I love almost all of the Queen Versions on 5.1 surround sound, excep somes like Somebody to Love For example, where the back vocals where mixed so low... but, one of my favorites is Friends Will Be Friends, There are songs that are more well mixed than this one, but I really like FWBF, and prefer it from the stereo version, because there is a guitar (parts of it) that you cant hear on the stereo original mix, but you can hear on the surround version, you can compare by yourself, starting at 2:56 seconds of the song, its a nice melody, and I wonder why it was Muted on the original version...
I recently got the japanese Greatest Karaoke Hits CD from 2004 and I noticed these nice guitar parts you mention ...very nice ... in this case, I'm talking about a stereo mix. Anyone having this 2004 edition can confirm it?
yeah! Im listening now to the karaoke version, and it does have that guitar... it incorporate that track because they remix all the song again, and since they actually didnt really care to make it sound like the original mix (just listen to bohrap) it has the guitar... nice... I'll try to edit my own version of the song, and incorporate that guitar...
Jjeroen wrote:
That's actually one of the nice things about any decent 5.1 version.
You can hear things clearly that were otherwise buried in the mix.
That usually means it's a bad stereo mix, though.
Not strictly true TQ. Something I find when mixing music is that you can't have all this stuff flying around, all of the time. If there's too many things in the mix at any one point, it can distract the listener or just sound like a messy concoffony of sound. I'm just finishing off another Queen cover (HTF) and at a couple of points, I really have to pull some stuff back because it gets in the way of other things I want to hear, i.e. guitars sometimes blocking the vocals coming through. Even though, I love those parts, it's just something that realistically, has to be done.
Jjeroen wrote:
That's actually one of the nice things about any decent 5.1 version.
You can hear things clearly that were otherwise buried in the mix.
That usually means it's a bad stereo mix, though.
Not strictly true TQ. Something I find when mixing music is that you can't have all this stuff flying around, all of the time. If there's too many things in the mix at any one point, it can distract the listener or just sound like a messy concoffony of sound. I'm just finishing off another Queen cover (HTF) and at a couple of points, I really have to pull some stuff back because it gets in the way of other things I want to hear, i.e. guitars sometimes blocking the vocals coming through. Even though, I love those parts, it's just something that realistically, has to be done.
Adam.
True, but that doesn't really counter my remark here: if it crowds the stereo-mix, it will also crowd the surround-mix. You still perceive the final result through two ears, not 5 with a separate low-frequency ear
That may be your opinion TQ, but my experience in mixing 5.1 - having more speakers around you doesn't crowd the sound at all. It helps to present what was already there in a bigger way. I'm not talking bigger as in volume, no. I mean about the way a song is mixed.
Now, in general when mixing, you cut and remove what will get in the way of your track which allows everything to complement each other. But there comes a point where you run out of mixing 'space'. With 5 speakers around about you, that space is expanded and allows more things to breathe! So things can be brought back from the cutting/sculpting down stage and given more depth because those extra speakers allow that to happen. Hopefully that makes sense.
In fact, what the OP is saying about being able to hear those new parts is, due to the new mix on the surround version, placing those more hidden parts into the additional space created in the 5.1 stage.
FWBF was never a bad mix and on further listening, I think that maybe the part could've been placed higher in the mix. But maybe it wasn't because of the mixer's choice not to. I can understand why, as stated in my last post about highlighting one thing rather than another, i.e. the lead vocal. Or maybe Brian wanted it pushed down cause it's a little bit flat at one point! Who knows. But what it isn't - it is not a bad mix in any way. If you want to criticise the 80's production of it, then that's one thing. But the mix is absolutely fine.
I agree with adam, the mix wasnt badly done, the fact is, that the guitar track, was muted in order to hide that part, i inst audible just because its stereo...
People, *please* just read what I wrote, as you're misinterpreting my words:
ThomasQuinn
Jjeroen That's actually one of the nice things about any decent 5.1 version.
You can hear things clearly that were otherwise buried in the mix.
That usually means it's a bad stereo mix, though.
If material is truly "buried in the mix", which I define as being no longer clearly audible through good hardware, that means either that it's poorly equalized, or that the mix is so crowded that the volume of said track that got buried in the mix has to be turned down so far that it is no longer clearly perceptible. Both of these possibilities I reject as bad mixing, because in the first case, there is a clear mistake (improper equalization, which can make two or more tracks blur), and in the second, there are more tracks than necessary (tracks you can't properly hear are redundant, in my humble opinion. The main problem with most production styles since the late '80s is that they make the end result too massive, too crowded. Music needs a bit of air; a little space to move around in).