| Pink Floyd - Germersheim (24-44.1) |
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| Notes |
| Recorded at the 2nd British Rock Meeting Open Air Festival, Insel Grun, Germersheim, Germany. Fantastic new transfer of the famous LP. From the info file: Pink Floyd Insel Grun, Germersheim, Germany May 21, 1972 2nd British Rock Meeting Open Air Festival. 24 bit remaster of 'Germersheim 1972' LP roio master (reel?) > unknown > vinyl > 24bit 44.1k AIFF > FLAC 24BIT 44.1kHz RECORDING - Not intended for audio CD. For computer based stereos (itunes or other favorite media player) or DVD Audio. TRACKS: 01. Atom Heart Mother 02. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun 03. Careful With That Axe, Eugene 04. One Of These Days 05. Echoes 06. A Saucerful Of Secrets SOURCES: S1 is the 'Germersheim 1972' LP roio S2 (just a few bits) is the 'SORCERERS SUPREME (R&D)' roio MASTERING INFO: S1: Sounds like open reel tape likely transfered to cassette. Who knows the generation before hitting vinyl but it sounds pretty low. The vinyl could be as low as a second generation analog recording (master reel > cassette > vinyl). 'Germersheim 1972' LP > Benz Micro MC-3 phono cartridge / Linn Basik LV-X arm / AR model E table > Mark Levinson model 28 pre-amp > Apogee special edition converters clocked by Aardsync II sample rate clock > Pro Tools TDM workstation S2: 'SORCERERS SUPREME (R&D)' roio > Pro Tools TDM workstation The main deal here is the 24 bit transfer of the Germersheim 1972 LP. S2 has been used to: fill in the tape flip gap in CWTAE (about 1 min), add a few more seconds to the opening of CWTAE, restore the first couple notes of Echoes. The very first moments of CWTAE and ASOS are still missing (we're talking about a second or two here at most). Both tapers had the practice of pausing the tape between songs and ended up clipping off the opening note of the next song a few times. (The opening of STCFTHOTS was clipped on S2 but is complete on S1) S1 is a really nice recording. The full sound of the recording is well preserved in the vinyl. The vinyl pressing was not exactly audiophile grade (even though in near mint condition), so while the sound hasn't been degraded, the vinyl is a bit noisy. This is partly due to the fact that a very small groove width was used (side 1 has over 28 min of program!!). All clicks that were louder than the music have been removed with the pencil tool. No music destroying automated noise reduction/click removal has been used! How bad is it? Not bad, and I say that as a person who has zero tolerance for noisy/damaged vinyl (audiophile snob here). Some of the quiet parts have a little background noise, some don't. For example, the wind effects that open OOTD (which, by the way, are too quiet to even hear on most audience recordings) are louder than the background noise. There's a bit of tape saturation noticeable in the high end likely from the master recorder or mics used. Still, this is a very full sounding dynamic recording, of the quality that some people would (mistakenly) call soundboard [it is in fact clearly an audience recording]. Only level corrections have been made (undoing the record level changes that were made during the show). No EQing and certainly no compression or limiting have been done. The high end above 8k is a little subdued but it was not possible to EQ without making it brittle sounding - so no EQ. I went with 24 bit to capture the dynamic range of the recording as preserved in the vinyl. I decided on 44.1k (as opposed to 96k) since I didn't really hear anything above 22kHz in the recording. I didn't really hear any loss compared to 96k so I decided to save on file size by sampling at 44.1k (see comment above about the high end). S2 must have been recorded from the nose bleed seats on a dictation machine. Although it's possible that this has been destroyed by a poor digital transfer and subsequent digital processing on consumer gear. The fact that the applause is about 10 times as loud (and dynamic) as the music suggests some distance from the stage however. Nice to have to make a more complete show though! I took an anything goes approach to this (EQ, etc) to match the sound of S1 with the least amount of distraction. (original S2 notes: Reel[Master]>CASS>DAT>CDR>SHN>WAV(eq)>SHN) NOTES: Nice show. Some moments of greatness (the gtr solo in AHM is worth the price of admission alone). Nice CWTAE - quite the scream. I believe this is their festival set and a complete show (I don't think there was a first set of DSOTM). There seems to be some PA mayhem towards the end of ASOS. It sounds like the mic (or the mixer channel) on Roger's cymbals just can't take it any more and starts to cut in and out and distort. Overall a great sounding recording that you can turn up and rock out to! I'd guess that if I could hear the master tape, I'd give it an A- rating. With the added generations and background noise here, I give this a B+. (For perspective, I give S2 a D rating. Most 1972 recordings I've heard with a few special exceptions generally don't get much above a C+) Do not sell. Do not compress to mp3 or CD. Do trade freely with everyone! |