HiRez Poll Blackfield - IV [DVD-AUDIO]

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Rate the DVD-A of Blackfield - IV

  • 6:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 4:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 3:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 2:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1: Poor Fidelity, Poor Surround, Poor Content

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    26

JonUrban

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Please rate the August 2013 5.1 DVD-Audio release of "Blackfield IV" from kScope. Post your thoughts and comments as well as your vote.
(n):phones(y)


Blackfield IV 700 FRONT.jpg
Blackfield IV 700 BACK.jpg
 
heard in - advanced resolution surround .....

First, to offer a longplayer with 31 minutes of music, is already almost impertinent. If they told "EP" nobody would have stood excited itself. Besides, no time was hardly given to the development of the songs. I feel so, songs are started, already to an end. It would have had to be no 10 minutes of epics, but 2-3 minutes more time would have given to the single songs. All together more sweetish pop songs than Prog. Some songs show a little bit of their potential, but not at all. Pleasingly, but not more.

The Surroundmix is good for my taste, but I do not find completely on the regular Steven Wilson niveau. Just in louder passages this had an effect to me already too near on the pain border. From the all-round sound top and just the last song has to offer a strong deep bass.
If there wasn`t this small flaw of pain in my ears ........

Nevertheless my rating note 8/10 points for the surround mix

:)
 
A solid '8' from me too.
A bit short, but thankfully almost all of the songs are very good. The mix seems a bit weak in a few spots, but it's still pretty solid overall.
Also, NICE graphic design from Carl Glover, which translated very nicely to a fantastic DVD-A from Neil! :)
 
I have to play it a couple more times before passing final judgement, but initial impressions are pretty good. Yes, it's a tad on the short side but I'd rather have a short album that flows well than one with filler. Aviv is a bit of an acquired taste and those looking for typical SW stuff (whatever that means!) will probably be a little disappointed. I like Aviv though and have all his hebrew albums so for me him getting together with SW is a bonus and not my only reason for listening (though I'll admit it's how I discovered his stuff in the first place).
 
This one is growing on me... I am only listening to the 5.1 lossless.

- First I was a bit dissapointed in the fidelity, but after several listenings at somehow higher volumes I find it pretty good sounding. Still miss the low end though from time to time
- Also the surround mix is getting better for each listening. The rears seem to be exclusively used for the strings and the backing vocals, but it works fine on this music
- Really like all guest vocalists - they add to the experience in a good way
- Aviv Geffen is a master on short snappy pop songs (something I wish Steven Wilson could do more of nowadays - he is really good on it as well)
- The best songs are the first 7 (and the last "odd" one which I really like) so the album drags a bit towards the end - not much but still...

I voted an "8".
 
I voted 8 as well. The fidelity is OK, but not stellar. The 5.1 mix is good, but not as brilliant as some of SW's other work. Then again, I don't think the music lends it self to a really aggressive mix. The rears are used mostly for strings and vocal harmonies, as the previous poster mentioned. It works quite well.

Jupiter is my favorite song. It is a beautiful tune, and the mix is also very good on this track. SW has lead vocal duties on this one.

I didn't find the bass too lacking, but I can understand why others may feel this way. The bass frequencies could afford to be raised by a db or two, but they aren't as weak as some others I have. A minor tweak of the LFE level can easily correct it.
 
Really glad that this came out as a Dvd Audio. I would rate this one a 8.5 so have rounded it off to a 9 as most people are giving this a 8 to balance out the scores.
Music is good, not great(Blackfield 1 and 2 I would rate as great). The surround on this is well done, wonder if some people are under whelmed by this because of some of the vocal treatments done as I am not a mixer but wondering if Steven Wilson to balance things out with the vocals that there isn't that punch but maybe its also a testament to some of the classic albums being converted to surround now and how they were recorded on analog equipment to tape in the past and how much better that is than recording straight to hard disk's today.
My favorite tracks are 4-7 which has 2 guest vocals and track 7 by Steven Wilson. I am really liking track 5,flying I think with Suede vocalist and how that song is performed.
I have been listening in the car for past 3 days and haven't been bored by it as am listening more than once a day due to the short length(30 min's), so its not all bad that's so short if songs hold your attention.
 
Its really nice to have Blackfield in surround. Thanks SW (and Aviv).

I'd love to hear re-issues in surround of I and II in particular.... maybe someday....
 
Well, I'm not quite ready to rate this disc, but at first listen, musically speaking, it's better than Welcome to my DNA (which I thought was pretty cheesy, to be honest. And this is from someone who loved the first two Blackfield albums, which have a healthy level of cheese themselves).
I do have one issue with it, though, and I need you guys' help to diagnose it. I have a feeling my center and rear left channel are inverted on this disc. I'm not sure, though, because I have no reference to go on.

Take the first track, "Pills". Where do the first vocals come in? For me they come out the rear right. Which sounds cool, but then it also sounds so unbalanced that I suspect that's maybe not the way it's supposed to be. Steven Wilson's mixes are usually pretty conservative, with the main vocals in the center channel. So is it just me, or is this actually correct? I'm listening to the 96/24 mix from the DVD-A files. I haven't tried any of the other formats yet, but I will once I get the chance.

The reason I'm asking is because I just moved house and rewired everything, so I might have just messed up something :D (Though my other discs sound fine, I think.)
 
Take the first track, "Pills". Where do the first vocals come in? For me they come out the rear right. Which sounds cool, but then it also sounds so unbalanced that I suspect that's maybe not the way it's supposed to be. Steven Wilson's mixes are usually pretty conservative, with the main vocals in the center channel. So is it just me, or is this actually correct? I'm listening to the 96/24 mix from the DVD-A files. I haven't tried any of the other formats yet, but I will once I get the chance.

Definitely wrong! Aviv's vocal is dead center when I play it (Lossless 5.1 MLP). Are you playing the DTS track? Maybe something is wrong there...
 
Definitely wrong! Aviv's vocal is dead center when I play it (Lossless 5.1 MLP). Are you playing the DTS track? Maybe something is wrong there...

Nope, I was playing the lossless files (or almost, see below). I just played the DTS files and they're fine.

I figured it out though. I store all my music on my media server, and I convert everything to FLAC first. So in this case, I converted the MLP to multichannel hi-res FLAC files. Somehow, though, eac3to screwed up the remapping this time. I don't understand how it happened since it always went fine in the past, but it did. I set the mapping manually, and voilà, fixed!

Looking forward to having a first proper listen!

P.S. This is the reason why I'm a big proponent of Blu-ray over DVD-A. I can just pop my Dark Side of the Moon Blu-ray into my PS3 and get the best possible audio quality sent straight to my receiver. For a DVD-A though? I either need a dedicated player (which are kinda hard to find and often a bit of a waste of space), or you need to go through the relatively elaborate process of ripping the hi-res files first and playing them from a PC. I could just settle for the DTS version, but really, why should I? The files are there, I want to be able to play them! </rant>
 
Nope, I was playing the lossless files (or almost, see below). I just played the DTS files and they're fine.

I figured it out though. I store all my music on my media server, and I convert everything to FLAC first. So in this case, I converted the MLP to multichannel hi-res FLAC files. Somehow, though, eac3to screwed up the remapping this time. I don't understand how it happened since it always went fine in the past, but it did. I set the mapping manually, and voilà, fixed!

Looking forward to having a first proper listen!

P.S. This is the reason why I'm a big proponent of Blu-ray over DVD-A. I can just pop my Dark Side of the Moon Blu-ray into my PS3 and get the best possible audio quality sent straight to my receiver. For a DVD-A though? I either need a dedicated player (which are kinda hard to find and often a bit of a waste of space), or you need to go through the relatively elaborate process of ripping the hi-res files first and playing them from a PC. I could just settle for the DTS version, but really, why should I? The files are there, I want to be able to play them! </rant>

PHEW!!!
I almost had a heart failure when I read that post......
 
PHEW!!!
I almost had a heart failure when I read that post......

Haha Neil. I'm sorry I'm putting you through all these intense emotions! Can you explain to me why this procedure is so shocking to you? Please understand that all I'm trying to do is get the best possible audio quality out of my legitimately purchased albums using the equipment that is available to me. Since a dedicated DVD-A player is not something I own (and in the age of BD, I'm not sure I still want one), losslessly (I hope!) encoding the MLP files is the best solution I was able to come up with. Which is not to say I don't occasionally pop in the DVD-V side of the disc and enjoy the full experience with visuals and DTS...
 
Haha Neil. I'm sorry I'm putting you through all these intense emotions! Can you explain to me why this procedure is so shocking to you? Please understand that all I'm trying to do is get the best possible audio quality out of my legitimately purchased albums using the equipment that is available to me. Since a dedicated DVD-A player is not something I own (and in the age of BD, I'm not sure I still want one), losslessly (I hope!) encoding the MLP files is the best solution I was able to come up with. Which is not to say I don't occasionally pop in the DVD-V side of the disc and enjoy the full experience with visuals and DTS...

I guess he thought the channels might be screwed based on what you'd said Coren..?!? :eek:
 
I guess he thought the channels might be screwed based on what you'd said Coren..?!? :eek:

That's possible too, of course! I interpreted it as Neil being horrified at me tampering with the carefully crafted audio files. And I wouldn't want that, so I assumed the worst!

I have nothing but respect for the fact that people care enough to deliver us great audio quality, in surround, no less, so the last thing I'd want is to somehow desecrate the work that was put into it. I went through quite a bit of trouble to try and handle the MLP tracks the best way I possibly could considering the hardware limitations I'm dealing with (lossless encoding of the MLP files, HDMI straight to the receiver using foobar2000 in WASAPI mode, and what have you...), but of course I'm only an enthusiast with limited knowledge on the matter. So yes, it is a lot easier to pop in a BD and to select multichannel PCM. No tampering necessary! :)
 
I guess he thought the channels might be screwed based on what you'd said Coren..?!? :eek:

That's it exactly - what you do with the discs is entirely down to you of course but the thought - even for 2 minutes - that channel orders were screwed up is the stuff of nightmares.
 
That's it exactly - what you do with the discs is entirely down to you of course but the thought - even for 2 minutes - that channel orders were screwed up is the stuff of nightmares.

Haha, okay, phew :D
It's FINE, Neil. It sounds great. Everything in its right place! Don't worry :)
 
In Kscope podcast 42 Aviv says there were 7 more songs that did not make it onto this album. He (or they) wanted no fillers. I thinks this works, also there is more variety in tempo and style. Blackfield 2 made my kids fall to sleep, even the one that is a big Steven Wilson fan.
Steven's input is further reduced, Aviv did the production and even plays most of the instruments. He is only absent on the track "The Only Fool is Me". The use of guest singers shows a path to survival of Blackfield if Steven would decide to step out of this project eventually.
 
gave it 5 but was very close to 4.
artistically i found nothing which might appeal to me. well, could be first track.
but that's personal and wasn't been counted in vote.
soundwise in general not very bad but somewhat dead. don't know how to explain... perhaps sort of
"sounds somewhat clamped, with no spark of life in it and without wrapping around listener even being in 5 channels physically"
surround mix - it's truly discrete but i'm sure it's a weakest one i have ever heard from SW
 
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