Home now, and had time to digest my thoughts bit…
Basically I just have to say that with the 5.1 mix of ATD James (Guthrie) has done it again… he’s taken an absolute masterpiece and managed to add a whole new level to it without “gilding the lily”, or painting it bright orange and putting flashing lights on top…
I didn’t notice anything astonishingly new or different compared to listening to it at home last night…. but the subtleties, textures almost, that the surround mix adds draw you in even more and just make listening to the album almost a completely new experience…
The sound system was extremely impressive although I would certainly not have complained had it been a little louder, especially in the .1 department
The room was a very odd shape – a floor plan was basically trapezoidal with a triangle lopped off one corner, wider at the front than the back, an almost full width skylight window with beams at the front and a ceiling that sloped from front to back… left and right were placed about 15 feet apart , about three feet from the wall… center was about a foot further back and had a lava lamp on top – that was the visual element of the event left and right surrounds were slightly further apart than the fronts… I never did figure out where the .1 was coming from. There was some presumably permanent acoustic baffling on the walls, but there were also some obviously hurriedly selected assorted carpet squares that had been taped to the floor, a few bath mats and an assortment of blankets hung from strings running across below the ceiling
By the time we started there were more people than the 30 or 40 available seats – some stood, some sat on the floor, most listened very attentiveley the whole, a few took pictures or videos, and one or two even appeared to be recording it on their iPhones (?!?!)
A few more people drifted in as the album progressed, but there was mercifully little “circulation”. There was a slightly awkward silence at the end before a warm round of applause broke out… James asked if that meant we liked it, and brought positive murmurings throughout the room. James then said “Roger Waters is a very clever man’, to which I could not resist calling out “As are you, sir”… he thanked me. A little later I shook his hand, thanked him and told him how much I enjoyed it.
Dark Side and Wish were also impressive… there was a bit more moving around during them, but not enough to be annoying…
A nice afternoon out… and I’m looking forward to the talks tomorrow.
With thanks to sysyphus (Kevin)