Author: Paul Sinclair

**Update 13 November 2011**

Andy Jackson got in touch again recently, wanting to clarify the common use of the phrase ‘digitally remastered’ when it comes to the new Pink Floyd reissues.

Andy Jackson: On Amazon and I suspect everywhere, it says of the new mastering of the existing albums, “digitally remastered”. It was all distinctly analogue remastered, neither James [Guthrie] or myself would dream of doing it any other way.

Even quite simple stuff that most people would do in the digital domain, like sample rate conversion, we did analogue.

In general there are two different ways of going about mastering. Analogue domain or digital domain. Essentially the reason for mastering is a final stage of any EQing, compression & level matching that needs doing. There are excellent hardware both analogue & digital, to do this. It’s really a matter of personal preference which. Both James and I fall firmly in the analogue camp. Even for ‘simple’ things like sample rate conversion, both James and I will do it analogue, having listened to both.

A good example is the ‘concert screen films’. We needed to have that as a 48khz sample rate for DVD. James had given me 96khz masters, as per the blu-ray. Damon [Iddins assistant engineer]  and I made two versions, one was digitally sample rate converted in our Sadie workstation and the other was re-recorded analogue domain between two workstations (one playing the 96kHz original, the other recording it at 48kHz). We then took it in turns to listen to both, not knowing which was which. We both chose the analogue version, it was miles better

SDE: Are Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon sourced from a direct DSD transfer of the master tape or was it converted from hi-rez PCM ?

AJ: I don’t specifically know on these as it was James, but in general they are always taken from whatever was the mix master, in terms of the stereos of Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here it would have been the original 1/4″ tapes. James surrounds were mixed to hi sample rate PCM, and then a analogue domain mastering pass was done to which ever format (DSD or PCM) was appropriate for the release format.

SDE: Are the Quad mixes of Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here sourced from DSD or were those tape-to-PCM as they never appeared on the SACDs?

AJ: The analogue tape masters were transferred to PCM by abbey road (who hold the tapes). I don’t know if James did a extra pass for EQing

SDE: Regarding Have A Cigar (Alternate Version):  There is virtually no information on the credits about this. Obviously Roger singing, but what other bits of performance are different? Is it a different take, a Beatles Anthology-style creation from mixing together take 5 of this and take 7 of that etc.

AJ: It is just an earlier rough mix of work in progress on the same version. It’s actually Roger and David singing in octaves. I got this as a stereo mix, so apart from what I can pick out I’m none the wiser as to what is different. Obviously a different guitar at the end.

SDE: Regarding Wish You Were Here (With Stéphane Grapelli) – Same question as above. Apart from the fiddle, what is different? Lots of the music sounds like a different take but David’s vocal sounds much like the master version…?

AJ: Same as above, it’s a stereo of work in progress, it’s substantially the same version, a few different mix things, but it would have been a quick run-off of where they were, rather than a full mix (which would be a day or two’s work)

Thanks to Andy for what is hopefully interesting information for all you audiophiles out there. Below is the original interview.

Pink Floyd engineer Andy Jackson talks about the challenges of mixing Pink Floyd live at Wembley 1974, Blu-ray vs SACD and The Wall 5.1

Andy Jackson is a Grammy-nominated recording engineer whose association with Pink Floyd goes back to the very early 1980s. He engineered Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, The Division Bell and co-engineered The Final Cut with James Guthrie. He was also their concert sound engineer on the band’s 1994 Division Bell tour. In addition he has been closely involved with band members’ solo projects including engineering Roger Waters’ first full length solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking and multiple projects with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, including engineering his 1984 solo album About Face and the On an Island album from 2006.
Continue reading “Interview: Pink Floyd engineer Andy Jackson on Immersion box sets”