Tape hiss noises

The hissing at the beginning of 5:15 has definitely been there from the
beginning.  There are two: one just before the railstation noises start,
another just before the music starts.  The second one is loud enough that I am
able to hear it on my 23-year-old vinyl played on equipment which is by no
means high end.  When I got the original CD version, I heard the quieter first
one.

Chris Goosman's explanation, I believe, is correct...

  From: goose@umcc.umcc.umich.edu (Christopher L. Goosman)
  Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 16:11:42 -0400 (EDT)
  Subject: Re: Embarrassed Correction re: 5:15 intro


  Very much on the ball, except that the noise is a combination of servo noise
  and probably bias frequency (which I didn't even think of before, but it's
  usually not that loud, plus there's too much of a pattern to the noise
  itself)  In this case to assemble the song as a whole it looks like thay had
  no less than four machines running.  Machine #1: Railstation noises; Machine
  #2: Piano tracks; Machine #3: Band Tracks.  These all went through a mixer
  and into machine #4 recording the whole shebang.  Yikes!  Computers make the
  process a lot more simple these days.

...except that I don't understand why he thinks the piano and "band" would be
on different machines.  The piano, guitar, and bass all start at exactly the
same time... it's unlikely that this could be sync'ed properly if the piano
were on a different tape.  

I believe that the piano tracks from Pete's demos were used on the finished
recordings of several songs.  If that's the case on 5:15, Pete's demo track
was probably transferred to the "real" multitrack tape, then the other
instruments were recorded onto the same multitrack.  The railstation noises
came from a different tape.  During final mixdown, the 2-track master recorder
was started, then the railstation noises (and the first hissing as that
playback came up to speed), then the multitrack with all the instrumentals
(and the second very noticable hissing).

Here's an interesting point:  if you listen to Pete's demo of Love Reign O'er
Me on the Scoop album, there is a very noticable level of hiss during his
piano intro.  (Ditto for "Quadrophenia Unused Piano".)  I gather that Pete
recorded his demos without a good noise reduction system.  I believe that the
water dripping sound effects at the beginning of Love Reign O'er Me on the
final Quad album were put there to mask this hiss, as much as they were to
provide atmosphere.  

If Pete's demo was used to provide the piano track at the beginning of 5:15,
that track would have plenty o' hiss, too.  That would account for startup
noise in 5:15, and also explain why it's not there for other tracks.

Ken Traub