Pink Floyd - Dusseldorf, Recorder 2, 5th or 6th gen (Goldenband-Neonknight) (24-96)
 
Album info
 
Recording Date  : 04-06-1971
     
Length  : 81:28
Format  : FLAC
Track List
 
01 Atom Heart Mother 16:04
02 Careful With That Axe, Eugene 15:08
03 Fat Old Sun 10:02
04 The Embryo 09:17
05 The Return Of The Son of Nothing 15:39
06 Cymbaline 08:42
07 A Saucerful Of Secrets 06:36

Notes
From the info file:

Pink Floyd 1971-06-04 Dusseldorf, Recorder 2, 5th or 6th gen (24bit/96kHz)

Pink Floyd
Philipshalle, Düsseldorf, Germany
4 June 1971

Lineage: 5th or 6th gen Maxell XLII cassette (1997) > Technics RS-B565 > Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 > Reaper v4.61 and iZotope RX4 > FLAC (24bit/96kHz)

xACT used to create FFP

01 Atom Heart Mother
02 Careful With That Axe, Eugene
03 Fat Old Sun
04 The Embryo
05 The Return Of The Son of Nothing
06 Cymbaline
07 A Saucerful Of Secrets

Total running time: 1 hours 21 minutes 27 seconds

In addition to having Echoes (aka ROTSON) with the early lyrics, this tape's other attraction is the version of Careful With That Axe, Eugene, which features some interesting and atypical playing from Nick Mason.

Recorder 2 is inferior to Recorder 1, which is possibly why a better copy has not surfaced, but it does have some pieces that aren't present on Recorder 1, most notably the end of Saucerful. The tape also contains the last few minutes of Embryo, which are missing from the other recorder.

I achieved a good balance of the channels using the dials on the Saffire but the cassette is misaligned so I made further adjustments to both sides after asking iZotope to suggest the correct values.

There are lots of edits on this recorder. These were probably made by the taper, who seems to have had little interest in any of the show's non-musical parts. Missing are the beginning of AHM, the middle of Cymbaline and ROTSON, and almost all of Saucerful. Only the Celestial Voices section is present. Set the Controls is completely missing and the end of FOS and beginning of Embryo were probably lost during a tape change.

The gap in the middle of ROTSON contains a fade. This is very likely to have been done at some point in the lineage and it is therefore possible that a more complete version exists.

The taper appears to have been positioned reasonably close to the stage but wasn't using very good equipment and the levels were high. The recording consequently exhibits some pretty distracting compression. All the instruments are there except the cymbals.

You probably have goldenband's Tascam 112MKII transfer of his tape in your collection. My version has less hiss, the channels are better balanced and it is less distorted. A good place for A/B testing is the start of Celestial Voices.

With thanks to goldenband for his advice, the following values have been applied:

Side A: AHM +12.7%, CWTAE +13.1%, FOS +13.74%
Side B: Embryo +9.35%, ROTSON +11.41%, Cymbaline +13.15%, Celestial Voices +13.7%

Goldenband's original transfer was speed-corrected in the analog domain using the pitch control knob on his Tascam deck but this wasn't always enough to fully compensate for the extremely slow speed of this tape. This new transfer has been digitally speed-corrected to a much higher degree of accuracy but there's still some pitch drift in most songs (most noticeably AHM and Embryo).

Goldenband cassette / Neonknight tape transfer, June 2016