neil wilkes
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
When I was a rash youth (and all that implies) this was one of my favourite bands and they kicked ass live.
I used to have this title on VHS - one of those with "Hi-Fi Stereo Sound" and it had long since gone the way those tapes used to eventually, so I was absolutely stoked to see a DVD release with a 5.1 mix.
So out came the plastic, and it duly landed a few days later.
Let me put it this way - great show, shame the authors screwed the pooch with the audio. It is awful.
Not only is it perhaps the worst transfer I have ever seen in my life, but the stereo is pitifully Dolby fuckin' Digital and the 5.1 mix is a complete fake done so badly it makes the worst Silverline titles sound amazing by comparison. Check out this screenshot.....
The stereo is bad enough - I mean, I often moan about over doing things but to see an average RMS of -28.3 with such a flat squashed response is going far too far in the other direction. More on the stereo in a moment though - we need to look at the alleged surround mix, where we see the centre channel at around 100% liuder than the left/right, and the rears may as well not be there at all they are so low. Left/Right is around -33.6dB, and Centre is -27.76dB - almost 100% louder (given that +6dB = twice as loud as before - dB is logarithmic, remember). To m,e it looks like it has been run through a DPLII decoder without anyone paying any attention at all to how it actually SOUNDS. I am frankly shocked that something this poor was released.
Let's now look at the codecs and what has been done & try to understand why. It's a single layer disc running at 60 minutes - this is more than enough to give us 16/48 LPCM as well as DTS (assuming a good enough mix of course - and the original stereo shows that the quality was there originally) and we could even go to 24/48 LPCM, DD and DTS 5.1 & still have the footage running at around 5Mbps with no problems at all getting it on a single layer disc. As it stands, I get the impression someone ran a transfer off the VHS and simply slapped it into some nasty abstraction layer tool (Encore, DVDSP) and thought "to hell with the customers". EVEN IF - and this is a big IF - there was no other source available except the original archived SD footage (and it will have been to analogue videotape) and even if the original recordings had been lost (which I doubt) they could have made a much better job of it than this - and if that was all they had available then why torpedo it by then proceeding to toss out most of it with a shitty AC3 stream instead of preserving what was there by running an analogue transfer to 24-bits and sorting out sensible levels? It makes no sense.
I've said it before & will doubtless be saying it again (and again & again) - Dolby Digital has no place on a concert release - PERIOD. The 5.1 could be DD, but should be DTS as well but there is no excuse or reason to butcher something this good that badly.
The upmix.
This should be clearly marked as such and it is not - to my mind this type of false advertising should be illegal and the RPGA are so right when they advised many years ago that 5.1 streams shoiuld be clearly marked as to origin, using either of these as applicable:
1 - The surround performance on this disc is a full remix from the original multitrack tapes,, or
2 - The surround performance on this disc has been electronically created without the benefit of the original multitrack tapes.
As it currently stands you can legally put any old crap on the disc & call it "5.1 surround" - this does the artist no good, the consumer no good and does surround in general a total dis-service.
It is fraudulent at the worst interpretation, and downright bloody shoddy & a cash grab at the best - Demon Vision ought to be ashamed of themselves for this. I have better quality bootlegs. If they cannot be bothered to produce a decent upmix then they ought to hand it over to someone who can and who has the right kit to do it - currently the best upmixing is coming off the Penteo hardware as it is artefact free & phase perfect and right now represents the state of the art.
The reason I am so bloody angry about this is because I know how this SHOULD sound, and this release is nothing like that - avoid in this form altogether.
I used to have this title on VHS - one of those with "Hi-Fi Stereo Sound" and it had long since gone the way those tapes used to eventually, so I was absolutely stoked to see a DVD release with a 5.1 mix.
So out came the plastic, and it duly landed a few days later.
Let me put it this way - great show, shame the authors screwed the pooch with the audio. It is awful.
Not only is it perhaps the worst transfer I have ever seen in my life, but the stereo is pitifully Dolby fuckin' Digital and the 5.1 mix is a complete fake done so badly it makes the worst Silverline titles sound amazing by comparison. Check out this screenshot.....
The stereo is bad enough - I mean, I often moan about over doing things but to see an average RMS of -28.3 with such a flat squashed response is going far too far in the other direction. More on the stereo in a moment though - we need to look at the alleged surround mix, where we see the centre channel at around 100% liuder than the left/right, and the rears may as well not be there at all they are so low. Left/Right is around -33.6dB, and Centre is -27.76dB - almost 100% louder (given that +6dB = twice as loud as before - dB is logarithmic, remember). To m,e it looks like it has been run through a DPLII decoder without anyone paying any attention at all to how it actually SOUNDS. I am frankly shocked that something this poor was released.
Let's now look at the codecs and what has been done & try to understand why. It's a single layer disc running at 60 minutes - this is more than enough to give us 16/48 LPCM as well as DTS (assuming a good enough mix of course - and the original stereo shows that the quality was there originally) and we could even go to 24/48 LPCM, DD and DTS 5.1 & still have the footage running at around 5Mbps with no problems at all getting it on a single layer disc. As it stands, I get the impression someone ran a transfer off the VHS and simply slapped it into some nasty abstraction layer tool (Encore, DVDSP) and thought "to hell with the customers". EVEN IF - and this is a big IF - there was no other source available except the original archived SD footage (and it will have been to analogue videotape) and even if the original recordings had been lost (which I doubt) they could have made a much better job of it than this - and if that was all they had available then why torpedo it by then proceeding to toss out most of it with a shitty AC3 stream instead of preserving what was there by running an analogue transfer to 24-bits and sorting out sensible levels? It makes no sense.
I've said it before & will doubtless be saying it again (and again & again) - Dolby Digital has no place on a concert release - PERIOD. The 5.1 could be DD, but should be DTS as well but there is no excuse or reason to butcher something this good that badly.
The upmix.
This should be clearly marked as such and it is not - to my mind this type of false advertising should be illegal and the RPGA are so right when they advised many years ago that 5.1 streams shoiuld be clearly marked as to origin, using either of these as applicable:
1 - The surround performance on this disc is a full remix from the original multitrack tapes,, or
2 - The surround performance on this disc has been electronically created without the benefit of the original multitrack tapes.
As it currently stands you can legally put any old crap on the disc & call it "5.1 surround" - this does the artist no good, the consumer no good and does surround in general a total dis-service.
It is fraudulent at the worst interpretation, and downright bloody shoddy & a cash grab at the best - Demon Vision ought to be ashamed of themselves for this. I have better quality bootlegs. If they cannot be bothered to produce a decent upmix then they ought to hand it over to someone who can and who has the right kit to do it - currently the best upmixing is coming off the Penteo hardware as it is artefact free & phase perfect and right now represents the state of the art.
The reason I am so bloody angry about this is because I know how this SHOULD sound, and this release is nothing like that - avoid in this form altogether.
