Tuesday, November 15, 2011

TPR CD 005 - Pink Floyd - 1970-08-08 - Saint-Tropez


Here or Here

1 comment:

Dr. Forrester said...

PINK FLOYD - Saint-Tropez
[ This Place Records TPR CD 005 ]

Saint Tropez, Les Nuits Musicales, 08Aug70

1. soundcheck / Cymbaline
2. Atom Heart Mother
3. Embryo
4. Green Is The Colour
5. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
6. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

Sources:
tracks 1-2-3: "Pop 2" TV show, originally broadcast 10Oct70
tracks 4-5-6: "Pop 2" TV show, originally broadcast 24Oct70

Lineage: French TV archives -> INA DVD -> audio rip -> remaster -> FLAC

Remastering notes:

The original audio of this French TV show is rather weird. This is not a true
soundboard source like the KQED TV show recorded earlier that year: here, it
seems the sound was recorded through the microphone of the stage camera. And
the cameraman moves a lot on stage during the Floyd performance, which is good
for the visuals, but a disaster for the audio part ! As a result, the sound
characteristics change radically from time to time, depending on the location
of the camera. Sometimes the bass is saturated (when the filming guy is near
Roger's amps or monitors), while at other times you can barely hear any bass
at all. The levels fluctuate a lot too, again depending on the camera location
(sometimes close to the amps, sometimes more distant). To summarise, with the
raw audio from French TV masters it is almost impossible to listen to the whole
show without turning the volume button or the equalizer faders on the fly !

Therefore, I reworked the audio, from the best available source: the soundtrack
of the INA archives DVDs. Each time there was an abrupt modification in the mix,
the frequency characteristics or the levels (it means about every 30 seconds!),
I tried to readjust the levels and EQ, so that a complete listening is possible
at last, with a feeling of sonic consistency throughout the songs.
As usual with my remasters, I also manually corrected the repairable flaws of
the raw source (drop-outs, crackles, tape warble ...). I didn't use any NR in
the process.

Since this remaster was primarily intended for the Rev.A of Harvested's "Reach
For A Peach" DVD, Ed Paule did his usual quality check and suggested some
additional corrections before the audio was fully approved.

But the current CD version is not just the soundtrack of "Reach For A Peach
Rev.A" DVD. Indeed, I performed additional editing to restore some small cuts
that were on the original TV show. The abrupt ending of Atom Heart Mother was
corrected too, and applauses were used to have a natural transition between
Atom Heart Mother and Embryo. Most importantly, I decided to restore the first
two minutes of Atom Heart Mother, missing on the TV broadcast (this was not
too difficult, as the missing parts are repeated later in the song). If you're
a purist and don't like the idea of this artificial restoration, just jump to
the 02:09 mark when you listen to track 2. ;-) For the others, you have a
complete enjoyable version of Atom Heart Mother while on the original broadcast
it begins directly in the middle of the guitar solo just before the choir part.

To summarise, this CD version of the Saint-Tropez footage is the best you can
get, coming directly from French TV archives (pre-broadcast), but even better,
presented for an optimal listening experience: no more cuts, no more abrupt
sound fluctuations, and a complete version of Atom Heart Mother.


Enjoy!

MOB.