Music DVD Poll Pink Floyd - The Wall

[neil wilkes]

Please post your thoughts, comments and observations.
I know this is more of a movie than an album, but think it is worthy of review in the multichannel spotlight sections due to the 5.1 soundtrack, and the fact that it is predominantly more of a musical than a movie with a 5.1 soundtrack.
After all, without the music this would be as nothing IMHO.

 

[bobou2]

My second DVD....
A very nice DVD, good extras, good video and a great surround mix.
A 9

 

[Dylan Berichon]

Having just watched this film for the first time in 5.1, I have to say that I'm really disappointed.

I felt the surround mix was very dull.

I really hope that if the actual album "The Wall" is ever remixed into multichannel sound that it is done much better then this movie.

 

[Manmc]

It wont be a surprise if this does sound better lossless next time around but , for now, I think this and The Who Live at Albert Hall show how good Dolby Digital music can be if done properly.

~M~

 

[rusinurbe]

one of the reasons i bought a dvd player. I was not dissappointed

 

[Eggplant]

As The Guy Who Will Buy A Whole Disc Just For One Good Surround Song . . .
does this thing include some part of the hit version of "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2" and is it anything approaching listenable discrete?

 

[JonUrban]

I was going through one of my "music" hard drives, and found the 5.1 wav files from this DVD, I originally used them to make a DTS CD for the car. This was quite some time ago, and I honestly had not revisted these files or that CD for quite some time.

Anyway, I pulled up the files into Sound Forge and refreshed my memory on the audio tracks. This actually is a fairly discrete mix, although it is mostly a 3 channel surround mix. The rears are used mostly for sound effects. However, there is a great deal of seperation between the center channel and the two front channels.

Upon quick review, in "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt 2", the kids chorus is only in the fronts, not in the center or rears, and the "teacher" is isolated in the center. "Go on do it again" and "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat" are solo in the center. Listen to the fronts and you don't get him.

Other songs have Roger Waters vocals very discinct in the center, with sort of an "echoed" vocal in the fronts. The center is not vocal solo, however, there are some instruments in there as well.

Looking at the wav files in sound forge, you can see that this is indeed a very true 5.1 soundtrack, and although it is not a "full surround" mix for the music, it is multichannel.

If you haven't listened to this one in a while, give it a spin. In today's dearth of surround releases, sometimes it pays to go back to an old standard!

Today I would have to rate this a 9. I love the music, it sounds great, and the mix is pretty damn discrete. (Now, if AP did the surround, well...............)

 

[JonUrban]

One last thing to add. I recently went back to remake the DTS CD I did for the car, this time as a DVD-A, and this time I wanted to put "Hey You" on the disc in its proper sequence, since there was no longer a CD time limitation to worry about. This tune is not in the film, but it's on the DVD as an "out take". To my surprise, it's in discrete 5.1! I thought I was going to have to Frankenstien it (that's Frankensteen ), but I didn't have to.

The rears on Hey You are mostly a "windy" sound, however there is a guitar solo 2/3 of the way through that comes through loud and clear. The more I listen to the audio of this one, the more I like it. Maybe seeing the video perceptually dulls the surround mix, as the video is very gripping.

For the price, this DVD can't be beat.

 

[YmSeb]

I felt the surround mix was very dull.

Same feeling. Actually, like it was said, it IS discrete, but this is mostly a 3-channel mix, everything in the front (incl. center) and almost nothing in the rears.

There is actually no MUSIC in the rears, and this is the biggest disappointment ; with all the choirs featured in the songs of The Wall, it could have impressive and massive.

I watched the movie again yesterday and found myself tempted to switch to the PCM stereo track, which is indeed more efficient, quality-wise.

 

[strat54]

The Wall is a must have for me. I would love a remix on Blu-ray

 

[DKA]

I was going through one of my "music" hard drives, and found the 5.1 wav files from this DVD, I originally used them to make a DTS CD for the car. This was quite some time ago, and I honestly had not revisted these files or that CD for quite some time.

Anyway, I pulled up the files into Sound Forge and refreshed my memory on the audio tracks. This actually is a fairly discrete mix, although it is mostly a 3 channel surround mix. The rears are used mostly for sound effects. However, there is a great deal of seperation between the center channel and the two front channels.

Upon quick review, in "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt 2", the kids chorus is only in the fronts, not in the center or rears, and the "teacher" is isolated in the center. "Go on do it again" and "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat" are solo in the center. Listen to the fronts and you don't get him.

Other songs have Roger Waters vocals very discinct in the center, with sort of an "echoed" vocal in the fronts. The center is not vocal solo, however, there are some instruments in there as well.

Looking at the wav files in sound forge, you can see that this is indeed a very true 5.1 soundtrack, and although it is not a "full surround" mix for the music, it is multichannel.

If you haven't listened to this one in a while, give it a spin. In today's dearth of surround releases, sometimes it pays to go back to an old standard!

Today I would have to rate this a 9. I love the music, it sounds great, and the mix is pretty damn discrete. (Now, if AP did the surround, well...............)

One of the best mixes I ever did was from the recent remastered version of the album. If the pros can't get excellent separation out of this material, it's because they don't know what the hell they're doing.

 

[Robert van Diggele]

The Wall is a must have for me. I would love a remix on Blu-ray

James Guthrie is working on that, together with a 5.1 of the studio album. On the forum of A Fleeting Glimpse there are a few people who are close to Guthrie and confirmed this. Cannot provide any link so quickly though.

 

[Jeddia]

Used to be a movie theater in the late 80's that we all went to every Friday night for 'Midnight Movies'. Basically it was a huge party. Everyone brought booze and the theater would look the other way. You had your choice of four movies you could watch. One would be the big release that week, the other three options were always the same: The Wall, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Heavy Metal. Every week. Friday at midnight. So, I saw The Wall like 50 times in the theater. So good.

When it released on DVD, I snatched it up quickly. I'm hugely fond of the film version of Mother - which is a haunting hybrid of the studio cut and an alternate take. Years ago, I extracted the audio for that, What Shall We Do Now? and the film's version of Outside the Wall. I've tweaked the sonics of them to make them match (relatively closely) the remastered Wall discs in the Immersion box sets. Then I mixed them into the studio cuts where they appear in the film.

And, of course, there are actually only 4 songs on Pink Floyd's The Wall: Side 1, Side 2, Side3, and Side 4. So they're ripped into lossless .wav's as such and named 'Side 1', etc... Yes...I'm a Pink Floyd geek.

Really, really looking forward to a Blu-ray release of the film and a nice surround mix of the albums on SACD or BD. Also hoping that if they release the surround mix on BD, that they use footage from the film while the songs play.

 

[himey]

Used to be a movie theater in the late 80's that we all went to every Friday night for 'Midnight Movies'. Basically it was a huge party. Everyone brought booze and the theater would look the other way. You had your choice of four movies you could watch. One would be the big release that week, the other three options were always the same: The Wall, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Heavy Metal. Every week. Friday at midnight. So, I saw The Wall like 50 times in the theater. So good.

When it released on DVD, I snatched it up quickly. I'm hugely fond of the film version of Mother - which is a haunting hybrid of the studio cut and an alternate take. Years ago, I extracted the audio for that, What Shall We Do Now? and the film's version of Outside the Wall. I've tweaked the sonics of them to make them match (relatively closely) the remastered Wall discs in the Immersion box sets. Then I mixed them into the studio cuts where they appear in the film.

And, of course, there are actually only 4 songs on Pink Floyd's The Wall: Side 1, Side 2, Side3, and Side 4. So they're ripped into lossless .wav's as such and named 'Side 1', etc... Yes...I'm a Pink Floyd geek.

Really, really looking forward to a Blu-ray release of the film and a nice surround mix of the albums on SACD or BD. Also hoping that if they release the surround mix on BD, that they use footage from the film while the songs play.

...also saw The Song Remains The Same and Warriors at my local midnight movie venue. Good times and great memories. Thanks for sharing!

 

[riskylogic]

Here's my review

It's a 5.

 

[riskylogic]

My rating scale is explained here. It's a 15 point scale - I don't suppose I'l ever review anything that merits a 5 anyway. For QQ purposes I'm just subtracting 5. I realize that means that I'm using more of the QQ rating range than most posters.

Since this is the DVD thread, nothing on here will do better than 9 - I only give top marks for video quality to modern blurays. A lot of these discs have dolby digital too - that's another automatic 1 point deduction. Furthermore, very few of them use surround for more than vocals in the center channels and a little reverb in the back. So a totally excellent concert (e.g. Stop Making Sense) may end up with a 7.

 

[bookofsaturdays]

I give this a 9. I’ve owned this movie for many years but never really analyzed the surround track until a few nights ago. It’s certainly discrete and I know previous posts stated that there is no music in the rears, but that’s not what I was hearing.

In What Shall We Do Now? for example, there is clearly synth textures panning across the back speakers during the flower sequence.

I also remembered hearing vocal echoes and other supportive elements back there.

It is Dolby Digital but it is pleasing enough sonics wise. I really need to do a thorough comparison between the surround encoded 2.0 track and the 5.1 but I’m very happy with the latter. Minus 1 point for the exclusion of a DTS track.