The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday
Trey’s senior thesis as performed by Phish.
Recorded in 1987 on a 4 track cassette recorder.
Evidently, according to ‘The Phish Companion’
the music/songs were mixed to mono to be one stereo
side with the narration added on the other channel.
That’s the way the tape was originally shared.
Along the way people digitally mixed this to spread
the music and the narration across the stereo field.
In a variety of ways.
SHN #’s 945 and 946 were early shares.
946 has a patch at the beginning of Wilson that fixes 945.
There is a ‘remaster’ of these. The earlier shares and the remaster
both have the stereo channels out of phase 180 degrees from one another.
Possibly done on purpose, I think people do this once in awhile thinking that
it sounds good, it doesn’t.
Then there is another version SHN # 88662 that is supposedly from a 5th.
generation cassette. Too bad someone doesn’t share an earlier generation
with the music on the one side and the narration on the other.
Anyway it’s been said that 88662 is the best sounding version commonly shared.
That’s what I used for this share. Thanks to Jw603 for sharing it.
The thing about 88662 is that not only did someone mix the two sides together
but they also did more to create a ‘fake stereo’ version.
If a person had the original share with the music on one side and the narration on
the other you could mix them down together for true mono. Duplicate waveforms
in both channels. On 88662 at some point someone emphasized on the left the low
end frequencies and on the right the high end. With the mids in the middle.
It also had phase issues. So anyway not a very pleasant thing to listen to especially
on headphones.
So here I have defeated all of this. Evened up the lows and the highs so they aren’t
spread across the stereo field that way. Also took care of all phase issues throughout
the frequency spectrum.
What I did not do though is to make this truly mono, the waveforms identical in both channels.
Somewhere along the line a bit of reverb/ambience was added and going full mono
doesn’t sound right. You lose the ambience and the sound is then quite dry.
So the final result is everything is fairly monoish with a hint of ambience that is still there.
I think this is the best this can sound until someone shares a low generation cassette with
the music on the one side and the narration on the other.
Or until Phish put it out officially themselves.
Or someone does the same thing I did only better.
Unlike one of the previous ‘remasters’ this is not brick walled/overblown.
It has an RMS of -19.8 dB.
I left in some of the tape/stop noises and clicks here and there.
They add to the listening experience not subtract from it.
SHN 88662 files thoroughly tampered with for this production.
acetboy
Oct. 3rd. 2016
01 Narration
02 The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday
03 The Lizards
04 Tela
05 Narration->Ride on a Multi-beast->Narration
06 Wilson prologue narration
07 Wilson->AC/DC Bag prologue Narration
08 AC/DC Bag
09 Narration
10 Colonel Forbin’s Ascent
11 Fly Famous Mockingbird
12 Narration
13 The Sloth
14 Narration
15 Possum