King Crimson 2009 re-issues CD / DVD stereo/5.1 all inclusive thread

I'm most interested in "Wake of the Poseidon" and "Islands" in the 5.1 series, as those two are the first ones I ever owned on vinyl, and were favorites. I notice that they skipped over these and are going for the Red and Lizard albums first.

Anyway, so nice that the multitracks were not lost, and that Fripp finally gained control of the catalog after years of bitter tears over the bad EG divorce in the 80s. There might have very easily never been these DVD-As of this material had Fripp not continued to assert that he legally and morally owned this material regardless of what some piece of paper said. It was a 20 year fight, and 95% of these type of things end with the artist broke and empty handed. This one ended with the artist getting their works back. This is a big deal in the KC big picture.

 

My copy of 'Court' is shipping!

 

I was able to get my ITCOTCK out of the sleeve by carefully opening the closed end, then gently pushing the digipack out. Before re-inserting, I removed the (loose) booklet & put it in the sleeve separately. This seems to make it easier to remove for me.
Gary

 

Can anyone comment on the DTS versions on Red and/or ITCOTKC? Specifically, does the LFE channel have the 10dB boost like the recent Genesis box sets did?

 

Just got my Red! Review for the 24/96 stereo pending...

 

I'm sure he's excited to be there, but he has had quite a long association with Fripp, dating back to the 1994 recording of "Flowermouth" by No-Man, so my guess is that he's not real star-struck anymore...

 

Can you post those here? To see those, you have to be registered and logged in.

 

Might be some issues with these. Spectral of Red looks like this:

 

Looks as expected for a 48k sampling rate.

 

Stereo high rez layer is same way

 

Today I got "In the Court.." and played the DVD-Audio 5.1. I regret that I will be the first to raise a major criticism. This mix is a victim of the Loudness Wars.

The main sin of the Loudness Wars is to compress the waveform so that the sound is unnatural and even distorted. Red and In the Court do not suffer from this (though at times I feel they could have had a little more "air", and so perhaps there is more waveform compression than I would like).

But another sin of the Loudness Wars is the idea that the quiet bits should be made louder. This is great for background music and listening on the iPod, but it destroys the impact of quiet and loud in the music.

Unfortunately Steven Wilson has made the quiet bits of these mixes louder.

This can easily be fixed at home by turning the volume down for the quieter songs (esp the Moonchild improvisation). But by the time I got to the title track I found that I was constantly adjusting the volume up and down during the track.

Because Steven Wilson makes what used to be quiet bits loud in his own mixes, I feared that he would do this. I even posted on the DGM forum raising this concern. Unfortunately my fear was justified.

There is lots to praise in this recording. But the fact that every time I listen I will be juggling the volume control to recreate the real dynamics is, for me, a major disappointment.

I have not yet made an comparisons with earlier versions. And I intend to give some more comments later on. But as no one else has commented on the loss of dynamics I thought that I should post quickly to bring this to people’s attention.

 

Michael,

I'm not sure what you're hearing. I have looked at the wav files for ITCOTCK, and they are not compresses, loudnessed, or whatever. They are clean, clear and well below the max threshold. I'm not sure what you're hearing?

I cannot comment on past issues of this album, as it's not one that I've ever listened to before, but I can't believe that SW would futz with the levels like you are saying. I think I actually still have my unplayed-unopened MFSL LP of this album (from the old days of trying to amass a complete MFSL LP set), maybe I'll break it out and give it a spin.

Anyway, I can assure you that these tracks are not compressed. Once I get my big PC back up, I'll post a view of the wav files from DVD-A Explorer, and you'll see what I mean.

 

JonUrban,

The compression I'm talking about is NOT waveform compression, but just making the quieter bits louder. To me all the quiet bits sounded far too loud (not distorted) and thus when the loud bits came they lost their impact and were too quiet.

I suppose that it is necessary to get out a sound level meter and compare this version with earlier CD and vinyl. I have not yet done this, so I may well be wrong.

Note that I have only heard the DVD-Audio 5.1 version.

 

Thanks for the warning, Michael.

Perhaps you would be able to answer my earlier question. Comparing the various formats in the set without changing anything in your setup, do you find that the DTS version has a comparitively huge increase in bass, as if somebody just turned up your sub? I'm just wondering if the DTS Music format is still done in this way, as my receiver has no way of compensating for it.

 

"Perhaps you would be able to answer my earlier question. Comparing the various formats in the set without changing anything in your setup, do you find that the DTS version has a comparitively huge increase in bass, as if somebody just turned up your sub? I'm just wondering if the DTS Music format is still done in this way, as my receiver has no way of compensating for it."​

I found that the DTS subwoofer level was higher than the DVD-A by 4 db and had to adjust my receiver accordingly.

 

But you see, the 5.1 mix is NEW. It never existed before, therefore you cannot say that the quiet bits are louder than before, because a surround mix is different than a stereo mix.

What if the "bits" were quieter in the stereo mix because that's how they sounded best in stereo, where there are only two outputs for sound. Adding 3 more channels gives the mix more space, which might allow for more volume from things that were quiet in stereo, giving an aural illusion of being further away. In surround, the distance is real, not percieved, and thus the volume levels could be increased.

Plus, this mix was blessed by the original artist.

How many times have we heard a surround mix of a stereo classic and say "We've never heard that track, mix, instrument, etc so clear" or something along those lines.

If they increased the sounds of things that were quieter in stereo, well, that's one of the options one has when mixing in surround.

It's a new 5.1 mix. You can't compare it to an old 2.0 mix. It's unfair to say that a surround mix is bad because it does not sound like the old 40 year old stereo mix. It does not because it is not.

 

Sorry, but I respectfully disagree! Of course he can compare them! And then prefer one of them -- for whatever reason!

 

Of course!

But because the new mix has the quiet bits louder than on the old mix, calling it a "victim of the loudness wars" might be exaggerating a bit... Without trying to speak for JonUrban, I think his point is that the new mix does not necessarily have to be just like the old one...

 

I'll chime in here although I haven't heard the disc yet. While you make a good point in general that a new mix shouldn't have to resemble the old, I *do* feel that there are certain parts of the album (much of "Moonchild", for example) that should be quieter than the loud parts. Heck, if the chaotic ending of "In the Court of the Crimson King" is not louder than the verses which are mostly acoustic guitar and vocal, then to me that's a bad mixing choice. It's just not natural, and I agree that this is a modern approach that does not suit my taste. If the band isn't playing loud at that point, they shouldn't be mixed so loud.

 

I can't wait to hear what was done with 'In the Court' as I don't have any fear that these were done as close to perfect as possible. Steve Wilson has a good ear for dynamics as listen to what he has done with his own recordings in 5.1(Porcupine Tree,No Man), they are really really good.
I can't remember if it was reported here or at QQ forum but these recordings are as close to the original master tapes as possible as Steve Wilson only used the original masters to create the surround version. 40 years ago they had to bounce them down(only had 8 tracks back then) to produce the dense layering for what we know of the recording as many of the sounds were bounced down to second and even third generation tapes and then they created the Lp master.
For sonic purity alone this is a landmark release as well as being able to hear this classic album in surround.

peter

 

I may have misunderstood, but In think he meant that the softest tracks have peak levels as high as the louder tracks, not that the dynamic range of the tracks was compressed.

 

I'd like to hear about the new 2009 redbook stereo mix of In The Court that Wilson did. As someone else said about the hi-rez stereo, how about putting away the 5.1 for just a bit and taking a listen to the CD?

 

Got my Red today from Burning Shed.

 

Great pictures in this link. Thanks

 

Yes. You can compare anything to anything else, however, faulting "B" because it doesn't sound like "8" is not fair.
However, in an effort to stop a SHF tradition of going back and forth in a thread, I defer. Michael is right. I am wrong. I'm done with this thread.