Wallflowers - Rebel, Baby: Not really multichannel?

[ClarkNovak]

So I came upon the BMG Direct (read: RCA Record Club) edition of the Wallflowers' "Rebel Baby" DualDisc and even though I've heard that the 5.1 is pretty lackluster, I was happy to have it. However, I've found that it apparently has NO 5.1 content on it whatsoever. Trying every setting on my Oppo for decoding resulted in nothing; opening in VLC player on the computer revealed that there are only Stereo tracks on the DVD side - not even any lowly Dolby Surround-encoded files.

Can anyone confirm this?

 

[sjcorne]

There's definitely a 48-khz/24-bit MLP 5.1 mix on my copy, but it might as well be stereo. Like most of Nick DiDia's 5.1 mixes, the front channels are brickwalled and the rears barely used. Here's a screengrab of the first track:

 

[ClarkNovak]

Wow...OK. You're right, and I should have just done an extraction and opened it in Audition to start with. What a crappy mix!

Thanks for putting me right. (Now the mixer in me wants to run a peak restore on it and rebalance the whole thing...)

 

[The Bright Side]

One of the very, very few multichannel discs I ever bought and then sold again. Total waste. Great album, had the stereo version even before I started collecting mch stuff, and still have it today and enjoy listening to it. Too bad, could have been really nice in surround.