Alanis, Disturbed, Neil Young purchased today... (1 Viewer)

[Shawn C]

I've given all three of these a BRIEF listen today and here are some initial impressions. Warning: I am not much of a writer.
Neil Young - Harvest (OR, how NOT to do multi-channel audio.)
Man, does this surround is weird.
"Heart of Gold": Neil's voice is 100% at the center channel, about 90% at the rears, and at about 20% in the front left and right. Same goes for his harmonica. It just does not sound right. I can't think of a reason for having his vocals like this, other than "surround, just for the sake of surround"
"Out on the Weekend": Drums EVERYWHERE. Drums from the mains, drums duplicated in the rears. Harmonica mixed way too low. This song sounds like your are listening to it from the inside of the bass drum.
Fortunately, things get better with the Stereo mix. I didn't give it much of a listen, but from what I heard, it was 200% better than the surround mix.
Disturbed - Believe (let's rock!)
One peeve: No selection of STEREO or SURROUND mixes from the menus! You have to use your player to change back and forth. I used the "Audio" button on my remote.
Now this is nice! Vocals at 100% in the center, about 20% in the mains. Drums mostly from the center channel and LFE. Rears used pretty much for ambience except for "Remember" that starts with a slow pan "right rear, left rear, front" Sound quality better than Metallica's Black Album DVD-A(not that there is anything wrong with the Metallica DVD-A). I did not give the stereo tracks a listen. Sounds good, but hard to recommend if you already have the CD(it didn't stop me).
Alanis Morissette - Under Rug Swept
Again, no Stereo or Surround selections from the menus. Awesome animated menus that appear from a graphical 'broom-sweep' effect.
Easily the best sounding of the 3 discs I picked up. STRONG and sweet sounding vocals from the center. Some guitar work from the rears. I need to listen more to add anything else.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Shawn,

Do these titles all have a 'medium res' stereo track on the DVD-V portion? If so, are they PCM, or DD2.0?

Is there production credits for the Harvest surround version? Whose names are listed?


Thanks,

Mike

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Tears,
When I read about the engineer for the Young Harvest mix, I knew we were in trouble. And I posted as such. But, man! This is even worse than I could have imagined!
Ugh!

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Ed,

I missed that. What did it say?

I assume that Mr. Young has no interest in surround mixes so he had no involvement. Which is his prerogative.

I was going to buy it for the stereo anyway.

 

[AaronD]

I'm glad to hear the new Alanis release is promising on DVD-A. This may finally motivate me to hook up a switch between my SACD and DVD-A players.
-Aaron

 

[Shawn C]

Is there production credits for the Harvest surround version? Whose names are listed?

DVD-A Mixed by Elliot Mazer with John Hausman at Redwood Digital.
Transfers and Support: John Nowland

DVD-Audio Master and Editing by Eric Conn with Don Cobb
Mastered at Georgetown Masters by Denny Purcell
DVD Authoring: Spencer Chrislu, Craig Anderson and David Dieckmann

DVD-Audio Producer: David May (for all three, actually)

 

[NickSo]

How does the DD/DTS sound on this disc? I may pick it up just for the heck of it... I have 'sampled' their album and it sounds pretty awesome. If you do get a chance to try it out in DD/DTS, canya tell em how the bass is? I dont have a DVDA player.

 

[John Tillman]

I was going to buy it for the stereo anyway.

For the $14 at Circuit City you can't go wrong. What I've heard so far on the surround didn't impress me but the hi-rez 2-channel is more than worth it.

 

[Justin Lane]

The Harvest stereo track is excellent. Head to head the DVD-A stereo track easily bested my vinyl copy of Harvest (though my record player is not the greatest, and old Marantz).

I have to agree that the 5.1 mix of Heart of Gold was very strange. It did produce a very nice three dimensional effect with Young's voice, though this is not how I perfer my 5.1 music.

My only gripe with this release is the packaging. It was made to look like the original Vinyl release. It is cardboard kind of like a digipack and the disc (which looks like a record) is found within a white sleeve that slips into the casing like a record. The concept is nice, but the case is the size of a standard CD case, not matching the rest of my DVD-A Super Jewel cases, and like any cardboard packaging, it will wear out over time.

J

 

[Martin Fontaine]

ADVANCED RESOLUTION SURROUND, ADVANCED RESOLUTION STEREO, DVD-VIDEO COMPATIBLE DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1, DTS 5.1 SURROUND.

Is The Alanis Morissette DVD-A in DTS?!?!?! Full-Bitrate? I'll buy it eventually, but if it's in DTS, I'll buy it tomorrow!

 

[Matt Butler]

Alanis in DTS!!!!!

Holy shit Im buying it now!! Please tell me its true!
I bought Disturbed already and it didnt have DTS. I was gonna wait to pick up Alanis because of cash flow.

 

[Shawn C]

Nope. Alanis is not in DTS, only Neil Young is. Sorry for the confusion. Disturbed and Alanis are DVD-A and just Dolby Digital.

 

[NickSo]

How does the DD5.1 sound on the disturbed DVDa then?

 

[Matt Butler]

Nick,
The Disturbed 5.1 is quite good. Like posted above it is mostly the fronts that are used. The LFE is used nicely and not too heavy like the Metallica DVD-A.
I "Believe" you should go get it.

 

[NickSo]

Sweet.. ijust hope they might have them locally...

 

[MichaelTa]

The Harvest DVD-A is DD,DTS,5.1 Surround and Stereo with the last 2 being in adv res. One thing I have not been able to do on my DVD-A player is get the DD and DTS to work. Only the surround and stero. It does come across as 192k/24bit and sounds good. As a test I put the disk into my Philips 825 and DTS and DD showed up in the menu. My DVD-A player is the Pioneer DV-656A. I'm thinking it does it this way because of the fact it is a DVD-A. Has anyone else seen this or is this unique to this player.

 

[Al B. C]

It it's anything like my Toshiba SD9200, you may have to change it's content priority from audio to video.

 

[Shawn C]

I have the same "problem" with my JVC DVD-A player. If it detects a DVD-A title, you ain't gonna get DD or DTS. There is probably some setup thing somewhere where I could make it work, but why?

The DVD-A are generally of a higher quality than the DD or DTS tracks. Are you trying to test something?

 

[Michael Gilliam]

First, Neil Young's "Harvest" does have a Dolby Stereo track if played in a DVD-V player.

I too was highly disappointed in the DVD-A multichannel mix. I had to check and see if my cables were properly connected (even though I knew they were), because everything is in the rears. You have to get very close to the front speakers to even detect any vocals at all. This changes with "Old Man." If I'm not mistaken, the vocals are more up front here. But in most tracks, the rears dominate. (Perhaps I WILL switch the front & rear cables next time I listen to the disc)
I then played the disc in a regular DVD-V player, listening to the DTS track. Again, the vocals are more highly present in the rears, but without as much separation, thus sounding a bit better (as far as surround goes, not talking sound quality here). Quite a frustrating disc.

The DVD-A stereo is preferable, and has a sampling rate of 192 KHz.

"Under Rug Swept" is very good, but I too hate that there is no way to select the Stereo version in the settings.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Namesake Michael,
Elliot Mazer, Idiot Master to me [for surround I should say], helped with the original recording of Harvest. He remixed the tracks for six channels.

"The electric songs, though, were originally recorded with a PA in a barn. We even had mikes outside the barn picking up reflections from the hills."

See complete interview in S&V Oct 2000.

I also started this thread:
multi-dysfunctional [long] in the Music Area.