Elton John "one night only - the greatest hits"

[Chris Gerhard]

I have listened to this once, the DTS 5.1 mix. This DVD-V was taken from a two night performance by Elton and some friends at Madison Square Garden in October, 2000. The 5.1 mix by Frank Filipetti is clearly intended to simulate a concert experience. As many others here, I have a lot of these songs on Elton John SACD's with very pleasing surround mixes but I will surely never attend an Elton John Concert so this is likely the closest I will ever get. I love this disc. Elton's performances are nothing spectacular for him and his guest appearances are strange except for Kiki Dee during the expected single song and Billy Joel, still it is mostly Elton John and his excellent backing musicians. Video is 1.78:1 and only ok, not great. One strange thing I haven't figured out, in trying to compare the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, I briefly listened to "Candle in the Wind" and the audio volume faded badly, then up and back down. The DTS mix sounded fine. It may be months before I get this one out again, so I thought I would write what I could now. I know Elton is capable of better performances, but that is not to say he is bad here, he is good.

I am trying to find more DVD-V's of favorite artists but I think this will be one of the best I will have for a long time.

Chris

 

[filper]

It's an all-encompassing collection, but Elton's voice has aged and lost some of the range.

This disc is a great representation of the music legend.

I find the center channel vocals too hot for my liking.

Picture quality is subjective.

 

[blam1]

I enjoyed the DVD-V program over the CD version. So I dusted off my trusty DTS-CD encoder and made myself a 2-disc DTS CD of the DVD program. The trickiest part was putting the CD together without gaps in the tracks and having the DTS decoder not drop out between tracks.