Pink Floyd - Better Late Than Never (BW-JFE) (SC) (24-96)
 
Album info
 
Recording Date  : 16-11-1972
     
Length  : 110:25
Format  : FLAC
Track List
 
01 Speak To Me 01:06
02 Breathe 02:47
03 Travel Sequence 07:32
04 Time / Breathe Reprise 06:34
05 The Great Gig In The Sky 04:11
06 Money 06:07
07 Us & Them 07:34
08 Any Colour You Like 06:34
09 Brain Damage / Eclipse 05:35
10 One Of These Days 11:55
11 Careful With That Axe, Eugene 12:24
12 Echoes 25:41
13 Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun 12:25

Notes
Recorded at the Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany. Excellent audience recording.


From the info file:

****************************************************************************************

Better Late Than Never 1972-11-16 (24bit/96kHz)
** Recorder 1 - Marbal **

Pink Floyd
Festhalle
Frankfurt, Germany
November 16th 1972

New High Definition transfer from Marbal's own mono cassette master.
Transfer and Artwork production by Beechwoods.
Mastering by Jimfisheye.

Lineage:

- Master Recording (1972-11-16): mono Philips EL3302 portable cassette recorder

- Nakamichi CR7A > Tascam HD-P2 (WAV 24bit/96kHz)

- ProTools 9 HD mastering (2013)

Files:

MASTER: 24bit/96kHz stereo* FLAC
SC: 24bit/96kHz stereo* FLAC (speed corrected only - no other processing)
RAW: 24bit/96kHz stereo FLAC (both stereo channels offset corrected)
CD (portable master): 16bit/44.1kHz stereo* FLAC (24/96 master > 24/44.1 > 16/44.1)

* The mono program is presented as dual mono in the stereo format. This is to avoid it playing only through the center channel of a 5.1 home theater system or a single channel of a stereo system. This does not increase the file size with FLAC compression.

Set List

01 [01:05] Speak To Me
02 [02:46] Breathe
03 [07:32] Travel Sequence
04 [06:34] Time / Breathe Reprise
05 [04:11] The Great Gig In The Sky
06 [06:06] Money
07 [07:34] Us And Them
08 [06:33] Any Colour You Like
09 [05:35] Brain Damage / Eclipse

10 [11:54] One Of These Days
11 [12:23] Careful With That Axe, Eugene
12 [25:40] Echoes
13 [12:25] Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

|| [110:24] Total

** Beechwoods' Notes

Marbal recorded both of the Floyd's performances at the Festhalle in Frankfurt in November 1972, on the 16th and 17th. This first show was recorded to cassette, on a mono Philips EL3302 portable recorder. On the 16th Marbal spotted that the venue had mains power upstairs besides the seats, so he decided to try and get his Grundig reel to reel recorder into the venue for the second night. That show from the 17th is captured on the Beechwoods / Jimfisheye release 'TK147'.

So why have we called this new release 'Better Late Than Never'?

I'll let Marbal tell his story first:

On 16.11.72 we had heavy snowfall in the Darmstadt (where I lived) and Frankfurt area, so we decided to go by train.

When we arrived at the railway station we heard the news that the trains will be delayed by minimum 2-3 hours.

Well, I had bought a new old car 1 week ago & had not the chance to test so much. But under these circumstances I had to drive, otherwise we would miss the show. The highway was full of traffic jams so we took normal streets. I can tell you it was stressful for a first ride with a new car and even if it was just 60 km away, I only drove short 5km distances before.

In between there was a metre of snow on the streets and every kilometre there was a car laying on a side of the street. Somehow we managed to reach Frankfurt and we had still to get the tickets which were in a friends flat who wanted to join us for the show. We reached his flat as he just came downstairs and wanted to go because he thought we weren't coming anymore.

Remember, that was a time when NOBODY had a Handy (cell phone)!

When we ran inside the hall we kicked the security out of the way. Inside I directly started my machine and we climbed up until we reached our seats just a few seconds before Breathe.

That's the reason while the start is much more louder. When my own heartbeat calmed down I checked the level and felt it was much too high so I reduced it somewhat, maybe a little too much, but my philosophy was always 'better 3db less than oversteered'.

--

Marbal wasn't the only one who made their place slightly later than expected that day.

Whoever was on the mixing desk that day in Frankfurt missed their cue at the start of Breathe, leaving Dave without a vocal mic for the first few lines of the song. When the vocals finally come in, Dave can be heard chuckling 'Better late than never, eh'. Quite apt under the circumstances!


** Jimfisheye's Notes

This is a mono recording of a concert presented in quadraphonic surround sound. The balance captured on tape is fairly complete considering but certain elements are far away sounding due to the mono perspective.

The recording suffers from incorrect transfer speeds, high frequency attenuation from tape degradation, and harmonic distortion from a microphone/deck just not up to the task of capturing full spectrum live loud dynamic sound. Further, the microphone tended to saturate at around 2kHz which exaggerated and further distorted this frequency band. This saturation is most pronounced in the first set. It sounds like the recorder is closer to the band and/or PA speakers for the first set. The rest of the show sounds like it was recorded from further away and does not have this saturation. There are 2 short missing sections due to tape changes in Brain Damage and Echoes. There are minor speed flutter issues here and there throughout but major fluctuations during CWTAE. The recording, for all it's flaws and high level of harmonic distortion, exhibits a level of technique beyond the equipment used in capturing the sound and preserving a solid level of dynamics.

The intent for this master is to present the concert as closely as possible to how it originally sounded with a reasonable amount of restoration work. Listening to a raw audience recording of an event made on amateur and/or portable equipment can turn into more of a study of the challenges and imperfections than the event itself. Tapes running at wrong speeds, volume levels altered by equipment response and operator controls, and frequency balance altered by equipment limitations can be very large distractions. Perfectly complete restoration is not always the goal (or even always possible). There will almost certainly be some artifact left untouched or a technique employed to be scrutinized. The goals here were to restore the correct speed, offset the high frequency attenuation, offset the 2kHz saturation, and correct record level fluctuations caused by level adjustments during the recording and other equipment anomalies.

This mono recording was transferred with a stereo tape deck. The channels are 5 samples off from a slight azimuth error. Ultimately the left channel contains a slightly higher fidelity and more dynamic recording than the right. The right channel does more harm than good if combined so only the left channel was used for the master.

The first set is 62c flat. The second set ranges from 71c to 104c flat. This was corrected with Serato Pitch n Time. Extra attention was spent on the major speed fluctuations in CWTAE. The entire program is not 100% perfect but the remaining transport related speed fluctuations are very minor. The missing sections: 3:29 - 3:33 in Brain Damage, 17:31 - 17:36 in Echoes, and a small dropout 3:42 into Time were restored using nearby sections of audio to recreate them. This was seamless as the missing parts were luckily repetition of arrangement (no unique lyrics or notes). The level of harmonic distortion makes it difficult to make any adjustments without further degrading the recording. I was able to restore some balance by boosting the high frequencies and dynamically attenuating the 2kHz saturation. All boosts were done by first isolating the frequency range to boost in a copy of the track and then mixing this together with the original track. This clinical approach avoids the coloration and alterations inherent in eq boosts. I used iZotope2 noise removal on the track adding back in high frequency content in order to not increase the hiss in the recording. It was not possible to remove hiss from the overall recording without losing content. I corrected the record level fluctuations and removed a number of noises from the mic and equipment being physically jostled.

Speed correction and certain isolated noise/artifact removal is fairly black and white. Acoustics of the venue, performance of the sound engineer, and the nature of the quadraphonic surround sound mixing present a lot of variables. Add portable recording equipment to this (and these levels moving around especially at the beginning of the show) and frequency balance and level correction become more subjective. Although this recording is far from audiophile or even portable consumer standards, the fragile nature of it's remains actually require a full quality digital format to preserve without incurring further loss. With this in mind and to preserve raw data for future technology, the raw digital transfer and a speed corrected only version are included with the mastered version of this recording. The raw master preserves the stereo channels of the transfer. Brain Damage & Echoes are each presented as 2 parts. The right channel has been advanced 5 samples to correct the azimuth error. Additionally, a reduced (CD quality) version of the master for portable players and small systems is included. Sample rate conversion with Protools highest quality and word length reduction with Waves IDR.

An explanation of the beginning of the show for civilians:
To begin with, it sounds like the band and crew find themselves in a challenging echoey room for sound. Dave's vocal mic turns out to have been errantly switched off and we miss his opening vocal line in Breathe. When the vocal finally comes in he adds 'Better late than never' and laughs. With the vocal now switched on we get some feedback. Things get a bit wild and frustrated on the mixing board for a minute while this is brought under control. It sounds like the keys start coming through the azimuth coordinator system a bit hot at first at the start of Travel Sequence just to add to the mayhem.


Marbal Tape / Beechwoods Transfer / Jimfisheye Mastering
January 2013
********************************************************************************

checksums:

ffp:

Pink Floyd 1972-11-16 Frankfurt (Marbal master cassette) 24-96:
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Pink Floyd 1972-11-16 Frankfurt (Marbal master cassette) RAW:
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Pink Floyd 1972-11-16 Frankfurt (Marbal master cassette) CD:
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md5:

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