Pink Floyd
"Celestial Voices"
Rover Records (RR CD 002)

Taken from silver bootleg CD: "Celestial Voices."
Ripped with EAC.

Lineage: Silvers > EAC > SHN

Additional lineage, Tracks 1-8, 11 and 12: SHN > WAV (CEP2.1 deglitching) > TLH (SBEs fixed) > SHN (MKW)

-The Paradiso, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (August 9, 1969)
01. Interstellar Overdrive (Segment)
02. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
03. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
04. A Saucerful Of Secrets

-BBC Session, Paris Cinema, London, England (May 12, 1969)
05. Daybreak (Grantchester Meadows)
06. Nightmare (Cymbaline)
07. The Beginning (Green Is The Colour) / Beset By Creatures Of The Deep (Careful With That Axe, Eugene)
08. The Narrow Way (Part 3)

-BBC Studios, 201 Piccadilly, London, England (June 25, 1968)
09. 'Top Gear' Introduction
10. The Murderotic Woman (Careful With That Axe, Eugene)
11. The Massed Gadgets Of Hercules (A Saucerful Of Secrets)
12. Let There Be More Light
13. Julia Dream
14. 'Top Gear' Conclusion


Notes:

The BBC Recordings here do indeed sound better than those included on the current Harvested Rev.A release of BBC Archives 1967-1969 (HRV CDR 008)!
Nice upgrade! Though, MOB did find evidence that some of the BBC 1969 tracks may have been processed. I kept the Spectral View of Track 7 that Ron Toon posted, together with this SHN set.

The only unfortunate thing is that there were a number of crackle/pops, most obvious on Track 5, but other tracks were affected as well. I had to fix these, I felt it was worth the effort.

I ended up fixing the pops/snaps on ten tracks (1-8, 11 and 12). Some 'pops' were VERY minor, others were quite obvious, like the ones during the first bit of Track 5, 'Daybreak (Grantchester Meadows)'.
I extracted the SHNs to WAV, then used Cool Edit Pro v2.1 to manually remove the digital pops, I aligned on sector boundaries with Traders Little Helper and reSHNed with MKW Audio Compression Toolkit. New ST5 Checksum created with TLH - Jan. 9, 2008.

I have included a couple CUE files, one for WAV, one for SHN.

-Original MD5 checksum (As recieved):
49c7e06cdc528dbe810fd9c36cce562b *Track01.shn
4ef4976b397e5e538b5e0177ef4556d9 *Track02.shn
e4484474e7cdc9bc7093ad131a57094a *Track03.shn
d5cd5ebaa1b30292bbc76e1dba06afe8 *Track04.shn
d533bf16c1e8435a037b906e2be69b23 *Track05.shn
6f48b188b9b45b0d95fa3d38f7167c25 *Track06.shn
22c5d431fca2ce67f1ffa477b3f3d80d *Track07.shn
ca697c8a294b28abbf31ebbd6adfc82d *Track08.shn
5c8a9e81e89ac58f72ea0a24efa73a9d *Track09.shn
f4fea0e5e2e7e26271ac392d75735b6d *Track10.shn
9cd5952b28500cd3228c74af34703633 *Track11.shn
ce6a06ef94f2dd4cf8a66c6190817248 *Track12.shn
93ee1ad059e9b87f757226dab9002dc6 *Track13.shn
a0ed4d57441eec424aed103489af9ae2 *Track14.shn


Notes by MOB (from a post on Dime 2008-01-08 21:08:18 GMT):

The 1969 BBC session torrented here is an obvious upgrade compared to HRV CDR 008 Rev.A, but we already have an even better source for this session (the versions of BBC69 here have excellent sound quality, but spectral analysis reveals some kind of compression - high frequencies were "cleaned" by some compression process, maybe mp3). The source we have sounds slightly more natural and has a pure frequency range.

For the 1968 BBC session, the tracks here were directly taken from the "master" version of John Peel 11Aug68 show torrented here some years ago (this torrent also included tracks by Tim Rose, Leonard Cohen...). The volume has been normalised for the present RoIO but apart from that they are strictly the same. And for the quality, with the exception of Massed Gadgets which is an obvious upgrade compared to HRV CDR 008 Rev.A, the gain in sound quality it's not so obvious for the 3 remaining 1968 songs. The "master" versions here have pure spectral characteristics, so they are probably from a direct transfer from BBC masters, but the tapes appear to have suffered with the years and there is a lot of tape warble, especially during Murderotic Woman (the exact title announced by John Peel) and Julia Dream. These tape flaws are NOT present on the corresponding HRV versions, that were taken from excellent sources (probably 1st gen). So you have the choice between a direct transfer from slightly "damaged" BBC masters (the current torrent) and the HRV versions from an older transfer, done before the tapes began to reveal their age. It's a matter of taste of course, but personnally I don't consider the 1968 tracks as upgrades (except Massed Gadgets), I prefer the HRV versions for their clarity and the absence of tape warble. The HRV versions are much brighter and more pleasant to my ears. This is an example where "master" does not directly mean better sound quality; sound quality depends on the age of the master at the time of the transfer (in other words, a well preserved 1st gen can sometimes have less flaws than a recent transfer of a "damaged" master).

Cheers!

- MOB

[Seems a Rev.B of HRV CDR 008 is in our future!]


Other Notes:

'Celestial Voices' is a brand new (2007) bootleg from Rover Records. They offer a recently uncovered, lost recording from August 9, 1969. According to a review at boot-review.com:

The first four songs come from a recently surfaced soundboard tape of a recording made of Pink Floyd at the Paradiso in Amsterdam on August 9, 1969. The band's set was professionally recorded with the intention of broadcast on Hilversum 3 Radio. When this tape first surfaced it was said there was a malfunction with the microphone for the vocals and the band were forced to play the songs as instrumentals. This isn't exactly accurate because Waters does still sing in Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, Careful With That Axe, Eugene, and in the latter part of A Saucerful Of Secrets. The vocals are present but barely audible.

Neither the audience nor the band seems to notice this and it leads one to the conclusion that the band's PA wasn't malfunctioning but the radio station's equipment was. Since the tape was unusable for the radio, Pink Floyd returned to Amsterdam the following month and were recorded by Hilversum 3 again on September 17th 1969 at the Concertgebouw, the famous The Man And The Journey tape.

The versions of the two other shows (May 12, 1969 and June 25, 1968) on the Celestial Voices boot are equally brilliant. The show at the Paris Cinema in London on May 12 precedes the Malaysian riots by one day. The last tune played that day was called The Narrow Way. It's chilling how it can describe the political fortunes of both Malaysia and Singapore.

This period of Pink Floyd was also their most liberating with all four members equally in charge and contributing. By the time Dark Side Of The Moon was made, Roger Waters was in control.
- The Little Chicken