Opeth - Pale Communion 5.1 (Blu-ray)

[mixamatt]

Message from burning shed; Opeth Pale Communion CD/BluRay preorder has shipped.

 

[matz79]

My CD / Blu-Ray arrived two hours ago.

Dolby True HD 5.1 or Stereo on the Blu-Ray. Simple Menu and two bonus tracks (live) only in stereo.
Mastered by Paschal Byrne.

I like the Mix (5.1) and sound quality on this new album better better than "Heritage".
I can`t talk about musical content, i must get used to it.

For those who are interested: Dynamic Range on CD is 11. (TT Dynamic Range Meter, MP3)

 

[capsid]

This sounds great. I love the solo guitar playing and it reminds me of Storm Corrosion. I'll need to listen a few times to get into it as there is so much happening.

My only gripe is that I can't easily read the lyrics in the booklet. For those of us with failing eyesight why do they have to make the text so small? The Gothic font doesn't help either.

 

[John S]

The CD / Blu-ray is listed in today's Best Buy ad for $13.99.
Available tomorrow!

 

[Circular Vibes]

The CD / Blu-ray is listed in today's Best Buy ad for $13.99.
Available tomorrow!

In which region?

 

[John S]

I live in Cleveland, Ohio

 

[wavelength]

My only gripe is that I can't easily read the lyrics in the booklet. For those of us with failing eyesight why do they have to make the text so small? The Gothic font doesn't help either.

I keep a magnifying glass beside my listening chair. I would guess the even those with reasonably good eyesight must find these booklets a bit of a challenge.

 

[Thonolan]

This sounds great. I love the solo guitar playing and it reminds me of Storm Corrosion. I'll need to listen a few times to get into it as there is so much happening.

My only gripe is that I can't easily read the lyrics in the booklet. For those of us with failing eyesight why do they have to make the text so small? The Gothic font doesn't help either.

Fortulately the booklet of the deluxe box is quite larger than usual. It helps.

Mine arrived already last Monday from Stereoboutique. Imagine my genuine surprise when it arrived one week before the official release date. Quite a few listens already... This is once again a masterful 5.1 mix by Steven Wilson and the music is inspiring. Better songwriting than Heritage I think (I personally love Heritage, but I see it like a bunch of good musical ideas rather than well produced songs), great vocals by Akerfeldt and GREAT drumming!

The box looks nice and elegant, pretty well designed. Not many extras but all of them are interesting.

By the way, this is my first message here. Avid reader of this forum since long ago!

 

[Wildman]

Just finished a run through the surround mix and noticed that it seems to be lacking in the low end. I listened to the stereo mix last night through the headphones and the bass was there so I switched to the stereo mix. It was much more full sounding than the surround mix. I had tweaked the sub during the surround mix and had to put my settings back to normal for the stereo mix. I have my BD player on the optical digital so I'm getting lossy DD due to only one set of multichannel inputs and no HDMI on my AVR. I'm hoping that is the issue and not a mastering issue.

Has anyone else noticed this? Can someone A/B the surround to the stereo? If the surround mix had the sound of the stereo mix on my rig it would be worth kicking the Pioneer 563 off of the multichannel imputs just to listen to this.

 

[Nimbatus]

I also had a few problems with the Bluray. The stereo mix was fine, but the surround track didn't feature any bass and it sounded like channels were out of phase. I assumed it was an encoding or authoring error and returned the disc just in case. Later on someone on a different forum suggested that there might be some weird TrueHD decoder issue in my listening chain and to set the player to PCM, so that the decoding would be done by the player to see if that helps. Right now I'm waiting for another copy of the album to check that out.

 

[Wildman]

Dang, I was hoping that it was just an issue in my signal chain. I really like this album so far and the surround mix sounds like another winner from SW, only slightly out of balance with no low bass. The stereo mix is wonderful.

I'm going to go over all of my player settings, hopefully there is an issue there.

 

[Wildman]

Good news! I found the bass in the surround mix!:banana:

On my Yamaha AVR, I switched LFE/Bass Out from both to front and the bass came back. My sub is hooked up to L/R preouts due to a bad sub amp killing the LFE preout. The both setting has always worked on all my other BD disks but this is only my third BD.

I had a feeling it was something simple.

Anyone on the fence about this, get it. If you like Damnation, you'll love Pale Communion.

 

[capsid]

Phew, glad you found the problem. I was beginning to think that my ears were shot.

 

[Nimbatus]

I got a replacement for my disc and it' still completely messed up sounding with my system. You can't really hear the drums, everything sounds like out of phase and the bass is completely missing. I set my player to PCM to do the decoding in the player instead of my amp, but it's exactly the same result.

So, either I had some bad luck with two faulty discs in a row or my player is messing it up right from the beginning when playing the disc. I'm pretty bummed at the moment about this. Weird thing is, I never had problems with any disc before, wether it's TrueHD, DTS-HD MA or straight PCM.

Nobody else having problems? My player is a Sony BDP-S760 connected to a Yamaha DSP-Z7.

 

[Robert van Diggele]

A pity that you have these problems Nimbatus. I only listened to the stereo tracks yet, so cannot comment on the 5.1 sound.

Here are a few pics from the deluxe set. Nice little box.

 

[Wildman]

I got a replacement for my disc and it' still completely messed up sounding with my system. You can't really hear the drums, everything sounds like out of phase and the bass is completely missing. I set my player to PCM to do the decoding in the player instead of my amp, but it's exactly the same result.

So, either I had some bad luck with two faulty discs in a row or my player is messing it up right from the beginning when playing the disc. I'm pretty bummed at the moment about this. Weird thing is, I never had problems with any disc before, wether it's TrueHD, DTS-HD MA or straight PCM.

Nobody else having problems? My player is a Sony BDP-S760 connected to a Yamaha DSP-Z7.

Did you see my comment above? If not, Change your LFE routing in the AVR menu to front and see if it brings back the bass.

 

[Nimbatus]

Yes, I just now did and indeed it enhances the bass reproduction, but mainly for the kickdrum and not the bass guitar, which is still almost completely missing. I played around more and flipped the phase of the LFE channel, and that brought back some of the bass guitar in the mix. Still, the drums as well as other parts of the mix seem to be out of phase. The drums for example are extremely focused on the rear channels, almost like only the overheads are left in the mix and lack a good amount of punch.

Very weird issue and nothing I've ever experienced before with any disc. I'm just now writing Roadrunner about it to see what there response will be.

 

[Wildman]

Yes, I just now did and indeed it enhances the bass reproduction, but mainly for the kickdrum and not the bass guitar, which is still almost completely missing. I played around more and flipped the phase of the LFE channel, and that brought back some of the bass guitar in the mix. Still, the drums as well as other parts of the mix seem to be out of phase. The drums for example are extremely focused on the rear channels, almost like only the overheads are left in the mix and lack a good amount of punch.

Very weird issue and nothing I've ever experienced before with any disc. I'm just now writing Roadrunner about it to see what there response will be.

How is your sub hooked up(if you're running one), LFE preout? If it is, try all LFE routes. On my Yamaha, I get no LFE on sub or both, and get LFE on front. I've only had that happen on this disk.

 

[Nimbatus]

Yes, my system is hooked up as it's supposed to be. I tried all those settings and front did bring back some of the bass, but it's still lacking a big amount of bass especially when compared to the stereo track on the same disc. I really think they messed up the LFE channel, plus the drums and other parts of the mix being out of phase, too.

To me the 5.1 is unlistenable. If this is what Mr. Wilson delivered (which I highly doubt) then I'd say this is the worst mix he ever did. But I truly believe that something happened during the authoring of the disc or that some player / amp combination are not compatible with the content.

Oh well, going back to the new Mandio Diao now. THAT mix is fantastic!

 

[Wildman]

I'm running a Yamaha 659 AVR and a Yamaha BD-S1065 BD player. Anyone out there with a similar setup not having issues with LFE? I'm curious if it is a compatibility problem.