criterionforum.org

I just watched the MGM DVD for this, and I noticed that the 2.0 stereo mix has issues. Go to "Caravan" (which for me is the highlight of the whole damn film, not to mention a career highlight for Van Morrison). They mixed the horn track and I think Levon's drums into the right channel, and it sounds like those tracks had an intermittent signal going into the mix. This is especially noticeable at the very end when Morrison does those notorious little kicks. It's like the horns are clipped off as the signal struggles to get through.

The 5.1 mix does not seem to have this issue, but I do not have a 5.1 setup, and on a stereo setup, the 5.1 mix sounds kind of anemic with everything scrunched in rather than spread out properly across two channels.

I'm wondering if this problem carried over to the Blu-Ray re-issue? I heard the picture wasn't a huge upgrade from the DVD, and this is yet another concert DVD that upscales very well. (I have an Oppo BD player that does it.) Check out "The Weight," upscaled it looks beautiful on a 55" screen, a pretty damn fine transfer.

hearthesilence wrote:...when Morrison does those notorious little kicks.

I have the blu-ray and will try to see if I can notice what you're talking about.

I hadn't noticed this when I watched the Blu-ray, but it doesn't have the stereo track, just Dolby 5.1 and LPCM 5.1. I also have a stereo system, and the horn section did sound a bit weak during that song.
Picture quality was great. The Blu-ray dropped to $4.99 at Amazon very briefly in June, so it was an easy upgrade (by the time I placed my order and went to share the deal here, the price had shot back up again).

Hahah, thanks for the Seinfeld reference and for checking - I didn't realize they dropped the stereo track, which is a shame because it has a nice wide spread that didn't come through with the 5.1 when I fed it through my stereo system. I'm not sure what went wrong, but it's just that mix, the 5.1 didn't have the same problem I was hearing with the stereo.

FWIW, the stereo mix also seems to have quite a bit of compression that isn't on the 5.1, a common problem these days. Another common problem with the stereo track - because of the extra compression used on those parts (a by-product of modern day mastering practices), the music numbers are too "loud." The volume jumps way too much from the spoken bits to the performances. A good mix would've kept everything even so that you didn't have to adjust the volume back and forth.