Two new titles from DTS: The Blasters and a jazzy/trip-hoppish title

I was checking out DTS' website--which looks better but takes forever to find new titles!--and found these two new discs coming out on January 25th:

Going Home: The Blasters Live

and this

LTJ Bukem Planet Earth

I'm not sure what formats they are: DTS has the Blasters listed as a DTS-CD but the cover art says a dvd-audio (so does cduniverse) & the Bukem disc as a "dvd-video" but cduniverse lists it as a DTS-CD and this site says it is a dvd-audio. Somebody needs to set up a conference call pronto! I sent an email to DTS asking about this.

Don't know much about the Blasters though I've heard of them--will be interested to hear reviews of the surround mix on this live album.

Going by the samples on cduniverse, I'll be getting the Bukem disc--a nice mixture of cool musical styles and ones I think would sound great in surround form. It's a compilation disc so I had to go to various pages on cduniverse to hear the samples but I liked all of them. At first some bordered on being smooth jazz (yech) then the drums or other instruments kicked in--whew! Good stuff. Reminds me of the trip-hop CDs I've been buying from various other artists like Thievery Corporation, The Karminsky Experience, DJ Cam and Kruder & Dorfmeister. Bukem's Journey Inwards double-CD sounds really cool-n-slinky, good enough for me to want to buy it even if it's just two channel lo-res PCM.

 

I’ve been listening to this album the last week and here’s what I found................

Music

Except for two tracks, I really like the music. This is a compilation album and contains several different styles of music & as can be heard on Bukem’s other albums, they can feature drum & bass, ambient, electronica, trip-hop or pretty much traditional jazz sounds.......and songs with a mixture of these different genres. So it’s a little difficult to describe but here goes anyway. Several of the tracks would sound at home on a James Bond soundtrack, i.e. cool-n-slick sounding. Some of the tracks that feature vocals, like the jazzy “You’re Divine” made me think of a dark/smokey downtown lounge with the singer dressed in a slinky black dress with expensively-dressed clientele nearby sipping martinis. “Stranded” took me a while to figure out because of the unexpected way the lines are sung relative to the music but it is now one of my favorite tracks. She sort of speaks & sings at the same time; she has an excellent voice. The music is (here’s where my lack of music technical knowledge shows up!) has a heavy bass beat to it--it sort of has a hip-hop feel to it but with a little bit of jazz mixed in. Whatever, it’s one of those types of tracks you automatically want to turn up as soon as it starts. And the tracks done by K-Scope, especially 2 and 5, I also like a lot. Track 9, “Above and Beyond” might unnerve some people at first with its frenetic solo drumming at the beginning, but at the 23 second mark, mellow synthesizer notes suddenly appear to provide a sonic & tempo(?) counterbalance so that the track “evens out” musically-speaking. The only track I consistently skipped was the first one. It is dangerously close to being smooth jazz, a class of music that for me causes my hand to involuntarily and very quickly reach for the skip or station preset button. And lastly, there are several tracks that are great to mellow out with after a long day at work.

Surround Mix

Fully immersive, with occasional aggressive movement like the swirling shaker on “The Setup”, but nothing gimmicky IMO. The mixes are usually a nice combination of discrete and atmospheric/airy effects. FYI: the surround channels usually contain powerful low bass frequencies (I operate my system full-range on all channels as per most surround mixers recommendations). The center channel is always active, sometimes featuring fully discrete instruments/vocals and at other times functioning more as a fill-in channel but is still fully utilized (i.e. not at all like that ghostly fill effect on DTS’ own Moody Blues’ Seventh Sojourn 5.1 DTS-CD or Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly dvd-audio). One cool effect using this channel occurs on “Above and Beyond”: the previously-mentioned drum solo is heard only through this channel for twenty-three seconds.......then those synthesizers swell up all around you resulting in a very cool musical transition effect. There is also some interesting sidewall imaging but due to my mutt of a speaker system (three different brands) I’m sure this will be heard more clearly on a properly matched one. I don’t own a DTS-ES capable system so didn’t get to hear the six channel mix.

The surround format fits together really well with this type of music, definitely helping to add to its emotional impact.

Sound

As usual for this label, the sound is very good IMO on all the included formats. It has a very clear and clean sound with lots of "punch" (but is not grainy or harsh) which fits the (mostly) energetic mood of the music on this album. And I didn't notice any overt compression, so I was able to turn up this album to ridiculous volume levels without irritating my hearing. In comparison, all the formats on DTS’ dvd-audio version of Uninvisible by Medeski, Martin and Wood had a very mellow sound, almost like the music was recorded in a room with heavy velvet drapes on all the walls. But then again, that music has a darker and much moodier feel to it than Bukem’s album does and so probably needed a sound to match it.

Packaging Format

* This CD+dvd package uses a regular-sized jewelbox, with an inner plastic flip-out panel where the discs are held on opposite sides.

* Back cover includes audio format chart.

* It cost $19.99 at a local independent music store.

Technical details

* Though the chart has a listing for “DVD 5.1 SURROUND” and seems to indicate this is a dvd-audio disc, I could not find any such format on the disc. That listing is followed by sampling rate and bit depth (48kHz/24bit) but using my Pioneer DV-656A I could find no such track and the disc’s menu didn’t list it either. But as of this writing, this disc is correctly listed as a “dvd-video” on DTS Entertainment’s site--a last minute change of mind perhaps?

The rest of the chart is correct though. There is a DTS surround track and a 48/24 “regular” (i.e. non-MLP) PCM stereo track which any dvd player can play. The surround track is the default playback mode.

* The disc operates just like a dvd movie disc, with quick “track” changes just like a CD. Each track is accompanied by an attractive still image, usually something nature-related. And a subtle but slick transition effect occurs during track changes. When the last song finally ends, DTS’ ten second “countdown timer” appears: if you don’t select an on-screen icon to go back to the main menu the disc finally & truly stops when it hits “00“. I.e. it doesn’t have that irritating habit many dvds have of going back to the main menu with an endless repeated loop of music (R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People dvd-audio does this and to make it even worse, the menu music is much louder than the actual songs themselves. Arrgh!).

Whether you push play or the “close tray” button, the disc loads then the on-screen audio menu appears and “PCM STEREO” is highlighted for about five seconds........then “DTS-ES” is highlighted next. Then around twenty seconds later the disc starts playing by itself (unless of course you choose another option from the menu).

Extras

In addition to the typical artist biographies and one remixed track not on the CD version, the really interesting bonus feature--at least to us surround techie nerds --is the mix breakdown. When this option is chosen, a black screen appears with six symbols representing an overhead view of a 6.0 surround set-up (no symbol for a sub though). An broken down version of “You’re Divine” begins playing and as each instrument is brought into the mix, a written listing for that instrument appears (or disappears whatever the case may be) in the physical place that a seated listener would actually hear it in. This might sound like just a gee-wiz feature thrown in with no real use but I actually think its very informative & I’ve watched it several times so far. And it’s also interesting to hear the song being put together piece by piece, starting with the drums first, then eventually at the finale all eighteen(!) instruments including the vocalist are playing. Neat!

I very much like this package, especially the music of course (I choose surround titles just like CD titles. i.e. is the music good?) but also enjoyed the inclusion of the separate CD, so this was definitely worth the trouble of having to order it.

 

I got the Blasters disc from CDuniverse yesterday, so I haven't listened yet. The packaging seems to indicate that there is a 48/24 DVD-Audio mix, and a DTS 48/24 mix, as well as a PCM 48/24 stereo mix.

The weird thing is that the packaging, at first glance, doesn't make it clear that it is a DVD-Audio disc, yet the DVD-Audio/Video logo is on the disc and package, and the back cover indicated DVD-Audio mix. Yet the disc is in a regular jewel box with a slipcase (instead of the normal super-jewel box commonly found on DVD-A discs). And the writing on the top of the slipcover and a few other places merely states, DTS Surround Music Disc with no mention of DVD-Audio. I guess I won't know for sure until I play the thing.

The disc does have a whole slew of bonus tracks that don't seem to appear on the regular CD, so that is a plus.

 

Very nice review, Taurus! While I enjoyed the disc, I found it a little bright on the top end for my taste. Interestingly, I found the Medeski DVD-A to be much more pleasing across the frequency spectrum. I'm using all-matched Ascend Acoustics speakers and HSU sub, which tend to reveal quite a bit.

 

I think the "Super Jewel" boxes for DVD-As and SACDs are going the way of the DoDo bird. Even the Telarc SACDs I've been receiving lately are in regular CD jewel boxes. Who knows...?

 

I heard this too. Cymbals especially can be quite forward sounding, so this is when my receiver's treble control comes in handy. But fortunately they still sound good, with a nice shimmery quality. So in other words this disc sounds nothing like that nasty sounding Beatles "1" album--I can only play 4-5 tracks on that CD before it goes back in the rack.

But considering that this title seems to not be targeted toward audiophiles (i.e. no hi-res surround track), and this music is more popular with younger people, I wonder if this disc was deliberately mixed that way to compensate for many budget surround system's lack of clean high frequency reproduction abilities, particularly the ones that use only a full-range 3"-4" driver & no tweeter......or 2.5" cones in cubical enclosures (ahem). Because when I play the CD in our $50 kitchen boombox the high end comes through nicely, almost as if the box was equipped with separate tweeters.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to see those super jewel cases disappear. They don't fit in the huge majority of storage racks and I'm sure retailers get irritated with them also, so good riddance I say.

 

Darn, the Blasters DTS disc supposedly a DVD-Audio disc, is not. The back cover states "Audio Tracks" DVD-A 5.1 Surround 48k 24 - yet this mix is nowhere to be found on the disc. In addtion the DVD Audio/Video logo is all of the package and the disc. The disc has a DTS surround mix and a LPCM 84/24 stereo mix.

 

I also bought the blasters disc based on the dvd-a labeling and was pretty bummed after finding out otherwise, so i wrote to politely express my displeasure. they, in turn, were kind enough to offer me a free copy of the dvd-video version to make up for their packaging mistake - - since i couldn't return the opened disc to the store. while i'm still disappointed there was no dvd-a, three cheers at least for their thoughtful customer support.

 

This is good news in some respects. I sent an e-mail to DTS Entertainment myself earlier today, so maybe I will get the same response from them.