"Saucerful" on CD - defective??

[danielcaux]

Works was an unauthorized by the band Capitol compilation done around 1983, I guess they used the American copy of the master tape, because they for sure didn't have access to the original masters. So I would assume that this glitch should not appear either on the Capitol verison of the 80s CD, unless they had got the same vinyl-master transfer that EMI used for their British CD. Who knows! Mmmm But why would they cut and paste a 5 second section for the CD master?

[crowman]

It would be interesting to check the 80s Captiol CDs. All I can think is that the British master tape was damaged at some point, and that this cut and paste job was a crude attempt to repair it. Having discovered the damage, someone may have cut out the damaged section and inserted a copy of the following 5 seconds to cover it, while getting the volume levels wrong in the process. It may even have occurred long before the CD master was done - does anyone have a UK vinyl copy of A Nice Pair? Perhaps it happened as far back as that? Thankfully it seems to have been rectified for the Echoes compilation so any future remaster should be OK. (And I really wish they'd do a remaster - with the mono version and unreleased tracks!)

[crowman]

Finally found my 80's EMI copy of Saucerful (in the shed). It also has the strange edit, so it obviously goes back a way. Evidently they either didn't notice it or ignored it for the 1994 remaster. Did anyone check the 80s Capitol CD?

What year did the 80s CDs get released, BTW?

[my breakfast.]

Crowman I am impressed with your dedication!

[Hudini]

I own a vinyl copy of "A Nice Pair" made in Yugoslavia and it also has the jump in "Set The Controls". I don't have "A Saucerful Of Secrets" on vinyl though, that is as a stand alone album.

[royalterrapin]

'Ello, I'm new around these parts

Anyway, just to say I've accumulated several different versions of Saucerful over the years, including Japanese '80s vinyl, German '80s vinyl, and the UK Nice Pair double; as well as the first UK CD release from '87.

As far as I recall, the only one among this lot which definitely features the non-'defective' Set The Controls... is the Japanese vinyl; although, thinking about it, this may also be true of the German vinyl (I need to re-check).

As for See-Saw, I think the problem there may be due to dodgy pan-pots on the Abbey Road mixing desk, causing some extraneous noise on the stereo mix. I seem to remember there being similar problems on the stereo mix of The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow album (particularly I See You), which of course was also produced by Norman Smith.

[crowman]

Crowman I am impressed with your dedication!

Thankyou. I'd actually completely forgotten about it and was going through the shed looking for something completely different when I found the old Saucerful - it's not like I've dedicated the last year to searching for it.

The news that the edit is on copies of A Nice Pair suggests that the edit is of an old vintage. I think it's interesting cos it's such a weird edit for anyone to have done - I'm still trying to work out why they did it in the first place.

[J Ed]

remeber the Piper disc in A Nice Pair was also tampered with for some zany reason, substituting the Ummagumma version of Astronomy w Dave playing in place of the original studio version w Syd
I have no idea why, maybe the American label tried to cobble the album together from what they had (the original US Piper had substituted Emily for Astronomy) instead of getting the complete tapes from England?
but why they would clip a chunk out of a song on the otherwise complete second album is an even more bizarre mystery

[danielcaux]

5 seconds of audio from 2:35 has been duplicated, boosted in volume and slotted in at 2:30, in place of the original audio which remains intact on the Works version. I have no idea why this might have occurred, perhaps a dodgy edit was done to the master tape somewhere along the line. Thankfully it seems to have been restored on the Echoes version.

This reminds me of the Frank Zappa "We Are Only In It For The Money" problems when they remastered the catalog in the early 90s. The original tapes were damaged so they had to patch some spots with inferior and generated copies, and there were also some sfx left out or out of synch in the new "re-master".

[my breakfast.]

I imagine the repair was carried out because of Rick's organ. His solo consists of his organ playing through a wah pedal, and this can cause frequencies to clip when recording. If you plug a keyboard into a wah pedal and hold down a chord, rocking the pedal will cause volume fluctuations as different frequencies are accentuated by the Q of the pedal. I imagine Rick's organ here ended up distorting the mixing desk or the amp and it was unusable.

[TheLazenby]

About "Money".... is that why the one track ("Mom and Dad", if I remember right) is such poor quality?

[danielcaux]

About "Money".... is that why the one track ("Mom and Dad", if I remember right) is such poor quality?

I would guess so, I have never listened to the original Vinyl recording so I can't compare. Perhaps the new boxset solved those problems? Don't know, but here's a good site with lots of info:

http://www.lukpac.org/~handmade/patio/v ... money.html

I'm still hoping for a site like that for Pink Floyd releases. One can dream.

[danielcaux]

Finally found my 80's EMI copy of Saucerful (in the shed). It also has the strange edit, so it obviously goes back a way. Evidently they either didn't notice it or ignored it for the 1994 remaster.

Oh, I just read this over the stevehoffman forums:

Doug Sax' Saucerful of Secrets is outstanding in sound and I can't imagine how it could be improved upon.

Though the european 1994 "Remaster" CD isn't actually the Doug Sax remaster, it's the horrible NR'd 80's mastering. BIG difference there! He probably has the Euro version

The European EMI 1994 Remaster of Saucerful uses the old 80's NR'd mastering and sounds awful. The US made 1994 remaster sounds great

Appearently the european copies of the 1994 EMI re-release don't even have the 1992 Doug Sax remaster! They just used the old 80s CD master again!

So if you live in Europe and have a copy of the 1994 Saucerful CD that says something like "1992 Doug Sax remaster" on the booklet... well, it's not true, you have been listening to the old 80s CD all this years! And appearently the same is true with the european EMI versions of Meddle

Appearently american copies (Capitol?) of the 1994 Saucerful do have the 1992 remaster. So since my copy is an EMI 1994 and it has the defective splice on STCFTHOTS I'm now wondering if the Capitol version is a different story.

Anyone here has a Capitol 1994 Saucerful?

[swanning_it]

The knowledge you guys possess abosolutely amazes me! I'm supposed to do some work today and now I find myself strangely drawn toward my vinyls to dig out "A Nice Pair" and have another listen

I must admit to never hearing any oddities, but hey, that's just me I guess. (Although I do remember picking the old ELO "Rockaria" blooper at the start which included a very audible "OOPs"

[nosaj]

Good gosh. All these questions about remastering drive me nuts. I now sincerely hope these 2011 remasters are the point zero for everything. Thankfully the audio-fidelity geeks will clarify everything for us in the long run.