HiRez Poll Morrison, Van - MOONDANCE [Blu-Ray Audio]

Wonderful, Amazing, my idea of what a quad should be... puts sound in the rear that is somewhat hidden in the stereo mix...but I have to deduct something because of the other 4 discs I HAD to buy that Ill never listen to. Bottom line, though, if new quad title's are as good as this and they are all $50 plus.... ill pay the price. 9

TVB said:

Wonderful, Amazing, my idea of what a quad should be... puts sound in the rear that is somewhat hidden in the stereo mix...but I have to deduct something because of the other 4 discs I HAD to buy that Ill never listen to. Bottom line, though, if new quad title's are as good as this and they are all $50 plus.... ill pay the price. 9

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talking of the Quad levels of discrete stuff going on here in this mix, I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the Quad-esque panning hand-claps at the beginning of "Glad Tidings" that go from Front L, to Rear L, to Rear R, Front R.. and then go all 5.1 and end up in the centre! Wow!

uffeolby said:

I don't do any base management and my front speakers are set to Large. There is a LFE signal coming to the sub but it is as I said before barely audible. Furthermore the base response on all other songs than the title track is very good, so it is an isolated problem for me for one track only. I usally do not tweak or adjust levels between records and i definitely do not for specific tracks...

Am I the only one who experience this? good base output on all songs except for the title track.

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If set to large, then the sub croosover needs a tweak.

fredblue said:

IIRC the Yellow Brick Road DVD-A has full range info in the .1 channel too..

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Yep, and IIRC this was not the case on the SACD, which is an indication something is, at very least, in-consequent.

alk3997 said:

The whole intent of this is method of generating the LFE is that the engineer places all of the instruments with low bass in the LFE (at a lower level) and then lets the home electronics including the subwoofer act as a low pass filter.

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This is the wrong way of handling that [silly] channel. Relying on the many different setups at home will result in a "miss or hit" situation. Most of the discs with full range LFE sound rather unbalanced, unless you use exactly the same lowpass that was used in the monitoring system the mixing engineer was using. Also the LFE channel is a mono channel, it should not contain "locatable" content IMO.

Bottom line: LFE should be lowpassed always, before authoring the disk.

BTW: maybe the LFE channel discussion should be separated from the Moondance poll.

leevitalone1 said:

If set to large, then the sub croosover needs a tweak.

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It is set as low as possible - so nothing to gain there either...

Just got the discs. When I play the blu-ray on my oppo 103, the info has "Dolby truehd 5.1 96k. Is there any way to get 192k output?

atlantasteve said:

Just got the discs. When I play the blu-ray on my oppo 103, the info has "Dolby truehd 5.1 96k. Is there any way to get 192k output?

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The stereo only is 192khz. (5.1 tops out @96/24 on BD) hit the "Audio" (or Audio select) button on your remote control and all the heavenly glory of the 192k stereo will be showered upon you

fredblue said:

The stereo only is 192khz. (5.1 tops out @96/24 on BD) hit the "Audio" (or Audio select) button on your remote control and all the heavenly glory of the 192k stereo will be showered upon you

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Actually, you can have 192/24 5.1 on a Blu-ray... The only one I've seen is the 2L recordings sampler which has 192/24 5.1!!!!!

LizardKing said:

Actually, you can have 192/24 5.1 on a Blu-ray... The only one I've seen is the 2L recordings sampler which has 192/24 5.1!!!!!

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Wow! Really?! I did not know that! thanks for the info!

..I have to get it now! I can't wait to not hear all those extra kilohertz..!!!

fredblue said:

Wow! Really?! I did not know that! thanks for the info!

..I have to get it now! I can't wait to not hear all those extra kilohertz..!!!

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With the exception, of course, that you can't actually hear those extra kilohertz Maybe we could say that you can't wait for your dog (assuming you have one or borrow one) to hear those extra kilohertz! (I know - sarcasm)

Wait until you see the frequencies available with HDMI 2.0 (assuming someone comes up with a codec that uses those frequencies). Bats will be thrilled...

haha! my little doggy Bobby loves sitting with me watching my woofers wobble! though he does get a bit tired of too much Elton John..

That's great - Bobby's ears are perfect for surround!

Lucy's favorite is "I Am The Walrus" in surround (she prefer's the Love mix). Unfortunately after she hears something a few times she gets used to it. Of course it has a reference to her name in it. OK, we're definitely OT.

However, Lucy was with my wife and I while we listened to Moondance. No reaction from Lucy (I think she started sleeping).

alk3997 said:

That's great - Bobby's ears are perfect for surround!

Lucy's favorite is "I Am The Walrus" in surround (she prefer's the Love mix). Unfortunately after she hears something a few times she gets used to it. Of course it has a reference to her name in it. OK, we're definitely OT.

However, Lucy was with my wife and I while we listened to Moondance. No reaction from Lucy (I think she started sleeping).

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They're certainly big enough ears, bless his little heart

aww.. Lucy in the sky with walruses!

Mix and production a 10 all the way. Another Scheiner masterpiece. Nice and discrete.

The packaging 1. The cover fell off the thing the first time I opened it. Is there no quality control in the world any more?

Perhaps I lead a charmed life. No problems so far with the packaging, even though it was in and out of the console in my convertible a few times.

After reading of the problems with the packaging, I very carefully opened mine and held the spine tight while working each page so it opened freely. Seems fine. Also no playback problems with my 5 year old Sony.

Only one time through, but my first impression is just wow! The sweet spot is truly sweet with this one.

Isn't their a member on this forum who puts scotch tape on anything that needs it? Maybe he will let us know if it needs that sort of fix.

I posted this yesterday under another thread. I hope I'm not doing something naughty. I'm reposting an edit as this now appears to be the main thread on the hope someone has a suggestion.

I received this Boxset in the Netherlands on Wednesday night. The cardboard back cover split off almost straight away. Poor design. I only ordered it for the Blu Ray but I question the quality control particularly for something so expensive.

I have an Oppo BDP-80 from 2010 at this house connected via HDMI to a 2012 Yamaha RX-V673. I initially noticed some skipping but it was late I thought it was my imagination. On playing it on Wed there is a skip in Caravan, Dropouts in Caravan, Into the Mystic and maybe three further tracks. I have to go though it in detail but I have tried cleaning the player , cloning the disc with various settings and the results are the same. The player has the latest and final release firmware. Otherwise it is almost new. Its been used regularly since mid 2010 but not as much as normal. The Apple TV tends to dominate in this system when there are other people around.

Strangely I had a problem with the new Benefit DVD last weekend where the disc froze in the surround version of 'Play in Time' and one of the extra tracks. I thought it may be the player. We had some renovation over the summer and there has been a lot of dust. This is why I cleaned it. It looked pretty dust free on inspection. I have been as careful as possible with it. I tested about 30 other discs last night Blu Ray, DVD-A,DVD-V and SACD and no problems with anything else yet.

In fact these are the only two discs this player has had a problem with - ever. Cut backs in the music industry?, quality control again? Who knows. Its the first Blu Ray disc Ive had a problem with in any player.

I notice various people had a skipping problem with the BDP-83 and this disc in both threads. I have one of these at home in Australia where I am going the end of next week so I will try it there. I think the 80 has the same mechanism.

I'll also try it in my budget JB HI FI Sonic Blu Ray. If it works flawlessly there over to Oppo.

A couple of first observations on this:

I was going to comment that he's put the vocals, center front, but if you listen to each speaker in isolation you hear it in each channel...it sounds like its front center front (more than the usual Elliot mix).

The mix is sort of like an old school quad mix. Stuff just placed in channels - wow he's done a great job considering there's only 8 tracks to work with. As Elliot says "...it's amazing how great it turned out."

Interesting that the video is MPEG2, why would they do that instead of AVC, not that it really matters - its all about the music....

I love the cloth binding, but hate the cardboard sleeves - I fear that 1) It will fall apart each time I open it; and 2) that I'll scratch to buggery the discs or should I say disc, as I don't care about the rest of the discs... It reminds me of the Boz Scaggs - Dig CD/DVD-A promo packaging... very nice.

I've never been a Van fan or had any of his albums, but boy this is great. I think I'll put it on again!!!!

P.S. No problems to "Poppo this in my Oppo" 83SE, plays perfectly.... phew! :banana:

I finally ended up voting (thought I'd let this one settle in). The music and the mix are excellent. However, I gave it a 9.

I subtracted fractions of a point for 1) Non-standard Blu-Ray mastering (no menus) that Denon players may not be able to play; 2) Questionable mastering since 2 discs could not be played by a latest-firmware OPPO BDP-93 that has played every other Blu-Ray disc; 3) a very slightly rolled-off high end - at least to my ears - compared to other discs (DVD-A's mostly, of course) and 4) no easy way to navigate to the 192/24 stereo program (use the player's audio button instead).

But, those are minor compared to how good this disc really is. An excellent release and I'd take 100 more titles even if they all had the same problems as mentioned above.