Intro

Remain In Light transformed a new-wave, post-punk quartet into a 10-piece worldbeat-funk band in just eight African-inspired tracks. And where there’s polyrhythmic improvisation, there is prophetic intellect. Evidence of Talking Heads time travel can be found in the album made public on October 8, 1980. Nearly 40 years later, the 40-minutes. Album in the Talking Heads discography is worth hearing, “Remain In Light” remains singular- one of the most striking and original pieces of rock music ever recorded. Philip Maddox is a professional software engineer living in Columbia, MD.

Being of the MiniDisc, I enjoy experimenting with new equipment, techniques and manipulation. The Talking Heads remasters, whilst sadly brickwalled to an extent (see: LOUDNESS WAR), were still well presented and restored. The clarity of the 5.1 mixes in particular was appealing. At last, you could hear the smallest handheld wooden percussion instruments - I'm sure their African names are recorded for posterity elsewhere - alongside eerily clear vocals. Many other details emerge, unheard on both my dusty old vinyl and '80s issue of the CD:- perhaps mastered from the same tape as the original vinyl mix, as was the practice in that decade.

Downmixing

So! What I set out to do was press into service my new Onkyo 105FX and utilize its unique ability to record digitally directly to LinearPCM, better known to you as CD quality. The Talking Heads remasters were presented in DualDisc format. One side was the original record, remaster-compressed, and presented in the same manner as the old CD: 44kHz 16bit stereo. The otherside contained a DVD interface with the album presented in DVD Audio stereo and 5.1 surround. The 5.1 mixes were brand new and no doubt contained individual instructions for all five channels and a low frequency effect (LFE) output.

To Hell with SCMS

The Serial Copy Management System employed on MiniDisc prevents a further digital copy being made from any digital copy (by simply adding a 'copy' bit to the first copy). I've never had a true 5.1 system, but I played the 5.1 mixes and fed this signal into the Onkyo. An earlier version of this article was confused, and I erroneously stated that the signal was 'pure stereo' - this was a mistake I never caught on to. The signal was not 'pure stereo' at all - it was the 5.1 signal. I did not install the drivers for the Sound Blaster, using it only to transfer this signal in a lossless, digital way. This signal going into the Onkyo definitely was 5.1, because when I plugged it into a surround receiver, each channel was present, including LFE. The Sound Blaster itself could only achieve this based on how everything was connected. It had to be USB 'in' and a form of digital connection 'out'. What I neglected to explain was the actual mixing and adjustment of the audio levels, which took place in the software realm, in real-time as the 5.1 mix was played. The Onkyo 105FX was and is able to achieve this downmixing, because I later found out how to mute any of the 5.1 outputs before they reached the Sound Blaster. FR/RR mix to the right. The centre channel is then entirely left or entirely right or panned between both. An example is the female backing vocals in 'The Lady Don't Mind' - they are combined with the lead vocals in the official stereo mix and presented in the centre of the soundscape, where you can't really hear them. In the downmix, the lead vocal remains centre, but the backing vocals move to right channel only. They could easily have been left in the downmix, with certain adjustments. In the 5.1 mix through a proper 5.1 system, I assume they are centred and absent-or-subdued in other channels (I have not verified this). If the centre channels was absent, the vocals would be very weak or missing entirely in certain passages. The .1 (LFE) is subdued, and you can tell this because the bass isn't as prominent as in the official stereo mixes. This is my own personal preference. The practice in modern remasters has been to boost the bass, as well as the overall volume, because of what they believe is consumer preference. As for the Rome Concert 1980, there was nothing I could do about the poor quality or the clipping which was present in all versions.

Transcribing

From the Onkyo 105FX the blank was passed to one of my portable HiMD units (the MZ-DH710 'budget downloader'). The portables have an advantage over the deck: they can upload the pure data via USB. This data is then stored as a lossless LinearPCM file within Sony's much-maligned SonicStage software. Thankfully, it can do an easy convert of the files to wave format. Although the Onkyo is able to add trackmarks using LSync, most of the songs were too close together to be automatically split. Using 'Wavesplitter' software, I divided the track and analyzed the waveform. As you can see, it is a lot more natural than the one taken from the Official stereo side:

'Listening Wind' waveform of 5.1 stereo downmix:

'Listening Wind' waveform from official stereo mix:

Perhaps to make it seem as though loudness wasn't the only intent behind the mastering, they compressed it all and then reduced the overall volume; Certainly not a natural sound, and what a shoddy way to handle such a record.

It was now simple case of loading these converted wave files into Nero Burning Rom, titling them, then preventing the addition of the dreaded 'two second gap'. Once the CD was burned, it was neatly scribed courtesy of a black Staedtler. Later on, I skipped the CD burning and converted the files straight to FLAC.

Acquiring

I do not host the FLAC files or include them on a cloud account. However, an anonymous individual has made them available.

You can also try the torrent.

A collection of full album YouTube videos used to serve as samplers (the audio was lossily compressed) but they only existed from 2012 to 2019. After that YouTube tightened up its policies on posting copyrighted material. Many comments were posted which you can view below.

Listening

This CD already sounds distinctively different to the standard version, even through a 2-channel stereo system. If you have a multichannel receiver, go ahead and try different combinations. A rather trippy experience is to play the downmix back into a multichannel system by way of the OOPS effect. Since the recording is already a simulation of OOPS (because it includes five channels of audio mixed into two), having it 'processed' again yields a much more spacious sound: the vocals are a lot more pronounced, and on the rear channels you will hear, at the top of the mix, instruments and sounds previously relegated to the background. Percussion defines this album, and it is further brought out in this way.

Up The Downmix

Finally got a chance to sit down and listen to the Fear of Music 5.1 downmix you posted. It is astonishing to hear a record I've listened to 1000 times sound so new. Please post any other downmixes you come across. I just love them.
Best,
Ted

'The quality of your Heads downmixes is outstanding. There should be a lot more comments about these. Thank you for your excellent work.'
-jupitertwo

'I look forward to hearing these downmixes too. Thanks for the hard work and ingenius approach!'
-tortoised

'Words just don't do these tracks justice. You've taken 3 of my favorite albums and made them more incredible than the released versions. No chance we could get the same treatment for Naked, More Songs About Buildings and Food and 77 is there?'
-MrTHowerton

'You're a genius man, seriously!!'
-Casare Rizza

'Incredible work. As a massive TH fan and a massive Brian Eno fan, the extra 'bits' that are now audible have blown my tiny mind. Anyway, thanks for the work you've done.'
-anon

My heart is warmed by hearing of people's appreciation!
I honour all your kind words :)
I would love to do the others, but I will need time to acquire them all. I only ever bought those three and didn't pay at the time for the entire 'Brick' boxset.

Try an OOPS System as an even trippier way to appreciate just what they were doing in Remain In Light - the lead instrument at times is merely a handheld percussion instrument. It's effectively upmixing the downmix.

I hope Eno would appreciate; the vaguer you can make something, the more interesting it becomes?

-Sharoma
5/Jun/2011 23:29

Six years later and I've finally completed the downmix of the debut album. But first, a user submission:

Hey,
Thanks for the downmix you made for Speaking in Tongues. The audio is outstanding. I added a photo of the MD I recorded it on.

Remain In Light Talking Heads Rar