DVD-Audiobahn

Posted by cfraser (A) on April 09, 2011 at 10:18:17

In Reply to: RE: different opinion posted by Joe Murphy Jr on April 07, 2011 at 22:02:38

There's not really that much video on it, which they mention on the cover too, I guess to warn people if they were expecting something like the more recent BD concert releases. I am ashamed to say I have NO other version of Moving Pictures to compare with... The DVD-A version has become a bit hard to get around here, even amazon.ca seems sold out now. Oh well, next week...

Edit: a friend directed me to a discussion of this at AVS (I didn't even know they did music discs there...). Most people there have the DVD-A it seems. Some complaints about "low bass" (do they forget this isn't an effects movie?, AVS after all). Not to worry, definitely not the case with the BD (all audio versions), in fact I thought the bass was the only part of the mix that seemed a bit off; it had great clarity/presence/etc., but a little over-prominent IMO and easily adjusted in an mch system (no means in my stereo system!). In case you were wondering, the surround mixes definitely do use the surrounds quite well and to some good effect without sounding overly "forced" or cheesy, adds some more space and depth. Edit-edit: I must have been too tired the first couple nights I listened to this. The bass on (particularly) Witch Hunt and Vital Signs (my 2 new favorites from this album, when in surround) seemed crushing when I was tired. Last night it seemed about just right...so I retract my niggling "complaint".

One thing: please use an "old guy" (e.g. somebody from Rush) to size the text displays. It's not like there's massive lengthy lyrics, and there's plenty of screen space. A 60" display at 9' was not too big for viewing the tiny text/lyrics. Not that red text on black bg is an optimal presentation either for some of it. My usual "music disc display" is a 19" HD at 7.5' and this was difficult to read, but it did make the low res videos look better (actually less bad). Never saw a double-necked acoustic guitar before... Edit-edit: sorry, it was the text for the on-screen liner notes that was really tiny, not the lyrics etc. Nice notes BTW, they're in the booklet too.

Yesterday I did manage to find the DVD-A, but now no BDs in the local stores lol. The Rush popularity resurgence (increase?) gathers steam...the apocalypse approaches... One thing that really sticks out about this album, now that I get to listen to it complete/in order and not in a concert setting: it hasn't aged at all, in any way, IMO. Could have been made yesterday.

04/16/11 Edit: I don't know if anybody else cares about this, but the BD does put out an S/PDIF signal when played on an Oppo BDP-83. The PCM stereo track @48kHz, sorry I can't verify the output bit depth. Some BDs do this, some don't, might depend on the player. Anyway, I remember saying somewhere in this forum (so many places where BD music can "fit", never sure where to discuss it...) that I usually like to get the Rush DVD(-A)s so I can get a signal to put into my better-sounding "analog" stereo system. So in this case I don't really need the DVD-A after all, unless somebody verifies the DVD-A allows 96kHz S/PDIF output...

Edits: 04/10/11   04/10/11   04/11/11   04/16/11