Hello,
I spent the afternoon comparing this concert video to the Led Zeppelin DVD set, U2's Popmart (Live from Mexico City) and Cream's Royal Albert Hall. These are all other power trios from which I could make legitimate comparisons. In every case, when playing the discs in the 5.1 format, there is a noticeable element in the soundfield that the Police recording is missing. I'm not referring to discrete info in the rears, though that would be nice, as in Zeppelins case (and Porcupine Tree's Arriving Somewhere but that's another story). What I am referring to is in the Police video the soundfield is front centric, at worst, and 180 degrees at it's best. In all the other recordings the sound has been mixed in a way to give you a 360 degree soundfield. I prefer the warmer, fuller sound. When this is done right it sounds perfectly natural and adds to the total viewing experience. In the case of the Police, the way the sound was mixed, almost totally eliminating 180degrees of the soundfield, it's an annoying distraction to the experience...
:sunHere is the good part though, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I did watch the second disc through a different system so I could listen through the variomatrix and OMG! what a difference. First off the second disc isn't more stand alone concert footage. It is a documentary of their reunion and tour and in hindsight I highly recommend watching it first. It will add more depth and understanding to what you are viewing in the concert footage on disc 1.
Now for the fun stuff, as I mentioned before the sonics of this recording are very nice so I wanted to hear what my other vintage system would do with it. When I preprocessed the stereo signal through an SRS (NuReality) encoder and then decoded it through the Sansui's Variomatrix synthesizer into quad the results were astonishing. Every nuance of the arena/stadium is there, along with infinite detail in the music. To hear all that rich detail in a 360 degree soundfield is bliss. I just wish the powers that be could figure it out too...
All this review has me wondering if Elliot Scheiner has done any live work with a power trio? Queen? Anyone know of any? Recommend any?