HiRez Poll Rush - HEMISPHERES [Blu-Ray Audio]

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Rate the BDA of Rush - HEMISPHERES


  • Total voters
    34
edisonbaggins is totally right on this review. The 5.1 mix is very unbalanced with fronts very compressed with the vocals, the center with some Alex solos in very high volume a the back channels very low with discrete reverb. That's it basicaly. BTW, i tried to create a downmix 2.0 from La Villa Strangiato with some individual ajustments on every channel from the 5.1 mixes and the result is below



(not bat at all, i liked the clarity of the drums)

Cheers
 
Well in fairness at least someone reviewed it, even if as we say in England 'what a load of bollocks' :) Reviews for this release are very few and far between.
Anyone buying the RSD picture disc?
I was hoping they would use the new artwork on the flipside.Maybe they have?
 
Well in fairness at least someone reviewed it, even if as we say in England 'what a load of bollocks' :) Reviews for this release are very few and far between.
Anyone buying the RSD picture disc?
I was hoping they would use the new artwork on the flipside.Maybe they have?
I have the non-RSD picture disk.... in a frame, hanging on my wall
 
I am listening to this tonight for the first time in a very long time. While I agree that this isn’t a an adventurous 5.1 mix, man, this thing sounds incredible. So much so that I certainly would buy it again if I had the chance to reconsider. I changed my vote from an 8 to a 9. It just sounds too good to give it less.
 
I've been playing around with this in Audacity for a while, and after about 10 different iterations, I think I've finally got it as close as I can for my tastes, as far as just basic level adjusting goes.

The center channel has literally nothing at all a good bit of the time, but quite often does have just a bit of drum bleed, a tiny bit of what sounds like direct injected bass guitar, and occasionally some massively loud guitar solos or keyboard highlights. There are no vocals at all, except for maybe some traces of bleed through. I ended up going with -3dB on the center to reduce the huge discrepancy of the occasional guitar/keyboard part. I could've possibly gone a bit lower, but I didn't want to take away from that little bit of clean direct bass guitar sound, and those solo parts should stand out a little more overall, just not to such a ridiculously absurd degree.

The bass/LFE is incredibly weak to me, so I tried increasing it a stupid amount, which ended up sounding way too thud-like and boomy, just on certain sections, so I kept reducing it to where it still has some oomph without being too boomy, and ended up settling on +9dB.

The surrounds were quite weak to me overall, so I increased them until it sounded more balanced, and while the few bits that are actually back there in the surrounds sounded much better to me, the echoey/reverb stuff stood out too much, so I kept backing it off until it sounded like the best balance between enough of the actual instruments and not too much reverb at +2.5dB.

After all of these 'corrections' it sounds much better to me, but the vocals (which come mainly out of the mains but also from the rears with a good bit of reverb on them) still seem a little distant and a touch harsh, and the bottom end of the kick drum and bass guitar could definitely be more defined too, with maybe a bit of judicious eq.

I'd say that for me, what I did takes it from my original vote of 4 (probably too harsh) to probably somewhere between 7~8.
 
I've been playing around with this in Audacity for a while, and after about 10 different iterations, I think I've finally got it as close as I can for my tastes, as far as just basic level adjusting goes.

The center channel has literally nothing at all a good bit of the time, but quite often does have just a bit of drum bleed, a tiny bit of what sounds like direct injected bass guitar, and occasionally some massively loud guitar solos or keyboard highlights. There are no vocals at all, except for maybe some traces of bleed through. I ended up going with -3dB on the center to reduce the huge discrepancy of the occasional guitar/keyboard part. I could've possibly gone a bit lower, but I didn't want to take away from that little bit of clean direct bass guitar sound, and those solo parts should stand out a little more overall, just not to such a ridiculously absurd degree.

The bass/LFE is incredibly weak to me, so I tried increasing it a stupid amount, which ended up sounding way too thud-like and boomy, just on certain sections, so I kept reducing it to where it still has some oomph without being too boomy, and ended up settling on +9dB.

The surrounds were quite weak to me overall, so I increased them until it sounded more balanced, and while the few bits that are actually back there in the surrounds sounded much better to me, the echoey/reverb stuff stood out too much, so I kept backing it off until it sounded like the best balance between enough of the actual instruments and not too much reverb at +2.5dB.

After all of these 'corrections' it sounds much better to me, but the vocals (which come mainly out of the mains but also from the rears with a good bit of reverb on them) still seem a little distant and a touch harsh, and the bottom end of the kick drum and bass guitar could definitely be more defined too, with maybe a bit of judicious eq.

I'd say that for me, what I did takes it from my original vote of 4 (probably too harsh) to probably somewhere between 7~8.
Your write up has parallels to my own attempts to fix this. Did you ever see my Hemispheres videos?
 
Your write up has parallels to my own attempts to fix this. Did you ever see my Hemispheres videos?
Not sure if I have, but I will. :) I do remember back when this first came out and everyone was trying to crack the 'secret magical fix' and most everyone eventually surmised that it was futile. I pretty much listened to it a time or two and just gave up on it and forgot about it for a long time. Since this wasn't hit too hard with the compression hammer, cranking it up helps a lot, and I'd say that with my fix, La Villa Strangiato almost sounds pretty danged good!
 
Not sure if I have, but I will. :) I do remember back when this first came out and everyone was trying to crack the 'secret magical fix' and most everyone eventually surmised that it was futile. I pretty much listened to it a time or two and just gave up on it and forgot about it for a long time. Since this wasn't hit too hard with the compression hammer, cranking it up helps a lot, and I'd say that with my fix, La Villa Strangiato almost sounds pretty danged good!
I know that I'm VERY in touch with the original album, so it might be more of a challenge to accent the mere differences in the mixes, but...
This 5.1 "mix" made me unhappier every time I played it. I tried to save a lot of fans the same pain with the reviews and breakdown videos I did.
And Richard Chycki blocked me on social media... 🤬
 
I don't know it for a fact, but I'm fairly certain it rhymes with either "cheeky" or "chickie."

EDIT: it's "chickie..."


Good to know! I'd bet he blocked me because I wrote him asking if he'd heard the commercial blu-ray, giving him the benefit of the doubt that a mistake occurred at mixdown, at mastering or somewhere in the process, maybe not even his fault. If the blu-ray truly does sound like he intended that might have pissed him off. (I may have tweeted that too...) o_O
 
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