01 Speak To Me
02 Breathe
- enter recorder 2
03 Travel Sequence
04 Time - Breathe (reprise)
05 Mortality Sequence
06 Money Severe Mechanical and Electronic Horror
07 segue - That wasn't pretty!
08 Atom Heart Mother
09 segue - tuneups & announcements
10 Careful With That Axe, Eugene
- exit recorder 2
11 One Of These Days
12 segue - tuneups
13 Echoes
14 segue - tuneups
15 A Saucerful Of Secrets

***

Notes:

Tracks 3 - 10 are 'mono surround' made from two mono audience recordings mastered to quadraphonic surround.
Recorder 1 is closest to the stage and has very good fidelity.
Recorder 2 is towards the back of the room by the sounds of it and a challenge to listen to by itself.

However, it adds to the sound in room ambience and even reveals some of the original surround mix due to proximity to the rear surround speaker stack.
Although both recordings are monophonic, the quad surround format is needed to present the front to back perspective.
The remaining tracks are the mono recorder 1 by itself.

Everything is still rough around the edges but the surround presentation puts you into the venue.
The mix puts you into very good seats and the mono recorder 1 by itself still holds up to finish out the show.
Some parts sound amazing for all the technical difficulties they were having on stage at times.
Just one extreme to the other in Mortality Sequence going from a flawless sounding mix with sermon voices coming at you from all directions to "severe mechanical and electronic horror".
Careful with the volume on this one.

***

Sources:

Recorder 1: Pink Floyd 1972-01-20 Brighton, Recorder 1, careful53 2nd gen [24-96]
Lineage: 2nd gen TDK SA90 and SA60 cassettes (1983) > Technics RS-B565 > Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 > Reaper v4.76 > FLAC (24bit/96kHz)

Recorder 1*: Pink Floyd 1972-01-20 Brighton, Recorder 1, two sources low gen (24bit/96kHz)
Lineage: Maxell XLII low gen cassettes (2002-05 type) > modified Technics RS-B965-M > Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 > Audacity 2.0.3 & iZotope RX3 > FLAC (24bit/96kHz) * extended segues only

Recorder 2: Pink Floyd 1972-01-20 Brighton, Recorder 2, nipote_neonknight [24-96]
Lineage: Sony HF60 normal position unknown gen cassette (1985 type)> modified Technics RS-B965-M > Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 > Reaper v4.61 > FLAC (24bit/96kHz)

*** Mastering notes:

Recorder 1 is a mono recording transferred to a stereo format tape. Both channels now contain unique elements of the sound. When an originally mono recorded tape is played back on a stereo deck, the area of the tape once covered and magnetized by a single mono head is being read as two tracks side by side by two heads. Due to variations in the surface of the tape, one or the other side of the stereo head picks up stronger or different elements of sound. Both channels therefor need to be preserved and recombined which demands perfect corrected azimuth alignment.

Some wild level changes to correct. Very light noise reduction on the right channel content.
Tamed down the saturation that happens when the cymbals come screaming through the PA in the opening of the show and OOTD. The alternate "two sources low gen" supplies some extended segue material that was trimmed from the main source.

Recorder 2 is a mono recording transferred to a stereo format tape. The right channel is inferior throughout so only the left channel was used here. This recording is very high end attenuated and very noisy. That it is a recording from the back of the room adds to the dark sound by itself. This recording seems to be in proximity to the rear surround speaker stack. I tamed the noise back lower than the music. There is a good amount of hiss left in both recorders. They didn't respond well to any more NR so it would get into manual scrubbing to go further.

I synchronized both recorders together to the correct speed. The humble rear recorder restores some natural ambience and surround mix elements.
I left the recorders to start and stop as they did between songs with no production to smooth anything over. You get the perspective the tapers running their machines at the show. The tracks from recorder 1 by itself are mastered to quad with the noise reduced component at low level in the rear.

Audio tools used include Reaper for the main DAW, iZotope RX, Universal Audio and Waves plugins. Speed correction and sync work was done in Reaper using the lossless Elastique Pro 3 algorithm. The master is 24 bit 96k 4.0 quadraphonic in a 5.1 container with digital zero C & Lfe channels to insure compatibility in all media players. In addition to the quad master, I produced a 24 bit 96k mono matrix mix with proper balances of the sources (not just a straight fold down). Although a compromise, it still retains some of the fidelity and completeness of the presentation. Mono master in a stereo container for compatibility. (FLAC uses no extra space for usual channel mono.)

***

Release formats:

24 bit 96k 5.1 FLAC with the 4.0 quadraphonic master

24 bit 96k STEREO FLAC with the mono matrix

16 bit 44.1k FLAC files with a copy of the mono matrix for burning to CD

Jimfisheye, February 17, 2018