The Blue Nile “A Walk Across The Rooftops” (5.1)

1984

In early 1984 Scottish band The Blue Nile released their debut album “A Walk Across The Rooftops” including the single Tinseltown in the Rain. After 40 years the album is still regarded as a classic, and in all that time the band have released only three other albums.

2010

A user called XTC343 uploaded some files to a USENET newsgroup: a fan-made multi-channel version of The Blue Nile’s “A Walk Across The Rooftops” album. The .nfo file said only:

This is an upmix from stereo to 5.1
Done in Plogue.

I was so excited to listen to one of my favourite albums in a new way. I burned the DTS format 5.1 .wav and .cue pair to a CD and played it in a Sony Blu-Ray player. It was awesome! The album sounded more like a live session, with instruments and noises positioned all around.

2023

Anyway, lots of time passed, and one day in September 2023 I rediscovered these files in my archives. A quick Google showed that they had been forgotten about and did not exist anywhere else, so I thought I’d upload them to Internet Archive. I didn’t give it any further thought.

2024

It’s now February 2024 and I realise that I have a whole bunch of devices capable of playing multi-channel audio: my iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and AirPods Pro headphones! Time to revisit those files.

Wrangling

Immediately it was easy to confirm playback using the original DTS format .wav and VLC app on macOS. But how to get the audio into the Music app so I can listen on my device of choice?

1. XLD and the .cue sheet to split the single DTS format .wav into multiple files
2. FFMPEG to convert the DTS format .wav files into AC3 format .m4a files

Using a video container for audio content is a trick normally reserved for podcasts, so they can have chapter markers, but here it enables us to get multi-channel content into Music app (aka iTunes).

Playback

You’ll need some multi-channel capable listening equipment.

For the DTS .wav you can either burn it to a CD and play it in a suitable CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/etc player, or play the file directly using software (VLC).

For the Apple .m4a files you can drop them onto the Music app or copy across your devices.

I’m sorry but I cannot help you with any of this.

Have fun listening!

Download

archive.org/details/the-blue-nile-a-walk-across-the-rooftops-dts-5.1