Pink Floyd - 1975-06-18 - Boston Gardens (Quadraphonic Raw Master) (DVD A)

Pink Floyd
Boston Garden
Boston, MA
18 June 1975

This is a quadraphonic audience master derived from 2 stereo sources:

SOURCE 1: Master Cassette taped by Steve Hopkins from 10th row center section, seat 14 (The seat numbers ran left to right looking at the stage, so this would be the right side of the center section).
Sony ECM-99a (hand held mic) > Sony TC-152SD
Master Cass > DAT@48kHz > shn@48kHz
Reeling in Pink Floyd DVD 7 - Tape 29
Decoded shn to wav with TLH, tracked with CD Wave, re-encoded to flac 8 with Flac Frontend

SOURCE 2: Master Cassette taped by Dan Lampinski from 5th row center section, right side (Exact seat number not recalled at this time).
Sony TC-152SD Tape Recorder
Sony ECM-99 Stereo Microphone
Maxell cassettes ->
Nakamichi CR-3A cassette deck with azimuth correction ->
M-Audio Firewire Audiophile 2496 ->
CDWAV 24-bit/96-KHz wav files ->
Goldwave (normalizing and crossfades) ->
CDWAV (track breaks) ->
FLAC Front End (FLAC 8)
Mastered and FLAC'ed by Carl Morstadt

QUAD MASTER:
Source 1 (rear channels) FLAC -> WAV -> upsampled from 48k to 96k (Digidesign - highest quality)
Source 2 (front channels) FLAC -> WAV
Protools HD2 for mastering
Serato Pitch n' Time plugin used for speed correction.
RAW QUAD MASTER is no eq and no patches.
A mastered version will also be available.
WAV -> MLP compression (SurCode MLP) -> DVDA disc image (DiscWelder Chrome)
DVDA is 24 bit, 96KHz quadraphonic (4.0)
Sound quality: B+


SET I
01 Raving And Drooling
02 You've Gotta Be Crazy
03 Shine On You Crazy Diamond (incl. Have A Cigar)

SET II
04 Dark Side Of The Moon

ENCORE
05 Echoes

MASTERING NOTES:
The goal was to present more music from the performance than is possible to hear from one source alone as well as present some elements of the live surround mix. What really made this project work was the fact that these 2 recordings together present a more balanced, more complete, fuller sounding recording than either one by itself. This is a rare thing. In my experience, projects like this do not have a very high success rate. There's no question that the clean and well done transfers of the master tapes played a huge role in the success of this. This would not have worked if at least one of the sources wasn't transfered at 24/96. A 16/48 DAT of a master isn't the worst thing either and it made a very clean upsample to 24/96. This also would not have worked without the front and center taping locations. Certainly it would have been nice to have someone recording further to the back to capture the rear speakers better. On the other hand the rear taper being close to the front increases the combined sound quality and he's still far enough behind the front taper to create the surround image between them. This also gives a very realistic audience perspective of the show from a really great seat. The original left-right perspective of the 2 stereo sources is preserved here and believed to be correct.

Matrix mixes of multiple recorders are generally not very well received amongst traders and for good reason. The concept is certainly valid but the execution usually fails. Further, mixing multiple recorders together into the same speakers presents a whole new set of problems. This can only work if the recordings are synced together with 100% perfect accuracy. When multiple copies of the same signal are mixed together, if they are offset in any way you will get phase cancellations. When sending these signals to separate speakers in a surround system however, any slight discrepancies would equate to moving your head slightly. Perfection is still desired but 99% can make sense now. There is certainly the possibility of some false movement created due to different frequency balances of the 2 recordings and a possible moment of tape stretch that wasn't 100% corrected between sources. This is very much an audience recording in that you will not hear isolated direct instrument sounds from each speaker like you would listening to the studio recording of DSOTM. Given that, you will hear sounds flying around from the actual surround mix at the show. The left right balance is nearly perfect as both tapers were nearly centered and directly in line with each other. The rear surround sound elements are more distant. There are no phasing or comb filtering artifacts from sync inaccuracy audible here. Turning off either set of speakers (between fronts and rears) makes a significant amount of fidelity disappear; the combination truly sounds more complete than either source. You get a more clear dynamic picture - a strong image of the instruments along with the sound of them filling the venue and echoing off in the distance. Subtle quiet parts and effects are much cleaner. While either of these sources by itself is an interesting window to this performance, the 2 together transport you there. This is presented in 4.0 quadraphonic; source 2 in front and source 1 in back - no matrixing. I suppose in theory you could get computerized and try to image the show in 5.1, deriving a centered mix from the raw stereo sources. I doubt it though so no messing around like that was attempted here. Just the 2 sources in quad and this sounds better than it has any business sounding. Quad seems appropriate for a 1975 recording as well.

The Serato Pitch n' Time plugin was used for speed correcting / syncing these recordings. Source 2 (the higher fidelity recording of the two) was first corrected to proper speed/pitch. The raw transfer started at 29c sharp and gradually ended up at 35c sharp by the end of the show. Source 1 was then speed corrected with source 2 as a reference. This had to be done in individual segments ranging from 2 to 20 seconds long to address the slight continually varying speeds between the 2 recorders (no tape drive runs at an exact perfectly stable speed - there's always some fluctuation). Serato is the only pitch/speed correction plugin made that will deliver a clean, artifact free speed change that you can dial in to the sample. The output waveform is complete and free of the cuts and edits that other speed correction plugins introduce. This project would not have been possible without this. No shortcuts like cutting and crossfading were done. The waveform of the synced source is complete and continuous - not one sample is missing.

A huge THANK YOU to all the generous people - Steve, Dan, Carl, Glenn, Scott, Kevin, anyone else who helped - who recorded, preserved, transferred and shared these recordings. Thanks for bringing me as close as I've ever been to a 1975 Pink Floyd show (I was 7 at the time). I hope you all like this new presentation of your recordings.

This recording can only be traded freely. Do not sell.
A multichannel system (old-school quadraphonic or modern 5.1 home theater) with either a DVD player that plays DVD Audio or a computer and audio interface setup is required for playback.
Do not convert to lossy surround formats like standard DTS or Dolby. Do not convert to a stereo matrix.
If you want to transfer this to DTS HD Master Audio (the new lossless format) or Blu-ray lossless audio, please make sure the transfer is perfectly lossless and remains in 4.0 quadraphonic (no lfe tracks or fake center tracks please).

JFE 2010