MindsMirror
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I bought TesseracT's new album Polaris, with the bonus DVD which has a stereo 96/24 and a 5.1 mix in AC3 and DTS 96/24. I feel like sharing my thoughts and discoveries regarding the different versions, so that is the purpose of this thread.
First of all, the standard CD sounds great. It scored DR7 on the TT DR meter. The DR score is not the greatest, but it sounds more dynamic than the meter would suggest. I would say sonically it is at least as good as One and Altered State, which already sounded great.
The 2.0 channel 96/24 audio from the DVD sounds just like the CD to me. The DR score is identical to the CD, and the levels are practically the same as well.
Here is the spectrogram of one of the tracks from audacity.
There's nothing above 22.5KHz. I tried converting the CD to 96KHz and subtracting it to see if they are truly identical. There seems to be a very small EQ difference because almost everything below 1KHz was completely subtracted but above 1KHz it was not. It's not enough for me to hear or tell you which is which. This version is pretty much a pointless waste of HDD/DVD space.
The surround sound mix is a bit confusing. First of all, it scores DR11, or DR12 if you downmix it first.
The most noticeable difference is in the vocals on the center channel. I don't have 5.1 speakers so I don't know how it would sound directly like that. If you mix the center channel into the L and R channels at the standard -3dB, it is too loud. On some tracks it is only slightly louder than the CD mix, on others it is significantly louder, and on Phoenix the center vocals completely overpower everything else. The center channel waveform is not really clipped (it touches 0dB for only one sample at those red lines), but it is obviously limited in many sections in Phoenix like this one. Center channel is the third waveform, by the way.
I thought maybe the center channel was not meant to be mixed at -3dB, but I used a software called Ac3Tool which can analyse the AC3 stream for the intended center channel mix level and it said that it was -3dB. If you don't include the center channel at all, some tracks sound fine, but then Hexes has significantly quieter vocals compared to the CD, and some vocal parts are completely missing from Dystopia. To get the vocal levels to sound similar to the CD on all tracks, I had to mix it at -6dB on Dystopia and Hexes, and -14dB on the rest of them.
With the center vocals fixed, the surround mix does still have significant differences to the CD. Certain tracks are EQed and leveled differently, and you can notice the increased dynamic range on the drums. There is noticeably less compression on the loudest sections of the songs.
The spectrogram looks just like the 2 channel 96/24 version with nothing above 22.5KHz, even from the DTS 96/24 stream.
The CD sounds great so you could certainly be happy without the DVD. I would only listen to the DVD if you are able to modify the gain of the center channel. Maybe there's someone who really loves Dan's vocals and wants to hear more of them, who might like the surround mix as is. Also I guess if you hate Dan's vocals and want Ashe O'Hara back in the band, you could listen to the surround mix and take out the center channel.
First of all, the standard CD sounds great. It scored DR7 on the TT DR meter. The DR score is not the greatest, but it sounds more dynamic than the meter would suggest. I would say sonically it is at least as good as One and Altered State, which already sounded great.
The 2.0 channel 96/24 audio from the DVD sounds just like the CD to me. The DR score is identical to the CD, and the levels are practically the same as well.
Here is the spectrogram of one of the tracks from audacity.
There's nothing above 22.5KHz. I tried converting the CD to 96KHz and subtracting it to see if they are truly identical. There seems to be a very small EQ difference because almost everything below 1KHz was completely subtracted but above 1KHz it was not. It's not enough for me to hear or tell you which is which. This version is pretty much a pointless waste of HDD/DVD space.
The surround sound mix is a bit confusing. First of all, it scores DR11, or DR12 if you downmix it first.
The most noticeable difference is in the vocals on the center channel. I don't have 5.1 speakers so I don't know how it would sound directly like that. If you mix the center channel into the L and R channels at the standard -3dB, it is too loud. On some tracks it is only slightly louder than the CD mix, on others it is significantly louder, and on Phoenix the center vocals completely overpower everything else. The center channel waveform is not really clipped (it touches 0dB for only one sample at those red lines), but it is obviously limited in many sections in Phoenix like this one. Center channel is the third waveform, by the way.
I thought maybe the center channel was not meant to be mixed at -3dB, but I used a software called Ac3Tool which can analyse the AC3 stream for the intended center channel mix level and it said that it was -3dB. If you don't include the center channel at all, some tracks sound fine, but then Hexes has significantly quieter vocals compared to the CD, and some vocal parts are completely missing from Dystopia. To get the vocal levels to sound similar to the CD on all tracks, I had to mix it at -6dB on Dystopia and Hexes, and -14dB on the rest of them.
With the center vocals fixed, the surround mix does still have significant differences to the CD. Certain tracks are EQed and leveled differently, and you can notice the increased dynamic range on the drums. There is noticeably less compression on the loudest sections of the songs.
The spectrogram looks just like the 2 channel 96/24 version with nothing above 22.5KHz, even from the DTS 96/24 stream.
The CD sounds great so you could certainly be happy without the DVD. I would only listen to the DVD if you are able to modify the gain of the center channel. Maybe there's someone who really loves Dan's vocals and wants to hear more of them, who might like the surround mix as is. Also I guess if you hate Dan's vocals and want Ashe O'Hara back in the band, you could listen to the surround mix and take out the center channel.