ABBA Revitalised

Hi Alex, I have some Cds and LPs for comparison. I have no doubt that modern mastering can offer considerable advantages - if the engineer has ears and a reasonable budget. Generally pop music suffers from grossly exaggerated effects. A „natural“ soundstage was not the goal. Whether the multitrack masters are still available, is a deciding factor. I will give it all a listen.

I've just had a wee listen to one track in particular, mainly because I know it well and have a supposedly "good" copy of it.
The Carpenters "I Won't Last Another Day Without You".

Using pretty basic equipment I compared small snippets at a time after setting the volume levels as equallly as I could perceive.

On first listen the Dysoned version seemed like a combination of more realistic tone, the piano especially but also a bit closed in.
A couple of passes later it was obvious my existing copy was very "hot" in the higher frequencies and posessed an overly live sound, possibly artifacts of the studio enviroment laid bare by the extreme HF content?

Once tuned in the new mix was far more pleasant, everything was still there but nothing magnified, Karens voice displayed a warmer, more intimate tone, the piano didn't peel your ears off and the drums had an easy, mellow flow, a very typical studio sound for a drum kit rather than the hard bish, bosh clang that went before.

I think I'm so used to the original mixes, that this and several more tracks I've had a quick listen to, are almost culture shock. Abba was very enlightening, so they didn't mean it to sound like an old tin can!

Now Mr. Dyson, how about some of those nasty sounding rock albums from the 70's and early 80's ...

<abbr>I got these messages about the decoded versions of ABBA and the Carpenters. I have better results coming -- some tonight, more tomorrow.</abbr>
<abbr>The problem with some of the 'decoding' is to get the material as supplied on CD (or other means) into the form where DolbyA can decode it. Very often (in fact, most often), the material has been 'meddled with' to make the DolbyA encoded material sound acceptable. Of course, the leftover sound of the 'undecoded', but instead only EQed material is a compressed high end and sometimes even LF distortion!!! (The attack/release time of DolbyA encoding is insanely fast for 50Hz signals, let alone lower frequencies.)</abbr> It wasn't really planned that DolbyA encoded material NOT be decoded, so the lingering distortion and HF compression will persist on undecoded material.

Someone, sometime figured out that in this world of pop/rock, that people will tend to accept the missing DolbyA decoding, and accept it as yet another form of 'compressed sound'. I do have to moderate my comments by the very important fact that R Dolby was a genius and designed his DolbyA hardware with secrets that all but the most perceptive EE reading the schematics, will gloss over. This is probably one reason why an alternative use for DolbyA processors was to do HF enhancement for vocals/etc (if used for that purpose -- seem to work okay.) However, a simple redesign without these stealthly considerations in the compressor designs, they WILL get more distortion than what they would expect. This is probably one reason why people give up and just use a DolbyA for HF enhancement.

If you have heard the true raw output of a DolbyA, it would most likely be deemed unlistenable. Only after at least 3-6dB cut at 3kHz and maybe another 3dB cut at 6kHz or 9kHz does raw DolbyA become listenable. This is the errsatz mastered material that started appearing on CDs back in the 80's, even to today. Probably also a big reason for the unexpected (harsh, digital) sound of CDs in the early days, and often continuing on to today. One side benefit for the industry: vinyl is usually properly decoded, and allows for a layerd 'audiophile' product, yet still damaged enough that it cannot be used for commercial redistribution.

By distributing DolbyA with EQ (and in some cases raw DolbyA on 99 Red Balloons/Nena CD and Sheffeild Labs CD with Thelma Houston -- have RAW DolbyA!!!) -- these distributors are ALMOST selling their 'family jewels' to consumers -- it is just that we consumers didn't realize it!!!

The hard part about decoding the DolbyA material -- UNDOING the errsatz-mastering. That is, doing 'corrective EQ' to bring the material up to the level that it can be properly decoded by a DolbyA compatible decoder... (My decoder IS better than DolbyA HW -- only because DSP can do fancier things)..
My challenge, evidenced that most of my decoding attempts are not perfect, is to second guess what EQ was done for the pre-distribution mastering. Then, I have to undo that EQ before running it through the decoder.

There is a double edged sword with my DolbyA compatible decoder (DHNRDS DA) -- that 'sword' is that the DHNRDS is very smart about working with out-of-standard material. So, when a true DolbyA might start producing more IMD or MD because of calibration errors or frequency response problems, instead the DHNRDS is REALLY GOOD at removing errant modulation products. So, for an initial tune-up for proper calibration/EQ, it is a bit more sensitive to use one of the DHNRDS modes that disables the anti-IMD/anti-MD mechanisms.

Tonight, I hope to have a new library of all of the original ABBA albums ready (I have been trying to fine-tune Arrival -- a real mess), and Carpenters/Olivia/etc are forthcoming. The law keeps me from freely distributing all of the results, but I will DEFINITELY supply subsets for demonstration.*

Sincerely and really trying to work for the listeners!!! (Actually trying to make groups like ABBA & Carpenters sound more like their original vinyl -- but better) My DolbyA copies of Olivia NJ already sound pretty good, but my newly decoded versions truly 'knock my socks off'. Alex hasn't even heard the latest version of ONJ yet -- I don't want to waste ANYONES time yet until I am totally happy with results. (Also fighting the variability of my hearing/perception/etc for quality control matters.) I respect Alex's time too much to blast him with iterative releases of many albums :-).

John

* Admittedly, the DHNRDS is always being improved. My recording restoration expert project partner has the attitude that I am guilding the lily. He is truly a WONDERFUL person, but doesn't seem to understand the sensitivities of a lot of people in the audiophile community. Some of the changes that I am making are super carefully considered and for at least the last 3 months, the DHNRDS produces 99.999% better audio quality than a real DolbyA for decoding -- period. The changes and centering of measurement apertures and very good IMD reduction with further MD reduction with very CPU intensive, highly proprietary algorithms, greatly reduces the DolbyA fog sound.