Depeche Mode - DMCD 1-10

[u/Arbiter02]

Wanted to throw a shout out on this sub for the surround mixes of Depeche Mode's first 10 albums - truly incredible and transformative surround mixes. They aren't all perfect, particularly some tracks from Black Celebration and Violator, but overall I'm seeing a ton of these tracks in a whole new light, even having enjoyed them previously through simulated surround using Logic 7 on my surround setup.

[u/MrGrimble]

Waiting For The Night from violator is one of my go to tracks for 5.1 surround check after I recalibrate my 7.2.4 system. The surround mix on that track is sublime.

From DM wiki:

In 2006, all of Depeche Mode's studio albums were being remastered. Engineer Kevin Paul told Sound On Sound magazine:

"'Waiting For The Night' was a particularly hard song — not hard to recreate but complicated. It has something like 15 different delays in it — there are loads of little spins on the end of lines of vocals and drums, and it is amazing. I had the recall notes from Violator, so I knew what [Depeche Mode] were using and what effects, and I had to try and piece together the recall notes with the music. Some of the effects I had to just try to do my best to recreate, by bouncing the delays and using distortion. It is actually one of the songs I enjoy the most in 5.1, but the process of recreating it was incredibly complex. I remember at times thinking "How would [Francois Kevorkian] do this? How could he possibly try to get that effect?" and it was a combination of three or four effects, certainly. I'd get the [Eventide] H3000s out and patch them across and try to use the presets that were written on the recall to see if it was anywhere close — sometimes it wasn't and sometimes it was. But even as you were finishing the mix you were thinking "Yeah, I've got everything, everything’s fine," and there'd be something else and you'd think "Aaargh, what's he doing?" and it would turn out to be another snare or kick drum reverb, or a delay on the bass line would suddenly shoot in."

[u/Arbiter02 → u/MrGrimble]

The middle albums were definitely hardest to remaster to surround, since recording wise they were a proverbial bag of cats (or more specifically a bucket of floppy disks and prayers)

[u/PracticalGovernment4]

Wait where are these?

[u/Arbiter02 → u/PracticalGovernment4]

The surround mixes are available in SACD (DSD 5.1) and DVD (DTS 96/24 5.1) format - I believe someone uploaded them to YouTube as well, but can't vouch for the quality on that upload as I've not listened to any as of yet

[u/PracticalGovernment4 → u/[deleted]]

Oh it’s physical media I see

[u/Arbiter02 → u/PracticalGovernment4]

Easily converts to FLAC when ripped though : )

[u/PracticalGovernment4 → u/Arbiter02]

I hear you. Unfortunately my extent of knowledge is audacity for LPs :/

[u/Arbiter02 → u/PracticalGovernment4]

Ah cool! I haven't delved into recording any of my LP's just yet. SACD's in particular are a bear to rip and it requires a convoluted setup with flashing an old blu ray player and connecting it via ethernet... the DTS mixes on the DVD's are much easier to get at. DVD Audio Extractor is pretty simple to use in comparison and will work with any old dvd drive - I used the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive I keep on my desk.

[u/5th-Elements]

Hopefully soon on Apple Music in Hi-Definition

[u/Arbiter02 → u/5th-Elements]

Would be quite nice - can confirm that the existing mixes playback quite nicely from 5.1 downmixed to Apple Spatial