Katatonia - Great Cold Distance: 5.1 Mix DVD-A

I am listening to this now. The Live album has an authoring error. Nothing in rear left channel.

TGCD is one of my fav albums ever. Jens Bogren captured the atmosphere of the production perfectly on his 4.0 mix, although there were certainly issues with it. Those who are not familiar with this album will love this, hardcore fans will notice many important guitar parts buried

Original surround mix vs new box set.

Bruce has made the vocals more audible and rears are more active.
Jens nailed all the guitar parts, Bruce has buried some integral guitar lines. Nobody can mix guitars like Jens IMO.
Bruce has made the album more dynamic, no hard limiting, Jens applied a lot of compression to front channels.


The genius of this album is not the main guitar riffs, or extravagant musicianship, but how the instruments interact and the feel of the production. A lot of the time the main riff has another guitar lick over the top coming in a few seconds later, these are the parts not very audible on new mix, real shame.

If you took the best from both mixes, you would have perfection.

By the sounds of it(although nothing in rear left, authoring error), Bruce did a great job with the live mix. Hard to judge at the moment.

Sorry to hear of difficulty can anybody else report on this?

I have a testing copy here that plays with 100% integrity, all channels on all tracks. It is possible that something happened after it left us, at the manufacturing stage so we can't rule that out.


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Mine is scheduled for delivery Thursday. As soon as I get it, I'll check out the live disc and report back.

von kulper said:

Mine is scheduled for delivery Thursday. As soon as I get it, I'll check out the live disc and report back.

Click to expand...

Please do.

keenly said:

TGCD is one of my fav albums ever. Jens Bogren captured the atmosphere of the production perfectly on his 4.0 mix, although there were certainly issues with it. Those who are not familiar with this album will love this, hardcore fans will notice many important guitar parts buried

Original surround mix vs new box set.

Bruce has made the vocals more audible and rears are more active.
Jens nailed all the guitar parts, Bruce has buried some integral guitar lines. Nobody can mix guitars like Jens IMO.
Bruce has made the album more dynamic, no hard limiting, Jens applied a lot of compression to front channels.


The genius of this album is not the main guitar riffs, or extravagant musicianship, but how the instruments interact and the feel of the production. A lot of the time the main riff has another guitar lick over the top coming in a few seconds later, these are the parts not very audible on new mix, real shame.

If you took the best from both mixes, you would have perfection.

Click to expand...

Sounds like Bruce Soord has a real tendency to make artistic alterations to albums! He also severely screwed up the 5.1 mix on "The Fall of Hearts". The lead guitars on Serein being a prime example of an overzealous mixer deciding a song should sound different.

Up till now the only 5.1 work of Mr. Soord that I have fully appreciated was his surround mix for Sanctitude, Katatonia's acoustic live album.

lolbroek said:

Sounds like Bruce Soord has a real tendency to make artistic alterations to albums! He also severely screwed up the 5.1 mix on "The Fall of Hearts". The lead guitars on Serein being a prime example of an overzealous mixer deciding a song should sound different.

Up till now the only 5.1 work of Mr. Soord that I have fully appreciated was his surround mix for Sanctitude, Katatonia's acoustic live album.

Click to expand...

Well first off, no two mixing engineers will ever mix something exactly the same way.
Second, Bruce would not be able to make these 'artistic alterations' if the band would not approve his mixes for release, but they do, so they must be OK with how he hears things.

So, my copy showed up a day early :banana:! And yeah, I can confirm, the live mix is missing a channel. IMMEDIATELY noticeable. Unfortunate too, because this sounds like it's going to be a killer live performance and mix.

As for the studio 5.1, to my ears, the mix and fidelity is excellent, and for the most part, demolishes the previous Bogren mix (I really don't like that mix); but, with that said, Keenly's right: There's some instrumental tracks that appear to be missing...

This is immediately noticeable on from the first track, "Leaders", at about the 2:50 mark. It's a quiet section in the song and the new 5.1 mix is missing the electronic percussion. It's not just buried or quiet; it's simply not there. Being extremely familiar with this album, it was a very weird, jarring moment to hear it that way.

Guitars also are not as "in-your-face" as the stereo and previous surround mix during certain moments (rhythm guitar during chorus for Deliberation, for example). But, other times, they sound very full and present and HEAVY. So, on initial listen, and despite some of the aforementioned oddities, given the much-improved surround mix and fidelity, this is a major improvement over the Bogren mix. And it's just wonderful finally hearing this with such expansive and involved surround field

Thanks for the additional confirmation. It's time to contact the label, I'll see what I can find out and if anybody else finds it first great.


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This appears to be one way:
http://peaceville.com/contact/

I actually forgot this was coming out. Maybe I'll wait and see whether these discs will be corrected first before I order, as missing channels doesn't sound good at all.

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My order arrived already today in Germany.The edition looks really great. Very, very nice.
Unfortunately, my DVD has the same errors. The left surround in the Live Mix from Plovdiv is mute. The LPCM mix of the regular album also sounds very good and powerful, but also a few things do not seem to be right.
As an Example, Track 1, Leaders: On the regular mix you hear after 20 seconds, a beautiful, guitar-like piece. In the new mix, the guitar is almost impossible to hear.
I can not imagine Bruce Soord wanting that.

Sorry for my bad English....

lucki said:

My order arrived already today in Germany.The edition looks really great. Very, very nice.
Unfortunately, my DVD has the same errors. The left surround in the Live Mix from Plovdiv is mute. The LPCM mix of the regular album also sounds very good and powerful, but also a few things do not seem to be right.
As an Example, Track 1, Leaders: On the regular mix you hear after 20 seconds, a beautiful, guitar-like piece. In the new mix, the guitar is almost impossible to hear.
I can not imagine Bruce Soord wanting that.

Sorry for my bad English....

Click to expand...

That's the way it is unfortunately, no error. Some parts are buried.

From Neil Wilkes:

"Deepest apologies for the defects with this release; I am looking into how this could happen and will have more to say at a later date. This will be made right."

lucki said:

My order arrived already today in Germany.The edition looks really great. Very, very nice.
Unfortunately, my DVD has the same errors. The left surround in the Live Mix from Plovdiv is mute. The LPCM mix of the regular album also sounds very good and powerful, but also a few things do not seem to be right.
As an Example, Track 1, Leaders: On the regular mix you hear after 20 seconds, a beautiful, guitar-like piece. In the new mix, the guitar is almost impossible to hear.
I can not imagine Bruce Soord wanting that.

Sorry for my bad English....

Click to expand...

keenly said:

That's the way it is unfortunately, no error. Some parts are buried.

Click to expand...

Yup, or outright missing. Leaders seems to be the most problematic track. It is what it is. I still enjoyed the hell out of this last night. And I'm SOOOO happy they included Dissolving Bonds. It was so great to hear that in surround, and Bruce did an excellent job on that one.

timbre4 said:

From Neil Wilkes:

"Deepest apologies for the defects with this release; I am looking into how this could happen and will have more to say at a later date. This will be made right."

Click to expand...

Thanks for investigating Tim, and Neil for coming up with a solution

timbre4 said:

From Neil Wilkes:

"Deepest apologies for the defects with this release; I am looking into how this could happen and will have more to say at a later date. This will be made right."

Click to expand...

Hmm. This somewhat dampens my enthusiasm for listening to this tonight. The MAIN problems seem to be with the live disc?

stormchaser said:

Hmm. This somewhat dampens my enthusiasm for listening to this tonight. The MAIN problems seem to be with the live disc?

Click to expand...

Yes, the live mix is missing a surround channel. The studio version plays fine

Again I'm glad I ordered mine from Burning Shed. I'm sure they will handle this very well.

rtbluray said:

Well first off, no two mixing engineers will ever mix something exactly the same way.
Second, Bruce would not be able to make these 'artistic alterations' if the band would not approve his mixes for release, but they do, so they must be OK with how he hears things.

Click to expand...

I agree with your "first off" - however, from what I read from various members here he has in fact simply left out certain parts of the mix. That is not the same as mixing them differently (cf. what Steven Wilson does: always trying to retain the feel of the original (stereo) mix). Again: in Serein lead guitars that are in the stereo mix and actually create the emotional tension at that moment in the song are simply non-existent in the surround mix.

Regarding the second part: in this day and age, I wonder how many bands free up the necessary time to approve mixes for re-releases... Unfortunate as that may be.

lolbroek said:

I agree with your "first off" - however, from what I read from various members here he has in fact simply left out certain parts of the mix. That is not the same as mixing them differently (cf. what Steven Wilson does: always trying to retain the feel of the original (stereo) mix). Again: in Serein lead guitars that are in the stereo mix and actually create the emotional tension at that moment in the song are simply non-existent in the surround mix.

Regarding the second part: in this day and age, I wonder how many bands free up the necessary time to approve mixes for re-releases... Unfortunate as that may be.

Click to expand...

Maybe the band wanted the mixes that way, or maybe they didn't care and just let him get on with it.
Either way they have been working with him for almost 2 years now, so he wouldn't be able to continue to work with the group if the band and their label did not approve of his work.


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