Pink Floyd in Hi-Res

[gvl]

Qobuz added a bunch of Pink Floyd albums in hi-res. I’m thrilled, I can finally listen to the actual noise of the analog recording equipment of the 60s and 70s in all its purity not polluted by the silly quantization noise of the 16bit format. Joking aside, is there any theoretical benefit of these hires remasters of analog recordings provided they are real and not just resampled CDs? Listening to The Dark Side off the Moon, and I think sounds worse than I remember.

 

[gvl]

And they removed their CD quality albums, I know I can limit the streaming to 44.1 in settings, but I suspect it will just stream downsampled version of the hires reissue, not the original CD. Not cool.

 

[caught gesture]

Qobuz added a bunch of Pink Floyd albums in hi-res. I’m thrilled, I can finally listen to the actual noise of the analog recording equipment of the 60s and 70s in all its purity not polluted by the silly quantization noise of the 16bit format. Joking aside, is there any theoretical benefit of these hires remasters of analog recordings provided they are real and not just resampled CDs? Listening to The Dark Side off the Moon, and I think sounds worse than I remember.

It is the ”remasters” concept that I have consistently found to be the problem. It is akin to over-salted food. One eventually craves the salt but you lose all the subtleties of flavour. Give me the delicacies of dynamic range.

 

[gvl]

I suppose if the original release was bad then a remaster can be an improvement. Pink Floyd releases I believe are considered pretty good, so it’s not clear what is the point.

 

[voodooless]

It all depends on what the source of the masters were and how they remastered it? The latest remasters albums aren’t really an improvement over previous versions. I especially dislike the latest incarnation of Delicate Sound of Thunder It’s almost unrecognizable.

Just check loudness-war.info

I recently ripped all my old CD’s so I have much better masters than what is available though the streaming platforms.

 

[gvl]

Just finished the DSOM, and going by memory the hires remaster sounds cleaner but also more smoothed out, kind of reminds me of what I hear when running CD material through SoX upsampling .

 

[Mr.Ian]

If you are lucky enough to find there are some hi res 4 channel dvd rips that reputable came direct from the mixing desks, dsom and wywh from memory

 

[elvisizer]

And they removed their CD quality albums, I know I can limit the streaming to 44.1 in settings, but I suspect it will just stream downsampled version of the hires reissue, not the original CD. Not cool.

guaranteed the 44.1 streams weren't the original CD's either.

 

[elvisizer]

I especially dislike the latest incarnation of Delicate Sound of Thunder It’s almost unrecognizable.

what the reMIX? heh that might be why it sounds so different . . . .

 

[Trell]

I want more multi-channel Pink Floyd SA-CDs.

 

[DSJR]

Your superior ears may contradict me now, but when I could hear better, I loved the Doug Sax masterings of PF albums as they seemed to keep the 'musical' aspects intact. I have the SA-CD of DSOTM and disliked the CD layer, finding it too smooth and safe sounding, especially the clocks going off on 'Time.' Trouble is, it 'sounds' fine today, so it's either silly subjectivism on my previous opinion or totally knackered shot ears today (CD player is unchanged in all that time). I passed on my original EMI CD issue to a grateful colector and suspect this may well have been the most 'honest' of all the transfers..

1970's PF in high res? I doubt any surviving master tape will be much over 18kHz and this will be on a surviving less played master tape rather than an EMI owned production tape which made the records. The noise will be well below red-book resolution too I suspect (I can't speak for the 1980's onwards releases).

 

[MRC01]

I've owned the original CD reissues of Pink Floyd albums from the 70s and 80s and very familiar with them. As a Qobuz subscriber, I just listened to the new high def versions and did some time synced fast switching direct A/B comparison. To my surprise, they did NOT squash or dynamically compress them! The dynamic range sounds and measures the same as the old CDs. The overall voicing, tonal balance and sound is almost the same but there are subtle differences. Some albums like Animals always had a bit of midrange cast to them, which they smoothed on the high def version making it sound just a bit better. Of course, that is probably due to remixing & remastering, not due to the 192-24 bit rate. The Final Cut has a new track, previously not released apparently because they didn't think it was good enough to be on the album, and I agree. My CD of DSOTM was the MoFi, and it sounded the most different of all these albums. The speeds didn't match, as the music drifted out of time sync even when the digital playback counters were perfectly in sync. So apparently one of the tape decks wasn't properly calibrated? Which one, who knows? Also the MoFi had a touch more deep bass extension, but less HF extension and a bit of midrange emphasis, so the new high def version was better in the mids & highs if a bit weaker in the low bass. The alarm clocks on "time" sound better, one the few areas where I didn't have to squint to hear differences. I do not think these are resampled versions of the CDs because (A) they sound slightly different, (B) the playback speed is slightly different from the CD versions, which suggests they replayed the analog tapes, and (C) they have slightly extended high frequency response to around 25-30 kHz in some places which the CD could never have.

Overall, Pink Floyd's albums were always very well engineered and the originals are some of the best sounding rock albums. The sonic differences generally are an improvement, but very slight, almost identical to the originals. I've been disappointed with most high-def reissues that sound worse than the originals, but these are the exception. If you already own the originals, they're not worth buying again. But if you don't already own them and you want them, I'd say these are the ones to get.

 

[Martin]

If you are lucky enough to find there are some hi res 4 channel dvd rips that reputable came direct from the mixing desks, dsom and wywh from memory

Check out The Dark Side Of The Moon Immersion Edition for Alan Parsons' original quad mix.

Martin

 

[MRC01]

BTW, Rush also released high def versions of their albums through the 70s and 80s, and the sonics are similar: same dynamic range as the originals, they did not squash them, and sound very similar yet just a tad less midrangy so Geddy Lee's vocals aren't quite so screetchy. And just a touch more extension of the extreme high frequencies, but without sounding brighter, just slightly cleaner transients with the bells & percussion.

I am soooo glad to see Pink Floyd & Rush buck the trend of high def recordings that are squashed to death and sound terrible.

 

[MRC01]

PS: the album notes on Qobuz for The Wall say: In 2011, the album was painstakingly remastered by James Guthrie (the sound engineer and co-producer of the original album) and Joel Plante, at das boot recording studio located in Lake Tahoe, California.

 

[0bs3rv3r]

The problem with all this hires stuff, for me, is that a good copy on vinyl is as good as I realistically need it to be. As someone said Pink Floyd stuff always was well recorded. The CD releases, and the hires versions aren't adding anything significant to my listening experience, when I am totally honest with myself.

 

[gvl]

Some albums like Animals always had a bit of midrange cast to them, which they smoothed on the high def version making it sound just a bit better.

Yeah, I too thought Animals in hi-res on Qobuz sounded pretty good.

 

[anmpr1]

If it doesn't look like this, it's probably not the real thing. But a knock-off. I'd look for your money back!

 

[Newman]

The problem with all this hires stuff, for me, is that a good copy on vinyl is as good as I realistically need it to be. As someone said Pink Floyd stuff always was well recorded. The CD releases, and the hires versions aren't adding anything significant to my listening experience, when I am totally honest with myself.

And how is that a problem for you when you already have exactly what you want?

 

[Beershaun]

Sweet. I’ll have to see if Neil Young is going upgrade my version of Dark Side of the Moon I bought from the Pono store a few years back. He promised free upgrades in the future. So I got that going for me…