Please post your thoughts and comments on the 5.1 Surround DVD-Audio of this album. If you feel so inclined, let us know when and where you got it from. Please do not vote until you've listened to the disc a few times.
THANKS
THANKS
Glad to see the MLP 2.0 audio at 96/24.
I know this is a Quad Forum but there are too many releases where the 2.0 gets shorted by being in a lower resolution, often LPCM with the resolution unpublished. The Beatles Love comes to mind where I've recently learned the LPCM 2.0 is only 16/48.
Can't wait for these to arrive
As SRC on the fly can sound terrible (ringing artifacts) we took the 24/48 route, as even if a player chops down to 16-bits (and an awful lot of them do) you will not hear the effects of this as readily as you would SRC because a 24-16 conversion in the DAC will usually carry flat TPDF dither, making it's effects as close to inaudible as possible.
May I?What is SRC?
May I?
It's Sample Rate Conversion
DAC is Digital Analog Converter
TPDF Triangular Probability Density Function (just say Triangular dither )
Guys,
Thanks for getting this information out. I am even more convinced after reading Neil's post that these will be true works of art.
Following Jon's prompt, let's all support this effort.
I'm in.
I'm happy to say we are almost anally retentive about putting format/resolution grids on releases where possible.
I also prefer to see things describing the surround mix too - this is in the booklet here, but missing on all too many.
What wee should have is either:
1 - The surround performance on this disc was created from a full remix from the original multitrack tapes", or
2 - The surround performance on this disc was electronically recreated without the benefit of the oiriginal multitrack tapes".
IMHO (H = Honest), this way the buyer knows exactly what they will be getting into. I have ended up with pseudosurround on far too many occasions for my liking. Sure, when done well (and some of our members here are seriously good at this) it can be superb (The TOUP Led Zep "Whole Lotta LOve" springs immediately to mind here with the guitar slides running from fromnt to rear) but it is all too often simply "big stereo" with heavy use of L/R and reverb in the rears.
The 24/96 streams here were lovingly done by Simon Heyworth - as are all the stereo masters in the series. We thought long & hard about putting 24/96 in the Video_TS, but lack of space & the sad fact that only 16/48 LPCM is actually mandated for DVD-Video with 20 & 24 bit and 96KHz support being optional. As SRC on the fly can sound terrible (ringing artifacts) we took the 24/48 route, as even if a player chops down to 16-bits (and an awful lot of them do) you will not hear the effects of this as readily as you would SRC because a 24-16 conversion in the DAC will usually carry flat TPDF dither, making it's effects as close to inaudible as possible.
These discs really will have something for everyone.
Although it is Off Topic here, IMO the only valid way to compare would to take the output from the Hi-Res and convert it to CD format yourself (making sure to do all the steps correctly). Also very important is to match the levels exactly when comparing.If this is the case, then Red will be a good test case for identifying the difference between CD and hi-rez. But of course if the CD has been compressed slightly and/or has a slightly different equalization then we are not able to make a valid comparison.
.....The 5.1 mix absolutely blows my mind, and a few of my neighbo(u)rs, too. Certainly a showcase disk, to be used for conversion of those remaining stereo-holdouts. Remarkable amount of noise from just 3 people. No, I know there's 5 guest musician on this one, but even the "pure" trio versions of Red and Fallen Angel sound tight and full.
I must say the MC brings out principally new dimensions in the music. Not just subtlety. All along in stereo, Red and Starless were my favorite tracks on this album. But now I see the Fallen Angel in a totally new "light", and it's a new #1 in my chart.
Kudos to Steve Wilson and Neil Wilkes for the fantastic work! Very aggressive mix, very playful. Just in my personal taste -- but I do think that using surrounds for ambiance only is a waste of 2 perfectly good speakers. Bruford's drumming particularly shines, 2 channels is just not enough for his work. ...
On the grounds that I did not do the stereo mastering, I cannot possibly say.
Personally, it is my experience that whilst CD can be done well, it rarely is.
16-bit audio is just too fragile sounding.
You have 65,536 possible values equivalent to analogue voltage, whereas in 24-bit you have 16,777,216 possible values.