Opeth - Pale Communion 5.1 (Blu-ray)

[keenly]

You mentioned the drums before, but mixing drums in the rears is signature SW.

And I love it! Having the beat in the phantom center above you; brilliant. Fills flying from fronts to rears; that is how drums should be mixed in 5.1!!!!!!!!!

Zappa's Halloween has a great drum solo mixed in 5.1; engineers should take note. I hate when 5.1 mixes have the drums mixed in stereo; such a waste.

 

[colsky]

My order from WOWHD is delayed. Very annoying.

Mine too, and yes it is annoying, but it seems as if you have to accept it if you order from them, and admittedly getting a low price. I had the same thing with Gentle Giant Power and the Glory from them. Come to think of it, I have it with every single new release that I get from them! I really don't know how they operate their orders, because every time its the same - the pre order price is way better than from anyone else so I order, come release date their website shows the item as "expected to ship within 7-10 days" and the order status on my account becomes simply "backorder", then about 2/3 weeks later my order arrives.

I accept this for some items where I'm not in a hurry, I wouldn't for something like Yes Relayer, especially as I have been overloaded with recent purchases to listen to this year. As I said, I don't understand their crappy way of fulfilling their orders, but I also don't understand how they are able to offer some things so cheaply.

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Indeed, he puts parts of the overheads and room mics to the rears. But he usually doesn't forget to mix in the direct mics.

Reading the comments here, I strongly believe there are some incompatibility issues with this disc. I'll give up for now, since I don't see a solution other than waiting for the day I might purchase another player and see what happens then.

alright, I understand. The direct mic input is in the rears from what I hear on my system. A pity that on your system it does not sound good.

 

[Nimbatus]

If this has been messed up complain!

I already did on Monday. I wrote Roadrunner, but no reply so far.

 

[Nimbatus]

I hate when 5.1 mixes have the drums mixed in stereo; such a waste.

Agreed, that's how I like it too. Only that in this mix there is no real differentiation of the drums, it's a complete mess.

No other SW mix from the past sounds like this, not even remotely. And there's a good reason why he never mixed it like that. I only need to listen to the stereo track to see how much punch the drums and the bass are supposed to have. Switching to the 5.1 just sounds weak and lacks definition.

 

[keenly]

Agreed, that's how I like it too. Only that in this mix there is no real differentiation of the drums, it's a complete mess.

No other SW mix from the past sounds like this, not even remotely. And there's a good reason why he never mixed it like that. I only need to listen to the stereo track to see how much punch the drums and the bass are supposed to have. Switching to the 5.1 just sounds weak and lacks definition.

A fault with authoring?

Tweet SW or the record label.

Lamb of God; Ashes come to mind. Thom C who did the 5.1 mix said the final DVD is a mess; his master copy sounds completely different. They should of recalled the disc.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ashes-The-W...&qid=1409314621&sr=8-1&keywords=lamb+dualdisc

 

[keenly]

Yes, my system is hooked up as it's supposed to be. I tried all those settings and front did bring back some of the bass, but it's still lacking a big amount of bass especially when compared to the stereo track on the same disc. I really think they messed up the LFE channel, plus the drums and other parts of the mix being out of phase, too.

To me the 5.1 is unlistenable. If this is what Mr. Wilson delivered (which I highly doubt) then I'd say this is the worst mix he ever did. But I truly believe that something happened during the authoring of the disc or that some player / amp combination are not compatible with the content.

Oh well, going back to the new Mandio Diao now. THAT mix is fantastic!

This must be what happened. No way SW would mess this album up, and there's no way there should be any compatibility issues.

 

[keenly]

This disk is perplexing. Reviews from stellar to rubbish.

I ran through the surround mix today twice at high volume making adjustments and was quite happy with how it sounded afterwards. On my system, it sounded more balanced by increasing the center 2db and eq adjustments to the center. When I listened to the center up close, it was not contributing much other than dry vocals, keys, and guitar solos. From the sweet spot, it seemed to pull the mix to the middle of the room. I'm going to listen to it again when I get time in a day or so and see if I feel the same about the adjustments. I also want to see how the adjustments sound on other mixes.

You should not have to make adjustments with a SW mix.

 

[keenly]

I already did on Monday. I wrote Roadrunner, but no reply so far.

OK let's hope this issue can be sorted and is not a case of a sh*tty mix. That being said not all SW 5.1 discs sound great IMO, but only due to some poor mastering, normally I have no issue with any part of his mixes..

 

[Thonolan]

Agreed, that's how I like it too. Only that in this mix there is no real differentiation of the drums, it's a complete mess.

No other SW mix from the past sounds like this, not even remotely. And there's a good reason why he never mixed it like that. I only need to listen to the stereo track to see how much punch the drums and the bass are supposed to have. Switching to the 5.1 just sounds weak and lacks definition.

Well, I don't know. On my system, the drums sound crystal clear. I've been switching from the stereo to the 5.1 mix several times and there's indeed more bass punch in the former, but not more definition. I've been also comparing it to the mix of "The Raven..." and the way the drums are mixed is pretty much identical. Yeah, I can clearly hear some drums in the rears, but the drum sound coming from the front speakers is still A LOT louder. Great job with the mix of guitars, keyboards and especially vocals... I still think it's a fine mix and I don't see myself listening to the stereo mix at home, having this 5.1 (unlike Ghost Reveries, which has one of the poorest surround mixes I've ever heard, the stereo sounding a lot better).

 

[capsid]

I can't hear any major difference between the stereo and 5.1 audio, the stereo is a little quieter in decibels. I also tried switching from bitstream to LPCM and didn't hear any difference, but I am in my mid 50s so maybe my ears are off a bit now. That said this sounds as good as the other stuff SW has done. Plenty of punchy bass from the drums. I'll have a closer listen to the discreteness of the mix but nothing seems awry from what I've heard.

 

[MarkN]

Well, I don't know. On my system, the drums sound crystal clear. I've been switching from the stereo to the 5.1 mix several times and there's indeed more bass punch in the former, but not more definition. I've been also comparing it to the mix of "The Raven..." and the way the drums are mixed is pretty much identical. Yeah, I can clearly hear some drums in the rears, but the drum sound coming from the front speakers is still A LOT louder. Great job with the mix of guitars, keyboards and especially vocals... I still think it's a fine mix and I don't see myself listening to the stereo mix at home, having this 5.1 (unlike Ghost Reveries, which has one of the poorest surround mixes I've ever heard, the stereo sounding a lot better).

This is exactly what I hear on this 5.1 mix. The drums coming from the front are definitely a lot louder than what is in the rears. The LFE channel is mixed a bit lower than some titles, but there is definitely a lot of low frequency content there.

This might be the only 5.1 music Blu-ray I have that was authored using Dolby TrueHD instead of DTS-HD or PCM encoding. I'm beginning to wonder if there are issues with some folks system's settings for decoding Dolby TrueHD. The first time I played the stereo track on this disc, it sounded very bizarre to me. The stereo track is also encoded as Dolby TrueHD 2.0, and I noticed that my processor was set to process that encoding using Dolby ProLogic, converting it to synthesized 5.1. I changed my settings to pass this as straight stereo, and it then sounded great. As mentioned by other folks, the stereo mix does have more low-end weight than the 5.1 mix, but I don't find the 5.1 at all lacking in low-end.

 

[Nimbatus]

I've been also comparing it to the mix of "The Raven..." and the way the drums are mixed is pretty much identical. Yeah, I can clearly hear some drums in the rears, but the drum sound coming from the front speakers is still A LOT louder.

Thank you for this comparison because I know now for sure that it HAS to be a compatibility issue of some sort. The Raven is a superb mix and sounds completely different to Pale Communion through my signal chain. I already checked if there's something wrong with the TrueHD settings, but everything is fine as in set to "straight" and no compression or anything else applied.

I guess I'll need a new player. I think the last time Sony updated the S760 was more than 2 years ago...

 

[capsid]

So are there any True HD blu ray discs that you can also listen to, maybe the soundtrack of a film?

 

[keenly]

Thank you for this comparison because I know now for sure that it HAS to be a compatibility issue of some sort. The Raven is a superb mix and sounds completely different to Pale Communion through my signal chain. I already checked if there's something wrong with the TrueHD settings, but everything is fine as in set to "straight" and no compression or anything else applied.

I guess I'll need a new player. I think the last time Sony updated the S760 was more than 2 years ago...

New player? Damn. How about the record company get their act together and sort it out. By the sounds of it the disc is defective. Dozens of people have said the same on a couple of different forums.

 

[Wildman]

After another run through Pale Communion, I compared it to Heritage which I've always played the DTS on my Pioneer 563. I played the DD stream on my Yamaha BD and they sounded very similar to Pale Communion. When I switched to DTS on Heritage, it then sounded as good as it did on my Pioneer. The DD stream sounded more localized to the speaker positions where the DTS pulled the mix out into the space and more balanced overall. Other than the LFE being mixed to low, all of my issues seem to be with the mix being DD only.

I ended up backing off of the adjustments some that I made earlier. I'm just going to enjoy Pale Communion for what it is, but I think a DTS stream should have been on this disk.

 

[keenly]

After another run through Pale Communion, I compared it to Heritage which I've always played the DTS on my Pioneer 563. I played the DD stream on my Yamaha BD and they sounded very similar to Pale Communion. When I switched to DTS on Heritage, it then sounded as good as it did on my Pioneer. The DD stream sounded more localized to the speaker positions where the DTS pulled the mix out into the space and more balanced overall. Other than the LFE being mixed to low, all of my issues seem to be with the mix being DD only.

I ended up backing off of the adjustments some that I made earlier. I'm just going to enjoy Pale Communion for what it is, but I think a DTS stream should have been on this disk.

Sorry I do not comprehend.

 

[Thonolan]

Thank you for this comparison because I know now for sure that it HAS to be a compatibility issue of some sort. The Raven is a superb mix and sounds completely different to Pale Communion through my signal chain. I already checked if there's something wrong with the TrueHD settings, but everything is fine as in set to "straight" and no compression or anything else applied.

I guess I'll need a new player. I think the last time Sony updated the S760 was more than 2 years ago...

I may add that my system is pretty new, bought it (including the player) not even 2 months ago.

Yesterday I read this review, caught my eye due to this paragraph:

Yet I'm giving it 3. The reason for this is the mixing. Done by the otherwise flawless Steven Wilson, the mixing is way too bass heavy for my ears. Both the bass and the bassdrums are predominantly present. For me, this is distracting enough to lower my rating from 4 to 3 stars. I can only say this is a damn shame, because this could have been really great.

I assume he's obviously talking about the stereo mix.

 

[Wildman]

I'm running my BD optical for now, No HDMI and only 1 set of multichannel inputs on my AVR. Only lossy DD and DTS on my BD player unless I get an analog multichannel switcher or a new AVR. If a disk has DTS, I never listen to the DD, so I hadn't listened to Heritage DD. Lossy apples to apples comparison. The Heritage DTS sound much better on my system and if Pale Communion had DTS I think it would too.

This is only my third BD so I haven't felt the need to address my sub par BD player hookup yet.

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Good that you mention this Wildman. Through optical you only get the core Dolby Digital. Perhaps you should put an analog switch between your players and your av receiver. That way you can connect the BDP with analog interconnects as well.