Dream Theater Distance Over Time CD/5.1 BluRay

[sjcorne]

think there are definitely discrete elements in the rears here and there, but for me, just turning up the center and rears isn’t doing it for me. There are too many effects/reverbs/drum bleeds/etc in the rears, so all that bad stuff gets amplified.

I noticed a similar issue with Marillion's Clutching At Straws 5.1 mix. I thought raising the rears 2-3 dB would improve it, but there is so much reverb in the rears that it makes the whole thing sound too echoey.

Perhaps you could try selectively raising certain sections of the rears where there are discrete instruments? It sounds like this is one of those mixes that's mostly reverb until an occasional pan or guitar/keyboard burst triggers the rears.

 

[skherbeck]

I noticed a similar issue with Marillion's Clutching At Straws 5.1 mix. I thought raising the rears 2-3 dB would improve it, but there is so much reverb in the rears that it makes the whole thing sound too echoey.

Perhaps you could try selectively raising certain sections of the rears where there are discrete instruments? It sounds like this is one of those mixes that's mostly reverb until an occasional pan or guitar/keyboard burst triggers the rears.

That's exactly what I'm doing... I've raised the rears, but then I'm listening and lowering any sections where it's too echoey or there are annoying sounds... and you're right about the rears only really being activated intermittently. I'm only half way through, and I like what I'm getting so far...

 

[DoctorO]

After enjoying the CD through numerous plays in my car, the BluRay at home is pretty disappointing. It has in my setup a sort of "thin" sound that's hard to describe but I found it fatiguing to listen to. But not as fatiguing as the visuals. Make them go away please.

The album itself is yes, "return to form", the form of the two albums prior to that dreadful one that immediately preceded this one. Staying in their safety after the last mis-step is probably wise. It has a good level of energy. Track 10 is, although not labeled as such on the CD, a bonus track, and sounds very tacked-on. Track 9 is the last song, as mentioned by JP in a recent interview.

 

[Frogmort]

Okay, I've analyzed this and re-re-retweaked it in Audacity literally about 20 times. What I've come to find:

1) The front mains are very hot, yet just short of clipping (probably limited), so I based everything else around them.

2) The center channel is the only channel that has dry vocals (and has a bit of bass guitar and kick too), but is very low in the mix, whereas all other main channels have wet reverb/delay effects (especially the rears). Turning this channel up actually makes the reverby stuff seem much less overbearing. I'm not a huge fan of just cranking James LeBrie's vocals, and on most of their other recordings he does seem to be mixed more balanced with the instruments instead of being overly prominent, so this took some judicious level adjusting to bring some focus and clarity without over emphasizing the vocals.

3) The LFE (.1) channel has a good bit of bass guitar and kick drum fairly equally balanced together (which is not always the case), but it is very low in the overall mix and sounds rather thin. I'll admit that I'm a basshead, and at one point I increased this +12dB and it still wasn't anywhere near clipping since the level is so low, but trying to be more reasonable, I used +7dB as a standard setting to keep things ballsy and deep, but still fairly balanced.

4) The rears do have quite a bit of discrete information going on, along with lots of wet effects on lots of stuff, but overall is still very low in the mix. This was quite tricky to try to bring out the surrounds a lot more, which was sorely lacking, without over doing the splattery reverb. Too low and the discrete sounds aren't balanced with the fronts, too high and the reverb was too prominent.

Here's what I've come up with on my particular setup:

Spoiler

Standard Audacity settings for all tracks unless noted:

Center: +9
LFE: +7
Rears: +6

-------------------------

Track 3:

Center: +2 (reduced very hot dry vocals - only on this track for some reason)
LFE: +9 (slight compensation for less bass from center)
Rears: +6

-------------------------

Track 4:

Center: +8 (reduced clipping from standard setting)
LFE: +7
Rears: +6

--------------------------------------------------

Track 5:

Center: +12 (much weaker than other tracks)
LFE: +8 (slightly weaker than other tracks)
Rears: +7 (slightly weaker than other tracks)

--------------------------------------------------

Track 6:

Center: +7.5 (reduced clipping from standard setting)
LFE: +7
Rears: +4.5 (reduced clipping from standard setting)

--------------------------------------------------

Track 7:

Center: +9
LFE: +7
Rears: +5 (reduced clipping from standard setting)

--------------------------------------------------

Track 9:

Center: +9
LFE: +7
Rears: +5 (reduced clipping from standard setting)

It's not perfect, and I may end up tweaking it a bit more before I'm done, but for me, these settings have taken me from a rating of probably about a 4 or 5 to maybe about an 8 or 9. I love the music, and this makes the mix much more tolerable. If anyone has any suggestions let me know, and if anyone wants to try out my crazy remix, send me a PM. Thanks for reading!

 

[Frogmort]

Anyone else think the very first few notes of this album sounds an awful lot like 'Last Child' by Aerosmith? "I'm dreamin' tonight"

 

[perzon57]

I was one of the first to get this,and I've played it a lot.Like the music very much and on my setup the fidelity is very good.The mix was not so good on the first tracks with weak rears but it gets better later on the record.After the first listen I tried to shift the front/rear balance on my pre.I found that 2-2,5 db did it for me.This means raising the rears by 4-5db.LFE sounds ok to me,bass and kickdrum loud and clear.Raised the center a little too.For me this is now a fine sounding album with very good music.

 

[jimfisheye]

raw L,R pair: level -2
high pass L,R pair @ 298Hz: level -10.75 (parallel track - use a linear phase high pass or crossover eq)
True phase side extract L,R pair with isotope RX: routed to Ls,Rs level -24
Center level +4.6
Ls,Rs pair: level +4.1
Lfe level as is

The side extracted content placed in the Ls,Rs channels is a little up mix trick to reinforce the guitars further to the sides to match the level where I put the keys. The net mids thru highs boost in the L,R pair is aimed at focusing proper presence without the more crude low cut and high mid saturation move they made with their stereo master.

There's a lot to like and it cleaned up decently enough. It's at least as interesting as some of the old school quad mixes that might just separate a couple things out to the rear. (It certainly required the level of hands on repair that some of those old quad tapes needed!) If nothing else, it's present and focused and more dynamic without out the squashed and ear fatiguing sound of the stereo master.

This album mostly kicks ass!

 

[skherbeck]

I don't see a poll on this yet, but I'll just review it here... really strong effort by the band: musically, the songs are killer; excellent musicianship, the guitar/keyboard interplay is awesome (as usual), Mike Mangini tears it up on drums (still miss Portnoy, though), and I love the vocals (not sure why so many Labrie haters around here). 9 excellent songs, but the bonus tune sounds like a leftover. The fidelity is excellent... it doesn't sound fatiguing to my ears at all (and I've listened to this at high volumes... maybe too many times, lol). The surround mix is conservative, but there are many discrete moments throughout including a few guitar overdubs, lots of keyboards (including solos and panned/swirling solos), background vocals and sound effects. Overall, however, the volume is too low on the rears channels. I've heard several QQ member "fixes" of this album (including my own), and the thing they all have in common is that, once fixed, the surround mix doesn't get that much better. There is also a lot of reverb in the rears making "fixes" difficult. I think this would have been a much better surround mix with all of the keyboards and additional guitar parts and background vocals in the rears. I'm still happy we got this surround mix, though, because ultimately I like it better than the stereo mix. I'd give this a 6 as is (3 for fidelity, 3 for content, 0 for surround), but would bump it up to 7-8 after adjusting various levels (I won't try to explain my personal fix as I made so many changes I lost track of what I did!)

 

[marpow]

Above "skherbeck" is quite accurate and my experience. However I do feel the surround does have great moments with stuff in the rears, it is not faux surround and it is mixed to be surround, that said, it just happens to be on the weak side.
I am listening in LPCM 5.1 mode from the Blu Ray disc. I have my center, right and left fronts adjusted to 6db and my two rears at 5.5db. Intially my standard settings the fronts overpowered the rears for good surround experience.
My listening level was at 55db.
Videos with each track are great.
Like many of us are doing is taking our time and finding that front/rear volume level for a better listening experience. The music does have that early Dream Theater sound which I like. I will always want Mike Portnoy on drums though.

 

[marpow]

Not that is that big of a deal but I was not able to rip the Blu Ray, protected? I used my MKV which ripped, but when I used the Music Media Helper to tag I couldn't get it to work?
I then used DVD Audio Extractor for rip and pop up said Blu Ray protected.
I then ripped the DVD-A instead successfully but at AC3 24/48 vs the Blu Ray would have been LPCM at 24/96.
Any feedback? If the BD is protected that is OK with me.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Not that is that big of a deal but I was not able to rip the Blu Ray, protected? I used my MKV which ripped, but when I used the Music Media Helper to tag I couldn't get it to work?
I then used DVD Audio Extractor for rip and pop up said Blu Ray protected.
I then ripped the DVD-A instead successfully but at AC3 24/48 vs the Blu Ray would have been LPCM at 24/96.
Any feedback? If the BD is protected that is OK with me.

Aren't all Blue rays protected?

I haven't checked out the conversion routine on MMH yet. I just use Audiomuxer to convert MKV to Flac, and then tag with Tagscanner. Did you try that?

 

[olgitnorm]

Should this one be removed from the rumours section now it is very much in existence?

 

[minimumtumbleweed]

Not that is that big of a deal but I was not able to rip the Blu Ray, protected? I used my MKV which ripped, but when I used the Music Media Helper to tag I couldn't get it to work?
I then used DVD Audio Extractor for rip and pop up said Blu Ray protected.
I then ripped the DVD-A instead successfully but at AC3 24/48 vs the Blu Ray would have been LPCM at 24/96.
Any feedback? If the BD is protected that is OK with me.

I use MakeMKV, and select to remove copy-protection when making a backup image. Pretty sure all Blu-Rays are protected.

 

[BrystonUser]

So I got the 4 disc (2 CD, BD & DVD) set. On the Blu-ray disc it says it has the album in 5.1 etc. and mentions the entire album is also available as high res. Does this mean there are high res stereo FLAC, (or AAC or WAV) files on the disc already to go just as if they were purchased from say HDTracks thus we don' have to jump through hoops to pull those off the disc like I'm sure we have to do to get the 5.1 files?

 

[JediJoker]

So I got the 4 disc (2 CD, BD & DVD) set. On the Blu-ray disc it says it has the album in 5.1 etc. and mentions the entire album is also available as high res. Does this mean there are high res stereo FLAC, (or AAC or WAV) files on the disc already to go just as if they were purchased from say HDTracks thus we don' have to jump through hoops to pull those off the disc like I'm sure we have to do to get the 5.1 files?

No. They'll be authored onto the Blu-ray disc just like the 5.1. You'd need to rip them from the disc in the same way.

 

[BrystonUser]

Ah nuts! Oh well, I guess I better start the ripping process then.

Thanks!

 

[minimumtumbleweed]

So I got the 4 disc (2 CD, BD & DVD) set. On the Blu-ray disc it says it has the album in 5.1 etc. and mentions the entire album is also available as high res. Does this mean there are high res stereo FLAC, (or AAC or WAV) files on the disc already to go just as if they were purchased from say HDTracks thus we don' have to jump through hoops to pull those off the disc like I'm sure we have to do to get the 5.1 files?

Once you rip the image, and remove the copy protection, you can open it in DVD Audio Extractor or similar software. Look through all the chapters and you will be able to see what channel and codec options are available.

 

[BrystonUser]

Thanks. Yep, already done, I got the 2.0 channel and 5.1 channel LPCM tracks. I use MakeMKV and Music Media Helper.

 

[dr. simple]

Okay, I've analyzed this and re-re-retweaked it in Audacity literally about 20 times. What I've come to find:

1) The front mains are very hot, yet just short of clipping (probably limited), so I based everything else around them.

2) The center channel is the only channel that has dry vocals (and has a bit of bass guitar and kick too), but is very low in the mix, whereas all other main channels have wet reverb/delay effects (especially the rears). Turning this channel up actually makes the reverby stuff seem much less overbearing. I'm not a huge fan of just cranking James LeBrie's vocals, and on most of their other recordings he does seem to be mixed more balanced with the instruments instead of being overly prominent, so this took some judicious level adjusting to bring some focus and clarity without over emphasizing the vocals.

3) The LFE (.1) channel has a good bit of bass guitar and kick drum fairly equally balanced together (which is not always the case), but it is very low in the overall mix and sounds rather thin. I'll admit that I'm a basshead, and at one point I increased this +12dB and it still wasn't anywhere near clipping since the level is so low, but trying to be more reasonable, I used +7dB as a standard setting to keep things ballsy and deep, but still fairly balanced.

4) The rears do have quite a bit of discrete information going on, along with lots of wet effects on lots of stuff, but overall is still very low in the mix. This was quite tricky to try to bring out the surrounds a lot more, which was sorely lacking, without over doing the splattery reverb. Too low and the discrete sounds aren't balanced with the fronts, too high and the reverb was too prominent.

Here's what I've come up with on my particular setup:
...

It's not perfect, and I may end up tweaking it a bit more before I'm done, but for me, these settings have taken me from a rating of probably about a 4 or 5 to maybe about an 8 or 9. I love the music, and this makes the mix much more tolerable. If anyone has any suggestions let me know, and if anyone wants to try out my crazy remix, send me a PM. Thanks for reading!

Okay, @Frogmort , I just got my copy and ripped it to flac. I’m making these changes in Audacity right now, and when I’m finished I’m going to listen to the “Frogmort Remix” before I listen to the official mix. Insanity!

 

[dr. simple]

If and when a poll is started for this, I don’t know how I’ll vote. I employed Frogmort’s suggested tweaks in Audacity (although I did not boost the LFE channel as much as he did) and I think it’s FANTASTIC. But this is only useful for those of us who play files in one form or another. For those who don’t, they’re stuck with a substandard mix.

So, I don’t know... How about a 9 with 1 point deducted because not everyone listens to ripped files, and 1 point deducted because it’s a little ridiculous that we have to tweak these things in the first place = 7.

I hope all of you who are interested in Dream Theater get to hear this with Frogmort’s tweaks. It’s really incredible!