lots of medium to big studios were closed here n Brazil and my hour rate is almost the same since 1998 and now guy complain that it is expensive. however, I invested almost $100,000 which is very much for brazilian reality so how to compete with a guy with a few mics and a digi001 doing almost for free?

Yes, I have been buying great dvd stuff from Earth, Wind and Fire and Rush for just $3!!!! and are original releases!!