Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is close to completion; that was the news at Surround Pro 2002 from veteran producer Alan Parsons, who confirmed the existence of the album’s long-rumored multi-channel re-mix.

“Officially, EMI won’t admit this is even happening,”

Parsons told High Fidelity Review.

“Unofficially, it’ll be finished by Christmas.”

Parsons also confirmed that the forthcoming high-resolution release is not built on the quadraphonic version (whose creation he documented in a 1975 Studio Sound article), but an entirely new mix from the original master tracks.

Despite receiving a Grammy® Award for his engineering work on the original Dark Side of the Moon release, Parsons is not involved in the current 5.1 project.

“I was never approached,”

he said.

“To say that I am angered by that would be an understatement.”

Asked if he knew whether the title was ultimately intended for release in DVD-Audio format (like previous EMI titles), or SACD, Parsons flatly declared,

“I have no idea.”

It has been widely rumored that the format of choice will be DVD-Audio (which is why we’re running this in the DVD-Audio news section), but as yet that is pure speculation as no official word has been forthcoming from EMI.

Regardless of the format in which it might ultimately appear, a 5.1 release of a title with the market clout of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ – which spent a record 15 years on the Billboard charts to become the fourth-best selling record of all time – has tremendous potential to galvanize consumer interest in multi-channel music. Let’s hope that after having gone through the effort to create this new version, EMI wastes no time in getting it onto retailer shelves.