Pink Floyd - 1975-06-18 - Boston 2 REC QUAD 24-96 DVDA - GRNS3

Here is an excellent vintage bootleg with a great performance by Pink Floyd. Recommended for fans.

Please enjoy, share with friends and please seed :) > i can't do it all alone! You can help by keeping this music alive :)
I really want to share more rare stuff that is not available in shops, but i need your help to keep my collection alive for all, now over 1600 concerts still available for you!

Stuff like this needs to be preserved for future generations of music lovers.
Thanks to all the peers from everywhere seeding my huge archive, i love you!
Look for my music archive here: https://1337x.to/user/GRNS3/
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Pink Floyd
Boston Garden
Boston, MA
18 June 1975

SET I
01 Raving And Drooling
02 You've Gotta Be Crazy
03 Shine On You Crazy Diamond (including Have A Cigar)

SET II
04 The Dark Side Of The Moon

ENCORE
05 Echoes

This is a quadraphonic audience master derived from 2 stereo sources:

SOURCE 1: Master Cassette taped by Steve Hopkins from 10th row center section, seat 14 (The seat numbers ran left to right looking at the stage, so this would be the right side of the center section).
Sony ECM-99a (hand held mic) > Sony TC-152SD
Master Cass > [email protected] > [email protected]
Reeling in Pink Floyd DVD 7 - Tape 29
Decoded shn to wav with TLH, tracked with CD Wave, re-encoded to flac 8 with Flac Frontend

SOURCE 2: Master Cassette taped by Dan Lampinski from 5th row center section, right side (Exact seat number not recalled at this time).
Sony TC-152SD Tape Recorder
Sony ECM-99 Stereo Microphone
Maxell cassettes ->
Nakamichi CR-3A cassette deck with azimuth correction ->
M-Audio Firewire Audiophile 2496 ->
CDWAV 24-bit/96-KHz wav files ->
Goldwave (normalizing and crossfades) ->
CDWAV (track breaks) ->
FLAC Front End (FLAC 8)
Mastered and FLAC'ed by Carl Morstadt

QUAD MASTER:
Source 1 (rear channels) FLAC -> WAV -> upsampled from 48k to 96k (ProToolsHD2 - highest quality)
Source 2 (front channels) FLAC -> WAV
Protools HD2 for mastering
Serato Pitch n' Time plugin used for speed correction.
WAV -> MLP compression (SurCode MLP) -> DVDA disc image (DiscWelder Chrome)
DVDA is 24 bit, 96KHz quadraphonic (4.0)
Sound quality: A-

3 other versions were produced with this master:
24/96 raw quad master with no eq and no patches
24/96 stereo matrix
16/44.1 stereo matrix


MASTERING NOTES:
This project started with the thought "lets see if I can hear the cash registers panning around the stadium between these 2 recorders". Turns out what really struck me was how well the audio was reenforced and became incredible present. These 2 recordings together present a more balanced, more complete, fuller sounding recording than either one by itself. The fact that both tapers are close to the stage does however, make some of the surround effects that are mixed far to the rear more distant sounding. Certainly it would have been nice to have someone recording further to the back to capture the rear speakers better. On the other hand the rear taper being close to the front increases the combined sound quality and he's still far enough behind the front taper to capture the surround image between them. This also gives a very realistic audience perspective of the show from a really great seat. The original left-right perspective of the front source is preserved here and the rear has had L & R reversed to match this. There's no question that the clean and well done transfers of the master tapes played a huge role in the success of this project. This would not have worked if at least one of the sources wasn't transferred at 24/96. A 16/48 DAT copy of a master isn't the worst thing and it made a very clean upsample to 24/96.

Matrix mixes of multiple recorders are generally not very well received amongst traders and for good reason. The concept is certainly valid but the execution usually fails. This can only work if the recordings are synced together with nearly perfect accuracy. When multiple copies of the same signal are mixed together if they are offset by just a little you will get phasing. If the error is large you will hear flaming (a stuttering from hearing each drum hit twice rapidly in succession). Mixing multiple recorders together into the same speakers presents a whole new set of problems. This is prone to additional phase issues as well a the required reduction of levels to make headroom for both sources. When sending these signals to separate speakers in a surround system however, you can preserve the full quality of each source and avoid creating phase issues caused by multiple microphones or by any slight inaccuracy in sync between front and rear. The Serato Pitch n' Time plugin was used for speed correcting / syncing these recordings. Source 2 (the higher fidelity recording of the two) was first corrected to proper speed/pitch. The raw transfer started at 29c sharp and gradually ended up at 35c sharp by the end of the show. Source 1 was then speed corrected with source 2 as a reference. This had to be done in individual segments ranging from 2 to 20 seconds long to address the slight continually varying speeds between the 2 recorders (no tape drive runs at an exact perfectly stable speed - there's always some fluctuation). Serato is the only pitch/speed correction plugin made that will deliver a clean, artifact free speed change that you can dial in to the sample. The output waveform is complete and free of the cuts and edits that other speed correction plugins introduce. This project would not have been successful without technology. No shortcuts like cutting and crossfading were done. The waveform of the synced source is complete and continuous - not one sample is missing. Very conservative EQing was used to help the balance. This is sometimes a controversial process amongst traders of these historical live recordings. This has gotten a bad reputation due to the great number of low resolution digital recordings that have been treated with low quality digital EQ as this adds significant distortion to an already compromised digital recording. Precision EQ and level adjustment with a high resolution digital recording can be very different and can help restore the frequency balance without distortion or further damage. The low end in the front source was poorly captured and therefor boosted to make up for this. The rear source was poorly transferred to digital originally and suffered significant high end loss from this. This was able to be improved slightly with a small boost. Since these boosts were to areas originally subdued in the recording, there was headroom to perform these EQ boosts without having to lower the overall level as a compromise (which would not be acceptable). No damage or distortion was allowed simply to try to mimic the sound of a studio recording. There were 3 short missing sections in source 2 during songs as well as different start and end times (before and after the music) between the 2. Source 1 starts recording 0:20 earlier than source 2 and 0:14 longer for the 1st set. 2 sections of SOYCD are missing in source 2: 6:20 - 6:26 and 19:32 - 19:46. Source 2 starts recording 0:09 earlier than source 1 and 0:40 longer for the 2nd set. The 1st 0:19 of U&T is missing in source 2. Source 1 starts recording 0:26 earlier before Echoes and 0:26 longer at the end. The patches were EQ'd and leveled for minimum distraction. The mastered version of this recording is intended as the most accurately preserved 'audiophile' edition. The raw version is intended for archival purposes to preserve a less altered copy for future restoration technology.

This is very much an audience recording in that you will not hear isolated direct instrument sounds from each speaker like you would listening to the studio recording of TDSOTM for example. Given that, you will still be able to hear sounds flying around from the actual surround mix at the show. The left right balance is very good as both tapers were nearly centered and directly in line with each other. The rear surround sound elements are more distant since both tapers are close to the stage. There are no phasing or comb filtering artifacts from sync inaccuracy audible here. Turning off either set of speakers (between fronts and rears) makes a significant amount of fidelity disappear; the combination truly sounds more complete than either source. You get a more clear dynamic picture - a strong image of the instruments along with the sound of them filling the venue and echoing off in the distance. Subtle quiet parts and effects are much cleaner. While either of these sources by itself is an interesting window to this performance, the 2 together transport you there. This is presented in 4.0 quadraphonic; source 2 in front and source 1 in back - no matrixing. I suppose in theory you could try to image the show in 5.1, deriving a centered mix from the raw stereo sources. I doubt it though so no messing around like that was attempted here. Just the 2 sources in quad and this sounds better than it has any business sounding. Quadraphonic seems appropriate for a 1975 recording as well.

FORMAT NOTES:
This quadraphonic master is presented as lossless DVDA (DVD Audio) disc images. This format is required for those using hardware DVD players to play surround sound. Creating a DVDA disc from raw WAV files can be very difficult with the abundance of flawed software made available. The prepared disc image can be burned with standard burning software to easily produce a DVDA disc for a hardware player. For those using a computer and audio interface to play surround sound, it is a simple matter to rip the WAV files losslessly from the disc image to hard drive with common open source software like DVDAExplorer. This master has not been compressed into DTS or Dolby surround (the lossy formats). It is unfortunate that some hardware DVD players will only play lossy surround (the common format for video). Both the Dolby and DTS encoding formats degrade the sound on a similar level to low bit rate mp3 (although for different reasons), so no DTS or Dolby surround track is provided. A surround sound system is required for the full effect. Surround sound was a big part of Pink Floyd's concert presentation, evolving since 1967. AHM, TDSOTM & WYWH studio albums were mixed and officially released in quadraphonic. A stereo matrix was produced as a concession to all those who do not yet have access to surround sound. The fact is, in spite of the earlier comments the matrix still sounds better than either of the stereo sources by themselves which gives it a valid reason to exist. It does however, sound significantly compromised from the quadraphonic presentation. The stereo matrix was also reduced to the CD format, which sounds good on the surface but does a poor job capturing/preserving subtle details and extreme dynamics in a recording. As a result, recordings that are lower quality to begin with can degrade that much more when captured with only CD quality resolution. This version still befits from the 24/96 capture and mastering and sounds much better than any previous CD version.

A huge THANK YOU to all the generous people - Steve, Dan, Carl, Glenn, Scott, Kevin, anyone else who helped - who recorded, preserved, transferred and shared these recordings. Thanks for bringing me as close as I've ever been to a 1975 Pink Floyd show (I was 7 at the time). I hope you all like this new presentation of your recordings.

Don't even consider selling this. This is a fan made recording of copyright material made for free trade among fans. And if you're one of those roio "labels" that, swear to Floyd, never sell anything but then grab only the reduced CD version (instead of the high res) to 'reissue' and then write up new notes that omit all lineage and mastering info but claim 'new transfer' and 'best sounding' and read like a used car salesman script… Honestly, what's up with that?
A multichannel system (old-school quadraphonic or modern 5.1 home theater) with either a DVD player that plays DVD Audio or a computer and audio interface setup is required for playback of quadraphonic surround sound.

Please do not convert to lossy formats like standard DTS, Dolby or MP3 to redistribute. Someone down the line will thank you.
If you want to transfer this to DTS HD Master Audio (the new lossless format) or Blu-ray lossless audio, please make sure the transfer is perfectly lossless and remains in 4.0 quadraphonic (no lfe tracks or fake center tracks please). I chose not to entertain this format as it is restricted to certain DVD players and difficult to extract to the computer at this time.

JFE 2010