OTHER TECH

Would you revisit any of your other albums and give them the surround touch? Well, it's all down to the record labels, really. The labels don't seem to be too excited about it at the moment. But I might do it under my own steam if I can, if I'm able to license it.

Sony/BMG are going to re-release most of the Alan Parsons Project albums this year with bonus material, but they've expressed no interest in surround. So I'm looking through the archives for demo material, things like that.

Will you remaster them yourself? We've gone back to the original analog. They won't be high-def releases. They'll be standard Red Book [CD], but we've gone to the trouble of making them sound as good as they can - a big improvement on the currently available CDs.

So you're disappointed with those CDs, then? They're desperately awful. I had nothing to do with them. They went from analog to digital and back to analog again before they actually transferred them - hugely frustrating. But record companies, unfortunately, don't often pay attention to the "whims" of producers and recording engineers.

Do you have any current surround sound recording plans? I'm doing a score for a film by an old friend of mine, Patrick Read Johnson. He made a biographical movie about his involvement with Star Wars [called 5-25-77]. So, that being a feature movie, there will absolutely be surround sound.

But nothing in the center channel. Right. Only dialogue will go in the center! [both laugh]

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