I’m looking for some great music to listen to that’s available in high quality 5.1 surround sound. I’m looking at picking up “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, but there has to be more great stuff in these fantastic mixes. Compared to a normal CD, DVD audio is completely immersive.
So far, I’ve got:
Queen (music video compilation)
Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust concert
AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” compilation
Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
Beck - Guero
The Flaming Lips - Zaireeka
The “core 7” Moody Blues albums have been released on SACD and I’ve listened to Days of Future Passed on my computer with DTS and 5.1 and it sounds amazing.
But, all of the SACD terminology confuses the heck out of me so I can’t say if you could just pick up an album in the store and play it in 5.1 on your stereo or not.
I can ask my buddy the record producer - he does 5.1 remixing for some bands.
At his studio, I have heard stuff like:
All of the ones I list above were excellent - he picked them out because of how good they sounded…
Not yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
My favorite 5.1 albums are …
Depeche Mode “Songs of Faith and Devotion”
Nine Inch Nails “The Downward Spiral”
BT “This Binary Universe”
This is in 5.1? Do you need four 5.1 systems to play it? The original was four 2 channel discs so I do not see how that would work in 5.1.
The Beatles - “Love” is amazing in 5.1
So is Beck - “Sea Change”
Tommy should be on the list. Remixed and remastered by the man himself.
In my opinion, Dark Side of the Moon is a must-own for anyone with a high-def player. It’s a fantastic mix, and the surround mix really enhances the music (it doesn’t always on other discs). I listen to it a lot - it’s very atmospheric, and sounds swirl all around the room as the music plays. There’s one track where you can hear footsteps running - and they run all around the outside of the room. You can hear doors slam in the right place after footsteps head towards it, that kind of thing. And the music is awesome.
Beck - Both Guero and Sea Change are great. Both have really good sound mixes and are really enhanced by 5.1.
The Beatles - Love
Whether you like or hate the way George Martin recut the music, it’s the only way to hear the Beatles in high-definition. And for me, that made it a must-own. A couple of the movie DVDs have good sountracks in Dolby Digital, but Love has just great audio quality.
Those Four CDs probably account for half of all my high-def music listening.
Can you play these on a normal DVDplayer, or do you need to have a DVD-Audio player?
My friend was the one re-mixing it. Not sure of the status; Robert Smith got caught up in other projects. I can say it was fun, cool and educational to sit with him while he took the original CD masters and showed me how he was re-mixing them for 5.1. We walked through Pictures of You in a lot of detail. Lots of layers to work through, that’s for sure. There is both art and craft to translating that to 5.1 - it’s not a walk in the park.
Depending on the Disc, you need either a player that will play DVD-A, or SACD. A standard player won’t work.
Some 5.1 discs are available in Dolby Digital or DTS, and those can be played in any DVD player/receiver combination that supports those formats. Which is pretty much all of them these days.
It was re-mixed into a special DVD released just for members of the fan club and (I believe) members of the flaminglips.com message board. Naturally, it was leaked to the internet where people trade it around. It’s not hard to find.
There are two audio tracks on the DVD. The first is the album mixed into 5 channels (I imagine two CDs are split between the center), the second track lets them go out of sync. Sort of contrary to the purpose of the album–the idea of a different listening experience every time–but it still sounds great.