| Pink Floyd - Sheffield (2nd gen) (Neonknight-JFE) (24-96) |
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| Notes |
| Pink Floyd 1970-12-22 Sheffield 2nd gen JFE master [24-96] Pink Floyd City Hall, Sheffield, England 22 December 1970 Lineage: 2 x TDK AD normal position 2nd gen cassettes > *Technics RS-B965-M > Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 > Audacity 1.3 > FLAC > Reaper v4.78 (with iZotopeRX2, Waves linear phase eq, UA precision multiband) > FLAC (24bit/96kHz) Reduction for CD: 96k > 44.1k with SOX in XLD. 24 bit > 16 bit with Waves IDR *The Technics RS-B965-M is a modified deck - for details see the Tapeheads.net forum 01 Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast 02 The Embryo 03 Fat Old Sun 04 Careful With That Axe, Eugene 05 Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun 06 A Saucerful Of Secrets 07 Celestial power loss 08 Celestial Voices 09 Atom Heart Mother 10 Atom Heart Mother Reprise Total running time: 2 hours 30 mins 57 secs *** Neonknight raw transfer notes *** a big thanks to Petef451 for lending me his tapes back in 2013. I broke the recording up into segments and transferred each of them at optimum level with Dolby off: 1. APB - Embryo - FOS 2. CWTAE 3. STC 4. ASOS 5. AHM - AHM Reprise Jim's master sounds significantly better than the one I released in March 2015. *** Jimfisheye recording notes *** This is a mono recording of a live performance mixed in quadrophonic surround sound that was captured in close proximity to one of the side surround speaker stacks giving you the perspective from the edge of the surround soundstage. Sounds panned to this surround speaker come through with very good fidelity from the close proximity, while the PA mains and stage sound is more distant sounding. You hear evidence of just how wild this show was with the surround sound mix due to this perspective even though this is a mono recording. You hear this clearly during the DJ Jimmy Young tape in APB. STCFTHOTS & ASOS were a wild ride for the audience with fast leslie-like 360 pans and general wildness matching the music. The motorcycle in AHM comes right out of this close speaker. The quieter moments of the show survive fairly well in this recording but the loudest moments overwhelm the recording device, especially during STCFTHOTS & ASOS, where there is heavy use of the surrounds. The distortion, compression, and high end attenuation from that make these parts sound washed out and far away. The applause from those nearest the recording device is the most well recorded and dynamic content on the tape. Turning the volume up on the recording to try to focus on the music with the applause at this level would cause hearing damage if it didn't blow out a speaker first! The tape speed varies throughout the recording with longer sections running at unique speeds and many isolated fluctuations. Most of the isolated speed artifacts consist of the tape suddenly slowing down and returning to (a sometimes different) speed a moment later, consistent with a tape that was physically snagging in the transport. That the effect on the recording would be the opposite if this had been happening on the original recording deck suggests this happened with a playback deck used on a later transfer of the original or earlier generation copy. The taper stopped the recording between songs to conserve tape. There are a few times that he would restart the recording only to stop it again a moment later - the result of trying to anticipate the start of the next song to not miss it but then realizing they weren't quite ready to start playing yet and stopping the recording again. Every stop/start resulted in a loud mechanical clank that was the loudest element of the recording. The tape has a very high level of broadband noise. This is exaggerated from either this copy or an earlier generation being encoded in Dolby but not decoded on playback. Accurate decoding of the Dolby is not possible from this copy as it will no longer track the pre-emphasis correctly. In the long and short of things, while the Dolby system will not decode the tape correctly, the pre-emphasis probably helps offset some of the high end attenuation caused by various factors. At the same time, however, the noise is boosted in the quieter parts. *** Jimfisheye Mastering notes *** This is originally a mono recording that was played back on a stereo deck for later generation copies. This makes two copies of the original mono track from two different areas of the physical tape into the two stereo channels. This can either result in one of the two channels being clearly the better copy or sometimes different elements of the recording better in each channel. The left channel sounds brighter at first listen but also contains more hiss. The right channel ultimately has the better preserved recording. The transport malfunctions responsible for the speed fluctuations are certainly also responsible for the wow and flutter that makes phase alignment between channels a moving target. If there is any high end content in the left channel over the right, it is not possible to do anything with. The recording only degrades by mixing the left channel into it and therefore only the right channel used for this master. The speed was corrected using Elastique Pro 3 (integrated in Reaper). I corrected everything by ear and there are far too many little sections to list! The mechanical sounds from the start/stops (the loudest content in the recording) were removed. I kept all the short fragments from the parts where multiple stop/starts were made in anticipation of the song starting and let them segue with no alteration simply to preserve the ambient content. Some of the segues were seamless sounding as the ambience was similar enough sounding while others are obvious cuts. I heavily peak limited the applause after songs. I reduced the close proximity applause to match the furthest away while preserving the background ambience and any music fade out trails. The close proximity applause was so loud in the recording that you could not turn up the level of the recording to focus on the music without risking damage to your speakers from the upfront bursts of applause. The overall dynamics were restored with the lower and medium volume content as the reference. I did what I could to restore some semblance of fidelity to the louder sections. Broadband noise was reduced with isotope RX2. In some respects the recording responded well to noise reduction. You could reduce a significant amount of hiss if you were willing to accept the sound of a generation loss with it. Reducing hiss with no apparent loss of content/fidelity was stubbornly difficult with this recording. Enticing as the results of heavy NR was, ultimately the best approach was to limit any compromising reduction to the most severe spots. I repaired the tape cut during the scream in CWTAE by patching with nearby content to restore to the nearest correct beat (removing the distraction of a dropped beat from the cut). Jimfisheye, January 2017 |