| Review by emilsjr March 17, 2003 (1 of 2 found this review helpful)
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Performance:  Sonics:  |
Oasis brought a revival of British Pop with their best album, "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?". Full of some classic tracks, like "Wonderwall", "Champagne Super Nova" and "Don't Look Back in Anger", I was really looking forward to this disc. I am afraid that SACD hurts this release.
This recording was never regarded as high quality. When the masters for these tracks were made, something must have been very wrong. Thanks to the higher resolution of SACD, we get to hear how bad they were.
The multi-channel mix is plain horrible for the first 3 tracks. The vocals are coming from the centers, but they sound like an echo in a comparison to the balance of the channels. It is like listening in a wind tunnel. Everything sticks out poorly. Although this effect improves as the disc continues, the disc can never rise above poor. The results in stereo are not much better.
Frankly, I am baffled as to why Sony chose this as the first SACD from Oasis, other than the fact that it was their most popular release. Stick with redbook.
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| Review by FredCamp July 19, 2003 (3 of 3 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics:  |
I am a huge fan of Oasis, so I am bound to be a little more forgiving for this SACD than most. My advice to any other die-hard Oasis fans is to buy this SACD but consider the source material when evaluating it. The mix on the first few songs is odd, but the rest of the cd falls into line eventually. To me, it was all worth it just to get to the multi-channel mix of "Champagne Super Nova"
When this album was recorded, Noel Gallagher still had aspirations of being the next Phil Spector. The "wall of sound" on the source material must have proved challenging when it came to to remaster it for SACD. It seems that when the mix couldn't be improved, they opted to make it different. It's an okay disc, but I expect better things from the remasterings of the later discs, STANDING ON THE SHOULDER OF GIANTS and HEATHEN CHEMISTRY.
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| Review by peteyspambucket July 21, 2003 (2 of 3 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics: |
I was so looking forward to this release. The masters of these sessions must have been horrible. There's alot of overloading and the channel separation is terrible. Everything is blaring at once, and there's no balance. The vocals are everywhere, and it sounds like he was overloading the microphone. There's no space around the voice.
I like a lot of the songs on this album, but this SACD comes off very poorly.
June 2, 2004 - I'm making an addendum to my review because I have been able to listen to it in surround. I think it's great that the orchestra and some instruments have been isolated in the rear channels and now sound clearer than ever, but the overall sound is still very muddy, distorted, and overloaded.
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| Review by Kevin April 3, 2004 (5 of 6 found this review helpful)
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Performance:  Sonics:  |
Without a doubt, Morning Glory marks Oasis' climax in terms of songwriting and performance.It was an album that truely facinated me back in 1995 and turned me into a fan.
The sound of the album was never considered as high fidelity, or produced under that purpose.
In fact it's the full-blown 20 layers of overdriven guitars and the heavily compressed punching drums that rock in songs like Hello, Morning Glory or Roll With It and singer Liam Gallagher did some of his best vocals.Comparing the original CD version with the Stereo SACD version, I immediatly noticed a severe lack of high frequencies, especially in the rockier songs.This must be because of the new mastering engineer, who probably tried to avoid or reduce hiss.But this also makes the drums and strings sound very unnatural and cut off.While it was clear that the compressed sound of the album wouldn't benefit that much from DSD Mastering, I hoped to hear an improvement in the frequency bandwidth. But this is not really recognisable, probably because of the strange reduction of high frequencies (see above). Also ringing noises are much more annoying now (Hey Now, Some Might Say).
It's probably up to personal taste if the Stereo layer offers an improvement or not.
The Multichannel layer came out worse in most cases. While the instrumental sound is quite ok and a finer channel separation is noticeable, they really messed up the vocals using a very sharp und unnatural reverb in most cases. (Hello! and Some Might Say sound awful!)
The best results, in my opinion, offer Cast No Shadow (nice slide-guitar and string sound) and She's electric (less reverb which makes it sound almost better than the stereo version).
In the end, what's left to say is that the SACD is a matter of taste and a nice addition to a fan's collection, but it could've been done much better, even considering the difficult source material.
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| Review by mccontrol July 16, 2008 (3 of 5 found this review helpful)
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Most of the benefits of SACD surround sound needs the right equipment,if you have it and you like your rock hard & snotty,buy this album before it's deleted/sold out.
This is one of the most unusual surround mixes I have listened to.It's not so much a 5.1 mix as it is a surround experience.
If you like Oasis and own a SACD player this gives you bucks for your pennies.Maybe bucks should have a capital "B".The music of Oasis is a very thick heavy sound and one would not think of it being a good candidate for surround treatment,what with ALL those guitars played REALLY LOUD and stacked on top of each other there would not seem to be much room to spread things out,BUT they do!
This SACD is a great example(along with Meatloaf's "Bat Out Of Hell" and Deep Purple's "Machine Head"),of how heavy rock and electric guitars can sound SO SO GOOD!It's as good as having the Gallagher Brothers set up at your place to lay down a few tracks for their next album(if only).You can almost smell the intensity as Liam sneers through the opening track "Hello",and "Champagne Supernova" is like a brand new song.It literally fills the room.
Honestly,you feel like your in the recording studio with them!It's no small wonder that the 5.1 mix is as good as it is.Longtime Dire Straits producer Neil Dorfsman was the knob twiddler.He's no slouch at recording/producing a tune or two.I never imagined Oasis in surround sounding so good!
Stick it in your player,turn it up and I hope you have understanding/deaf neighbours.****ing Great
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| Review by David Jay June 29, 2014 (4 of 4 found this review helpful)
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I greatly enjoyed this Super Audio CD for its exclusive multichannel mix of the album by the producer Neil Dorfsman. It's great to hear some of the different choices made in expanding Oasis's dense 'wall of sound' to the discrete surround sound format. The remix manages to be very faithful to the original stereo mix by Owen Morris (also included on this disc), whilst enhancing the clarity and sense of space on tracks like Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger. The dynamics are also a little more open than the original CD, with a corresponding increase in separation between each instrument, whilst still preserving the intense energy that characterises the original mix. One of the best-sounding tracks (on my system) is Cast No Shadow.
I believe that the version of the original stereo mix included on this SACD is most likely derived from the original CD mastering, as it seems that the original analogue master tapes of each mix were not available to the producers of this disc. In casual comparisons I found the mastering of the Owen Morris mix here and on the original Creation CD to be very close.
Anyone interested in learning more about the production of this SACD may find an article on my Oasis website of interest. In an exclusive new interview by Tom Stroud for Oasis Recording Info, the Grammy award-winning producer Neil Dorfsman, perhaps best known for his work with such diverse artists as Dire Straits, Sting, Björk, and Paul McCartney, speaks for the first time about remixing Oasis’s classic album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? in 5.1 surround sound for the Super Audio CD edition.
http://www.oasis-recordinginfo.co.uk/?page_id=1201
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