YES
The Palace of Auburn Hills
Auburn Hills, MI
8 May 2004

"Bright Side of the Sky"

Disc 1:
1.01 Firebird Suite (2.10)
1.02 Going For The One (5.30)
1.03 Sweet Dreams (6.47)
1.04 I've Seen All Good People (6.42)
1.05 Intro Mind Drive (0.46)
1.06 Mind Drive Part 1 (6.45)
1.07 South Side Of The Sky (10.27)
1.08 Turn Of The Century (8.02)
1.09 Foot Prints (1.13)
1.10 Mind Drive Part 2 (6.06)
1.11 Intro Yours Is No Disgrace (0.31)
1.12 Yours Is No Disgrace (12.12)
1.13 Elgin Mansions ~ The Meeting (4.02)
1.14 Long Distance Runaround (3.35)
1.15 Intro Wonderous Stories (0.44)


Disc 2:
2.01 Wonderous Stories (4.19)
2.02 Intro (0.43)
2.03 Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life (0.47)
2.04 Intro Time Is Time (0.22)
2.05 Time Is Time (2.39)
2.06 Intro Roundabout (2.05)
2.07 Roundabout (5.04)
2.08 Show Me (4.07)
2.09 Second Initial (3.09)
2.10 Rhythm Of Love (5.45)
2.11 Intro And You And I (0.27)
2.12 And You And I (11.27)
2.13 Intro Ritual (0.59)
2.14 Ritual (25.42)
2.15 Intro Every Little Thing (0.31)
2.16 Every Little Thing (5.11)
2.17 Soon (6.21)

Lineage:
Core Sound Binuaral (left only) > Core Sound Battery Box (bass roll off filter) > Sony TCD-D100 DAT > Oade 7-pin cable > M-Audio Audiophile USB > Cool Edit Pro 2.0 > CDWav > SHN (mwkACT, verified with shntool).

Notes:
This was a comedy of errors and annoyances for me, but it has somehow turned out more listenable than it has any right to be. A list of defects and other comments follows:

Loud crowd noise in many places, including an idiot who sat directly behind me. Too bad I didn't preserve the drunken, completely inaccurate history of Yes that he foisted upon his neighbors during intermission.

There was frequent static in the right channel (I believe I have a short in that line, as it remains a problem) which largely rendered it useless. The static-free sections were not long enough to justify trying to incorporate it.

Somewhere between the hotel and the start of the show, my DAT got put into LP mode, which is 32K, instead of 44.1k or 48k. This was not intentional.

Near the beginning of Long Distance Runaround, I got busted for having a camera. You can hear this interchange clearly, unfortunately, along with my attempts to bring it to an end as quickly as possible. At least he was oblivious to the taping. As I was sitting through Ritual later in the concert, I decided on a working title for the show--"Catch as We Look" :)

There is some intermittent mic noise in parts of the acoustic set. Fairly short duration, and not too distracting, compared to the other annoyances.

Having listened to the results and been rather disappointed, I finally decided to just make use of the left channel and see what could be done for my own use. I decided that since the recording was already considerably less than perfect, I would feel fairly unconstrained about the editing/remastering process. I converted to 44.1k (w/ highest quality setting) at 32 bits with Cool Edit Pro 2.0, and then created some simulated stereo (Graphic Phase Shifter to create different left and right channels, stereo field expansion, some reverb, etc.). Since I had used the bass roll-off filter, I boosted the low end with the parametric equalizer. I also boosted the relative volume of the acoustic set. I then made some light use of hard limiting a bit past the point that normalization would have allowed, to reduce the crowd level during applause. Realizing that the total length was just over 160 minutes, I decided to go in and edit out some of the applause--most of the applause sections have been shortened, though I made every attempt to make these deletions seamless. The transition from the end of set one to the beginning of the acoustic set after intermission is the only spot that still has an obvious seam. Back to 16 bits, dithered with triangular noise shaping, then CDWav, and shn'd.

May 2004
SFenton

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