The Dark Side Of The Moon

For some of us the Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon was one of those pivotal albums that as we went beyond more simplistic pop tunes usually in the form of 45's (aka "Singles") we explored usually with some support by older siblings to more deeper lyrical concerns and musicianship not that I didn't love (and still love) my Mud and Bay City Rollers 45's.

Sooner or later you move from hearing it a few times back then from tape to buying yourself the whole package and this album was such a thing being in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics, two posters and stickers.
The album explores the nature of the human condition specifically loneliness and mental illness using what were start of the art tape and electronic instrument techniques of the early 1970's.
My copy was a Canadian Capitol pressed edition with different posters I learnt several years back that Brits had in their own which to limit wear I taped to cassette for portable use and open reel tape for home use. You're welcome to try lugging such a machine and changing 7" tape reels on the move!

In the ever so fantastic plastic 1970's it wasn't enough to be thinking about sound from two speakers but four so a special four channel "Quadraphonic" mix was made and by some quirky math based science you could get four channels into the two channels of a stereo lp and (paws crossed) get four channels back out to impress the neighbours by surrounding them in  sound! 
They called it SQ standing for Stereo/Quadraphonic.
That lp jacket is of the UK Quad edition Q4 SHVL 804.

Quad had to everywhere like in our car so we had a Q8 eight track four channel tape player that was pretty swell and special four channel tapes were issued that offer better separation between the four channels than the fancy four into two and back as four electronics could manage from lp record and radio.
This is the UK tape, Q8 SHVL 804 that used the actual four channel mix direct as Capitol in making theirs took that funny 4 to 2 processed version for the SQ lp and decoded it before putting that on their tape which was silly as the actual four channel master existed and technically poorer but hey it's Capitol Record USA and they do stupid stuff at times.

Roll on March 31, 2003 and it's the thirtieth birthday of Dark Side of the Moon in an era that has seen the establishment of the compact disc as the pre-eminent sound carrier and the start of attempts to improvement on the sound it's had since the early 1980's.
It was decided to issue it in the Super Audio CD format that I mentioned on "the other blog tm" in the form of one disc with a regular stereo cd layer and a Super Audio cd (sacd) layer for both stereo and an improved form of surround sound called 5.1 often used for movies with a special remix being done for that version.

At the time only a few people had sacd players and because of this few heard that layer of the disc so when so-called audiophiles started debating all the 5 cm disc versions of this album all they heard the slightly compressed when it comes to the loudest and softest sound regular layer which has become a common trend since the mid 1990's and dismissed it.
I bought this sacd at the time and was very much encouraged to ditch it for a much older version by a certain forum but that ignored one thing. The regular cd layer and the super audio cd stereo versions were done separately and actually the stereo sacd layer sounds better than any of the cd only issues when played back on a machine like mine.
That ironically is why a decade on I ended up rebuying this disc and believe me its fantastic with clearer instrument sounds and effects like the heartbeat and chimes in "Time".
One moral of this story is don't let others tell you what to like and buy as they may be wrong.