Sarah Mclachlan Mirrorball DVD Problems! (1 Viewer)

[JasonG]

Hi all

I am a big Sarah fan and I just purchased her dvd Mirrorball. Now It has a DD 5.1 track for the songs and I was going on a review from Link Removed which said it sounds awesome. But the problem I am having is it seems to have no bass or very little. The cd of the same name sound better than the dvd! Does anyone else have any experience with this disc? Is mine defective?

JasonG

 

[Dave Mack]

Make sure you manually choose the 5.1 trk. It defaults to 2.0. Mine sounds great. VERY bassy.

D

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

I don't like the 5.1 track because it sounds kind of boomy and too heavy with reverb, so lack of bass was not a problem I encountered. Make sure you have the correct audio track selected as Dave pointed out. I like the sound of the 2.0 track with no surround decoding engaged, personally, but you be the judge.

Regards,

 

[JohnRice]

I wonder if my copy is defective. It has virtually no center channel on the 5.1 mix. You can barely hear her, so I always play the 2.0 mix. A buddy also has it, so maybe I'll try his disc.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

John,

Your disc is not defective -- the DD5.1 soundtrack was mixed that way. Sarah's vocals get drowned out throughout much of the performance, and there is way too much echo in the rears for my taste. I was very disappointed in this 5.1 mix. On the rare occasions that I play this DVD, I opt for the two-channel mix. However, when I need a Sarah fix, I usually listen to one of her CDs -- they sound much better.

 

[Dave Mack]

Hey, just popped mine in and went to the center speaker. Surprisingly you're right. I never noticed that b4. Her voice is indeed spread out mostly in the left and right channels. There is bass in the overall mix though. Don't know how much is discreet as I have small speakers with crossover.
ALOT of reverb as if you're listening from the middle of the hall. An artistic choice I assume to sound more ethereal.

D

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

No center channel vocal is not necessarily a bad thing. The Norah Jones SACD has a 5.1 mix where the vocals are "centered", but not actually placed in the center channel. It still sounds good. The Mirrorball 5.1 mix has other issues (depending how you feel about it) with how the vocals are placed in the mix.

Regards,

 

[CraigL]

I absolutely love the sound mix on the disc. Having seen Sarah live a good 5 or 6 times, it is a VERY realistic representation of the mix at a concert.

That and my 100-some odd bootlegs

 

[jeff lam]

You will find that many concert DVD's will not have center channel info. Concerts are usually reproduced in stereo. How often have you seen a center speaker at a live show???
I never have. There are usually two large stacks on each side reproducing stereo. The surrounds just give you that reverb and crowd sound that makes you feel like you are there.

 

[JohnRice]

My problem is not that her voice is not coming from the center channel, it's that it is virtually nonexistant in the 5.1 mix. When I play a concert DVD, I usually turn off the center channel and run it in phantom mode anyway, but the 5.1 mix of this dvd is all instruments and ambience with virtually no audible vocals.

 

[Luis_RC]

For me, the 5.1 mix is horrible. The 2.0 is much much better. Though, both tracks are mixed very low compared to most other concert DVD's, it seems to be almost 10 dB low.
Wish they just released a properly mixed DTS version.

Still, it's a very good concert and definitively worth getting

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

But the problem I am having is it seems to have no bass or very little.

This could be a bass management issue, how is your system configured? Sometimes DVDs that have much of their bass in other channels than the LFE sound like this on systems that have their speakers set as large when in fact they aren't capable of really reproducing the very low bass.
I have my medium sized floorstanders all set to small and let my sub handle the bass, I have no lack of bass on this disc (or Madonna Drowned World live, about which I have heard similar problems).