Sophia Gardens, Cardiff

Speed Corrected

Lineage: Unknown recording device > low generation tape > Aiwa Tape Deck TC-WE475 > Audiophile 2496 Soundblaster > HD >
SoundForge 7.0 > CD Wave > FLAC Frontend (level 6)
Additional lineage: FLAC > TAudioconverter (combine tracks) > MATLAB (speed adjustment) > Audacity (tracking) > FLAC > TLH > FLAC (level 8)

Linage :- Tape Trade (T.D.K-D c90 ) ( 2nd Gen SBD ) - Demon tape deck - Yamaha Reciever - Phono Leads Into PC Soundcard - Nero Wave Editor -
Wav - Tracks split - Traders Little Helper - Flac8 - SBE Checked - You.

A bit better and clearer than previous versions. Downside is that the complete recording is in mono though, whereas the other versions have the second part in stereo (the first part is mono on all versions though). [Jesper Moonen]

Peter has to re start the beginning of Family Snapshot 5 times. [NeilC]

The Cardiff 1980 recording is a bit of an odd one. It is special because it is one of the very few professional recordings of the "China 1984 Tour" (as the Melt Tour was called officially). However, for a soundboard-recording it has a lot of problems. There's a fair amount of hiss. The first half of the show missed one channel already from the beginning on (this was on the master tape), and the second was in stereo. Also the first half of Moribund is sadly missing. Apart from these flaws, the recording is really muddy and misses clarity.

Still, this recording got my interest. About a year ago I got a complete copy of this gig in a trade. I was happy to find this, because the usual circulating version, The Watcher, was incomplete. What was the most interesting was that one of the previously missing tracks, Moribund the Burgermeister had some great stereo effects during the "I Will Find Out" part. Games without Frontiers, which was missing too on The Watcher featured some nice stereo synths as well. The new complete recording also offered Here Comes the Flood and the band introductions. Another interesting moment that was edited out on The Watcher, was the introduction to Family Snapshot, which was plagued by technical problems.

Sadly, this complete recording was plagued by other flaws: hiss reduction and speed correction were used. Both with bad results: the hiss reduction was so high that all the highs were completely gone, and the speed correction introduced all sorts of clicks/beat-splices/unstabilities.

Later on, I found a new source, which was 2 CD-rs made from a 4th gen. recording. I also got a tape, but this was too hissy to use. I decided to use the 4th gen. as the base of the remaster (see WHAT WAS DONE?).

Back to March 7, 1980. Peter and some members of the band had the flu that night. Peter decided to use a vacuum-machine to get his voice in better shape, which seemed to work to some degree.

The first disc is in mono, but the second disc is in stereo. Some of the synthesizer pads and effects sound wonderful in stereo. Especially Humdrum, and And through the Wire have a nice warmth to them, because of these synths. As said before, Moribund the Burgermeister has a great stereo vocal effect.

This recording is FAR from perfect, but as it as one of the very few professional recordings of the Melt Tour, it has some historical value, and is worth trying out if only for Peter's "I Will Found Out" in Moribund :)

WHAT WAS DONE?

The first part of the recording was in mono. Therefore I used the best channel, with the most high frequencies, which was the left one. I copied this channel to the right one. After that equalization was done. Following to that was multiband-compression, which I used to get some more of the high frequencies, and to keep the hiss at a minimum.
To create 'artificial stereo' I used a trick with phasing which makes a stereo sound out of a mono sound.
Some final equalization was done. Also, the subharmonics were removed, as well as the >16kHz range, which didn't contain any music at all. Since the recording sounded very sterile I added a little bit of reverb (which also helped a little to warm up the sound and get the vocal a little more to the front)

The second part of the recording was in stereo. The process done was basically the same, although I did use both channels of course.
There was a problem with the balance of the two channels. In one channel, the high frequencies and the low frequencies were too low, while the mid range was too high. The opposite happened on the other channel. This was corrected. After that equalization, multiband-compression and final equalization were done, as well as removing the subharmonics and >16kHz-range. Some different values were used during the equalization and the multiband-compression because of the different sound during this part.
There was also a small speed problem on the second part of the show. During Moribund the speed was right but at the end of the disc the speed was about one note too high. This was corrected. Some volume restorations were done. Finally some reverb was added here as well.

A few words of talking after Lead a Normal Life and the first three seconds of Moribund were not on the 4th gen, so I used the above-mentioned 'hiss reducted/speed corrected' to fill this gap.

The Genoa audience recording was used to fill in the gap in Moribund.

There were two gaps inbetween the songs near the end, which were corrected.

Finally, fade-outs were apllied and the recording was normalized. Then the recording was cut-up in tracks, sector-boundary aligned.

A FINAL THANK YOU

Thanks to David Dunnington for providing the 4th gen. recording. Thanks to Eric Hall, for helping find info and the best sources of this recording. Thanks to everyone who listened to the small remastered samples and suggesting improvements on the sound. [Jesper Moonen]

Also dated as January 3, 1980 - Sophia Gardens