Saint - Tropez

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

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.

Dodano:  6.2.2017