QueenZone discussion #1231524

Band : Queen Studio : Maida Vale Studio 4, London, UK Date of recording : October 28, 1977 Date of broadcast : November 14, 1977 Producer : Jeff Griffin Sound engineer : Mike Robinson Band Freddie Mercury - vocals, piano Brian May - guitar, backing vocals John Deacon - bass guitar Roger Taylor - drums, backing vocals Tracklist Spread Your Wings It's Late (with parts of Get Down Make Love) My Melancholy Blues We Will Rock You (slow / fast) Lineage PRO > Analogue 1/4 reel MASTER > MiniDisc > WAV > CD(1) > EAC > WAV > Trader's Little Helper > FLAC level 8 Sound quality : Excellent + "Performance quality" : Excellent +++ :-) Length : 19:30 --- Mini-review

After a break of some three years, Queen returned to Maida to record their final session for the BBC. This time four tracks from the recently released News Of The World LP were reworked. The album received it's UK release on this day on October 28th 1977, the BBC airing provided additional publicity. The session was produced by Jeff Griffin and engineered by Mike Robinson, and was broadcast two weeks later, on November 14th. The recordings provide an enthralling listening experience: John Deacon's "Spread Your Wings" is bursting with energy with Freddie obviously revelling in singing this expansive song. This recording is very similar to the Live Killers version of two years later. An unusual aspect of Session 6 is the inclusion of a narrative passage, which precedes "We Will Rock You". Immediately after an explosion, and just prior to the opening chords, a female voice cuts in briefly with an extract of a reading from Siddartha, by Herman Hesse. How did this come about? At that time, only master tapes survived from BBC sessions, while the actual tapes used to compose them were recorded over later. When Queen assembled in the control room for a playback, they discovered remnants of a Radio 4 programme on their tape. The band incorporated a segment of this unusual material into their own work. The broadcast version began in News Of The World fashion, then breaks for the Siddartha interlude. "It's Late" contains a unique improvised section absent from the album version. There are many similarities with "Get Down, Make Love" (from the same album), which is largely due to a custom-made tape delay machine, which the band took with them into the studio. Since no commercially available device existed to supply the desired length of delay, the band had to come up with their own. "My Melancholy Blues", from this session, is just stunning. Brian accompanies Freddie on guitar, which does not occur on the LP cut, and the result is superior to the album mix, and that's saying something

--- Quote from link VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO JOHN S. STUART !!! Basic rules 1. NEVER try to "remaster" the recording and share it, KEEP THE AUDIO UNTOUCHED ! 2. NEVER ENCODE TO MP3 OR OTHER LOSSY FORMATS !!! I will search common mp3 sites to check if it appears in mp3 format somewhere ! 3. DO NOT SELL !!! - I know the common bootleg pages and I will check regularly if somebody will sell it ! Especially eBay ! 4. DO NOT BOOTLEG !!! - I will regularly check the various "bootleg encyclopaedias" and pray that this won't appear somewhere ! This is a very special gift from a famous Queen collector, so if you want to see more from his collection, don't you dare to NOT to obey the above mentioned rules ! If ANY of the rules will be broken by some idiot, I will NEVER share something again, I swear ! Other BBC sessions will (maybe) follow later, it depends on your reactions and the reactions of a "certain company" :-) Enjoy and please, accept the 4 rules !

Brians wig wrote:

CruellaDeVille wrote:  To all concerned, thank you for bringing this material to life in all it's glory. It takes me back some 30 years (or so) when I played some hashed up version on an LP with fake audience and clapping, but nonetheless blitzed by the energy of it all. Does anyone else just love the way Roger belts out the top harmonies on We will rock you? Should time and your continued generosity permit, I look forward to any other jewels that you may care to offer. Hangman anyone? Again, hugely grateful

  I actually find this quite interesting. In my 24 years of collecting Queen, I have NEVER heard  (nor come across) these sessions with the crowd dubbed on! Perhaps it's because the ones I bought on vinyl back in the late 80's (with Session 2), are clean, reasonably good sounding versions and I've not really gone out of my way to look for upgrades...

The Real Wizard wrote: Great post. Please post more ! We need more quality dialogue like this. My question is - if the original source couldn't have exceeded 20kHz, then does going to miniDisc really make it that much worse, if at all? Suppose a direct 16/44 transfer to digital from the master was possible. Wouldn't that make it a mere storage medium, like burning a DVD onto a blu-ray disc ?

pittrek wrote: Hm... I have a crappy memory but if I remember correctly, I spread the version originally with one lineage, and after it was banned from Dime, I got in contact with John again he updated the lineage with the MiniDisc info and I updated the info in the next share.

pittrek wrote: Hm... I have a crappy memory but if I remember correctly, I spread the version originally with one lineage, and after it was banned from Dime, I got in contact with John again he updated the lineage with the MiniDisc info and I updated the info in the next share.

brians wig wrote:

pittrek wrote: Hm... I have a crappy memory but if I remember correctly, I spread the version originally with one lineage, and after it was banned from Dime, I got in contact with John again he updated the lineage with the MiniDisc info and I updated the info in the next share.

??? Why did Dime ban it in the first place? The idiots at Dime consider minidisc to be a lossy format, so surely they didn't accept it second time around if you'd added that info?

MDNA wrote:

brians wig wrote:

pittrek wrote: Hm... I have a crappy memory but if I remember correctly, I spread the version originally with one lineage, and after it was banned from Dime, I got in contact with John again he updated the lineage with the MiniDisc info and I updated the info in the next share.

??? Why did Dime ban it in the first place? The idiots at Dime consider minidisc to be a lossy format, so surely they didn't accept it second time around if you'd added that info?

The "idiots" at dime are right, check your facts before posting. Minidisc is lossy. Minidisc masters are OK usualy, but analog sources with minidisc steps in lineage are not. It was probably banned from dime because someone did a spectral view and frequency analisis and found it to be lossy.

disco_mart wrote: Does any one have a working link to this torrent at all?

OwenSmith wrote:

disco_mart wrote: Does any one have a working link to this torrent at all?

It wasn't a torrent, it was a megaupload files to download. See the first posting of the topic.

OwenSmith wrote:

OwenSmith wrote:

disco_mart wrote: Does any one have a working link to this torrent at all?

It wasn't a torrent, it was a megaupload files to download. See the first posting of the topic.

Ah I see there's a torrent at the bottom of the second page. Whether there are any seeds on it is a different matter, I downloaded the files from an older thread.

Mrmarioanonym wrote: can i get a reseed please?

OwenSmith wrote: Hmm, looks like no-one knows anything about this. Not even an off air recording of these tracks from the Alan Freeman show? That would at least have the Matrix H encoding for sure.

teddi2002 wrote: Would the decoded tracks be considered official, and thereby not allowed to shared here?

teddi2002 wrote: The 2011 remasters bonus tracks still has this quadraphonic encoding. I did the maths myself and decoded them manually. The results are incredible so far! Would the decoded tracks be considered official, and thereby not allowed to shared here?

teddi2002 wrote: I tried decoding a bit, and it seems to be encoded with the QS matrix. To decode Matrix H, you phase shift the right channel by +60 degrees and then run it through a QS decoder. Leaving the right channel unchanged did however produce much better results. In the rear channels, there's almost no lead vocal, but the echoed effects during the middle part of It's Late are very clear.

teddi2002 wrote: I did a bit of reading in to it, more precisely http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1974-29.pdf and http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1977-02.pdf, and the "60 degree hack" is clearly documented in the latter report (page 5 and onwards). It is stated to produce slightly better results (closer to original quadraphonic mix) than a simple "proper" linear Matrix H decode. According to my analysis, neither this share or the 2011 remasters (which should be the same mix) contain any indication of Matrix H encoded material. A pure QS 'logical' decode did produce some interesting results, which could be entirely coincidental as you said, but shouldn't SQ and Matrix H decoding also produce some interesting sounds in that case?

The Real Wizard wrote: Good detective work. This once led to a really discussion about the Golders Green Hippodrome 9-13-73 material.. Let's see what happens here..

teddi2002 wrote: Indeed. The Golders Green concert is very likely SQ-encoded, as is documented here: http://www.surrounddiscography.com/quaddisc/quadradi.htm#bbcsps and here: http://www.surrounddiscography.com/quaddisc/Queen-BBC%20Presents.mp3. But I've yet to find any indication or documentation pointing to this recording beeing recorded and broadcast in quadraphonic sound.

teddi2002 wrote: I did a bit of reading in to it, more precisely http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1974-29.pdf and http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1977-02.pdf, and the "60 degree hack" is clearly documented in the latter report (page 5 and onwards). It is stated to produce slightly better results (closer to original quadraphonic mix) than a simple "proper" linear Matrix H decode. According to my analysis, neither this share or the 2011 remasters (which should be the same mix) contain any indication of Matrix H encoded material. A pure QS 'logical' decode did produce some interesting results, which could be entirely coincidental as you said, but shouldn't SQ and Matrix H decoding also produce some interesting sounds in that case?

OwenSmith wrote:

teddi2002 wrote: Indeed. The Golders Green concert is very likely SQ-encoded, as is documented here: http://www.surrounddiscography.com/quaddisc/quadradi.htm#bbcsps and here: http://www.surrounddiscography.com/quaddisc/Queen-BBC%20Presents.mp3. But I've yet to find any indication or documentation pointing to this recording beeing recorded and broadcast in quadraphonic sound.

The online lists of quad discography are notoriously inaccurate, listing things as quad that aren't and omitting many things that are. The last time Golder's Green came up I posted a picture in that thread of the BBC transcription disc for that concert. The disc label does not say SQ, so it's not SQ or any other quad encoded. The BBC transcription disc service were very careful about labelling and archives, in many cases the transcriptiom service archives are the only copies that remain at the BBC. Also my friend who runs the qaud blog I linked to above tried a decode of Golders Green from several sources and could detect no quad encoding.