The Moody Blues Album: “Days Of Future Passed: Deluxe Edition”

This latest edition of "Days Of Future Passed" has to be the last, as it is nearly perfect. The Moody Blues have never been keen on keeping old unused material, so what is presented here is very, very good and very, very rare. Now on SACD, the sound is faultless and the mixing is astounding. Besides the first seven tracks of the original, the second CD contains outtakes, singles, B-Sides and alternate versions of pre-"Days Of Future Passes" songs and BBC Sessions that are as solid and pure as a studio recording. This is the sound that will keep you mesmerized for years.

The remaining tracks are listed here and it is great to hear the complete album songs without the orchestration:

Tuesday Afternoon (Alternate Mix)

Dawn Is A Feeling (Alternate Version)

Sun Set (Alternate Vocal Mix)

Twilight Time (Alternate Vocal Mix)

Night In White Satin (Mono Single Version)

Fly Me High (Mono Single Version)

I Really Haven't Got The Time (Mono Single Version)

Love & Beauty (Mono Single Version)

Leave This Man Alone (Mono Single Version)

Cities (Mono Single Version)

Long Summer Days (Stereo Version)

Please Think About It (Stereo Version)

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (BBC Saturday Club 5/9/67)

Love & Beauty (BBC Easybeat Session 9/20/67

Leave This Man Alone (BBC Easybeat Session 9/20/67

Peak Hour (BBC Easybeat Session 9/20/67

Nights In White Satin (BBC Dave Symonds Session 1/1/68

Fly Me High (BBC Dave Symonds Session 1/1/68

Twilight Time (Live BBC Dave Symonds Session 1/1/68)

This is the ultimate collection of the Moody Blues first successful album and an important piece in musical history. The box is half plastic and half cardboard which might not last as long as a regular CD package. However, the liner package notes are exhaustive with many new pictures and a complete history.

(Note: Disc 1 is an SACD mix made from the original quadraphonic tapes. Disc 2 is the original remastered quadraphonic tapes - not SACD. This is seen as Disc 1 is gold colored and Disc 2 is silver).

NOTE 1: I don't have an 5.1 channel SACD player, so my comments are about the standard 2-channel CD-Audio layer of Disc 1. This is what most people likely to buy this set will hear anyway.

NOTE 2: The three stars are for the SACD remastering. The album itself is a 5-star classic.

I've been living with this wonderful album since the 1960s, wearing out at least three copies on vinyl. Then I got both the 2-channel Dolby stereo and 4-channel quad open reel tapes. Finally I bought the original CD release, and then the Mobile Fidelity Gold CD release. (Yes, I guess I'm a hardcore fan.) To my ears, the Mobile Fidelity was by far the best-sounding version, although it was not without problems (somewhat hissy, and an audible drop-out near the end).

It was with great excitement that I ordered this new SACD remastering, hoping that the latest technology combined with the supervision of Hayward and Lodge would produce a definitive version. Boy, was I disappointed.

Like so many other remasterings nowadays, this edition of DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED has been agressively compressed to make it sound "louder." This became obvious as soon as the orchestral introduction ended and "Dawn Is A Feeling" began. The dynamic swells that made earlier versions sound majestic and lifelike have been squashed to a hard, glassy sheen. The heavy-handed processing is especially noticeable on "Another Morning" and "The Sunset."

To be absolutely certain about what I was hearing, I ripped the entire SACD Disc 1 into my PC using Sound Forge. Then I ripped the entire Mobile Fidelity CD and put the two waveforms side by side on my screen. The difference is dramatic and obvious. The Mobile Fidelity version preserves the entire dynamic range of the original; the overall gain was adjusted so that only the loudest moments approach peak level. This version lets you hear how some songs are softer or louder than others, and how certain key moments (the end of "Peak Hour," for instance) are loudest of all.

By comparison, the waveform of the SACD version is flatlined at just two-tenths of a decibel below peak over the ENTIRE course of the album! This means that any subtle change in volume between and within songs is completely lost. Everything sounds the same: LOUD. This is the same scrunched sound you get when you hear music on the radio. Even listening with high-quality headphones gave me ear fatique.

FOR ENGINEERS ONLY: The average RMS power level of the Mobile Fidelity CD is -19.1 dB, with a peak level of -1.1 dB. The stereo SACD layer's average RMS power level is only -9.1 dB, with a peak of -0.1 dB. That's a full 10 dB louder, and judging from the peaks, at least 8 dB of dynamic range has been lost. Who did these guys think they were mastering? LL Cool J? Britney?

Despite its CONSTANTLY LOUD presentation, the SACD version is less hissy than the Mobile Fidelity. That's because the SACD mastering employed digital noise reduction, a technique Mobile always avoided because of the audible artifacts such processing can cause. I don't hear any of those artifacts in the SACD version, though. Also, the drop-out near the end of "Nights In White Satin" on the Mobile Fidelity is not heard on the SACD.

Conclusion: The out-of-print Mobile Fidelity CD of DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED is probably the most accurate representation of the original master tapes we will ever have. The new SACD version sounds squashed from start to finish. Although remarkably clean, it unequivocally FAILS to reproduce the entire dynamic range of the classic album.

The bonus tracks on the second disc are of variable interest. The "alternate takes" in tracks 1-4 are worth hearing, though the differences are often small. The mono, non-orchestral "Nights In White Satin" on track 5 is nice to have. The singles in tracks 6-12 were all released previously in the out-of-print PRELUDE collection, except that "Cities" is in mono here instead of true stereo, as on the earlier disc. The BBC sessions on tracks 13-19 are the most interesting, especially the very respectable cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."

If you're a Moodies completionist, or if you can't find a copy of PRELUDE, you'll want to get this set for the bonus tracks. But if you want to hear how great this old warhorse really sounds, track down a copy of the Mobile Fidelity CD on eBay. This SACD mastering is a sad misrepresentation.

Here's the story: Apparently in 1978 there were some problems with the master tapes to DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED. I don't really know what that was about, but at that point the album received a different, and mostly inferior, mix from the one a lot of us grew up with. This is true not only of the later LP & cassette copies but ALL CD copies.

When I saw something about this new edition having the "original" mix I was intrigued. It sounded too good to be true, and it was. This is still basically the same inferior mix as all the other CD copies. Three of the seven tracks are still altered in subtle but undesirable ways. Mostly it just affects backing vocals, but it's surprising how much difference those can make. If you didn't grow up with the original mix like I did, or if you're not such a purist, all this shouldn't bother you. But at least be aware of what you're getting with this.

I purchased this item based on a review from the All Music Guide in which the reviewer stated that they had finally used the original mix. I assumed this meant the 1967 mix, not the later 1978 remix by Hugh Mendl, but the reviewer was wrong.

If you're familiar with this album, but haven't heard the original stereo or mono mix, I highly recommend you seek both of them out on vinyl. The songs "Evening Time To Get Away", "Twilight Time", and "Nights In White Satin" all suffer from missing overdubs which either Hugh overlooked or couldn't access. The 5.1 version (ahem...remixed Quadrophonic) suffers from the same fate, only worse (a couple more overdubs lost), but it's at least understandable when you're talking about re-mixing a 4 track recording for this medium.

The bonus tracks make up for some of this because the original mono single of "Nights" and an alternate mix of "Twilight" are here, though not in SACD like the album.

I have also read the reviewer who suggested that the mixers applied way too much compression to these remixes. In this case, I can see the point, but I'll let you decide whether it's worth buying the out-of-print (and costly) Mobile Fidelity versions.

Altogether, this was a worthwhile buy if you're interested in hearing the Moodies bonus tracks, which I was anyway (and they're great!), but if you're looking for the original stereo mix of the album, it ain't here.

I am perplexed that someone would rip this album after first admitting that he did not have a SACD player, but was reviewing the standard stereo CD mix.

The only good reason to buy this album is the 5.1 surround SACD track. (Even if you want to maintain the 2 channel listening experience, at least use the SACD track)The 5.1 SACD track is glorious, and far better than any optical pressing to date. Not since vinyl has it been so warm. I never heard the quad vinyl, so I can't comment on that.