Search - Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture:The New Recording on DVD Audio

What a disappointment

downhill | Idaho | 02/27/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Seeing this was converted from DSD..well if I had known that, I would have just bought the SACD. No big deal as I'm figuring with all the hyperbole about this one that...

1...The surround part would be..24 bit 96 kHz..NOPE..it's converted to 24 bit 88.2 kHz. What's up with that? Cheapskates. 88.2 is done usually so they can convert to redbook easier.

2. The Stereo hi rez layer. Now this one really frosts my goat. It's 24 bit 44.1 Why the hell even bother and it takes guts to even call this hi rez. Not even 96 kHz? Heck they could easily have done a 192.....

The performance? Nice...the sound? Not bad but hey....I was looking for real hi rez..


*Edit*

Ok to be fair, I just read this post to another forum by Michael Bishop the recording engineer.

Let me add this to my review.

DVD-A:
1. 88.2 kHz stereo pcm made from DSD stereo program
2. 88.2 kHz 6-channel pcm made from DSD 6-channel program with height channel
3. 48 kHz DTS 6-channel made from DSD 6-channel with height channel
4. 48 kHz DD 5.1-channel made from DSD 6-channel w/o height channel
5. 6-channel setup and alignment pink noise tracks on all surround programs
6. 48 kHz linear pcm stereo as default made from DSD stereo program
plus slides and video
7. High quality variable bit-rate MP3 encoding of the stereo program

Well... it turned out our plans were w-a-y too ambitious for DVD-A at the time, but we had wanted to have the most complete DVD-A package possible for the time. We also wanted to have the opportunity to compare the two formats made from the same master. Our troubles started with having a DVD-A authoring system at the facility we worked with that was too crude and cumbersome to be able to handle all the components we wanted on the same disc. It also turned out that we wouldn't have enough space for all that we wanted - even with a dual-sided DVD. We had to start throwing out ballast or the whole thing was going to sink. We also found that no DTS encoder anywhere was setup to pass six full-range channels, so out went the height channel there. We learned that the version of MLP out then would not pass six full-range channels, so out went the height channel on the 88.2 surround! Besides, the full-range height channel was taking up too much data. It also turned out that both the stereo and 6-channel 88.2 program would not fit on the same DVD-A side - and additional authoring and manufacturing costs prohibited splitting the DVD further into a 3- or 4-sided release. Out went the 88.2 stereo because we wanted to emphasize hi-rez surround over the stereo. We had to ditch having video on the DVD-V side because we had chosen to use the higher bit-rate version of Dolby Digital and DTS for those versions. Just to make room for the slides we had to go with the lower bit-rate on the DD program. We had to drop the alignment section from the alternate surround programs due to space. On and on... In the meantime, the audio press had been writing about what we were including on the 1812 disc so there were already certain expectations from our customers long before the disc was even ready to manufacture. And we were now 6 months late with the release! We were now up to a $15,000 (USD) DVD authoring bill for a disc that if we sold 1000 of them we'd be lucky. We had a DVD authoring engineer going nuts trying to make an authoring system work that had no effective user interface and no real-time testing of the program. Every time we changed anything it required re-typing hundreds of lines of code on his part. Every change meant having to burn a new DVD-R as a test to see how it worked. Our DVD-A authoring engineer was a real hero! We ran into some MLP encoding bugs that were unknown 'til then - even at Meridian. These bugs weren't found until we had the first DVD-As manufactured and played them on some of the just-introduced DVD-A players. The entire first manufacturing run had to be scraped. Add to this fiasco the fact that we were also producing the "Celebrating the Music of Weather Report" DVD-A release at the same time and we were running into it's own set of problems - and at similar cost of dollars and years off our lives. All along the way choices had to be made and we made them. Not everyone has been happy with the choices made, but no one can please everyone all the time.

Incidentally, the SACD authoring and manufacturing went without a single hitch...
Best Regards,

Michael Bishop
Recording Engineer

(...)"

Analogue LP had more punch!!

'Space Captain' | Victoria, B. C. Canada | 03/30/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a two-sided disc. The dts side is only 5.0 . My Amp fills in the bass but it is not a discrete .1 channel! Also the cannons near the end are LAME- sounds like snaps of a whip or the crack of a 'cane' on a piece of wood - nothing like my old LP version which had plenty of 'thunderous cannons', only in 2 channel Stereo but with quite abit of ambience providing reasonable surround. This dts digital recording was abysmal!The DVD-A side though 5.1 , sounded 'weak' during the cannon blasts. Really disappointing!!!
Edd. iegolden@shaw.ca"

DVD-Audio tracks are awesome

bobmonf | Trabuco Canyon, CA | 02/08/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"It's a pretty good recording, first I've heard the 1812 with a children's choir in addition to the Kiev chorus. The cannons sound good on the DVD-Audio track, there's also a DTS track, PCM tracks, and mp3's at 128Kbit. The DVD-Audio track is the best sounding. The only thing I missed was the peal of the bells - they're there, but they don't peal like on other recordings I've heard. If you can play DVD-Audio, this is definitely one to wake the neighbors with..."

Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture:The New Recording

Dr. M. Zelman | Pasadena, CA | 02/24/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Great sounding DVD. The cannons are not as impressive as I thought they would be; have the setup (7.1 THX Cert system), but overall fine audio quality."