Roger Waters - Amused To Death - opinions on 2015 remix

Hi,

what do you guys think about the new versions?
I listened to both the stereo and 5.1 mixes on the Blu ray and I am kind of disappointed. Especially bass and drums do not sound as powerful as I had expected them to do especially after knowing other great remixes by Mr. Guthrie.
The biggest disappointement though is the new mix of "The Bravery Of Being Out Of Range" with strangely enough lacks the great deep slide in on the hammond organ at the start of the song and gives us cheesy synth or guitar sounds instead. That almost ruins my listening experience. I was expecting a surround mix as true as possible to the original stereo mix. Unfortunately the new stereo mix has the same disadvantages as the 5.1-mix.

 

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/roger-waters-amused-to-death-coming-to-lp-and-sacd.306423/

 

That thread is about the LP and SACD. I haven't listened to the blu ray yet, but the CD is awesome

 

Sounds great but is typical of Guthrie's lack of ambition in 5.1, music not used in the full sound field , you are right Drums and bass not used effectively and the mix at times is missing the umph that the original stereo mix had.

I am OK with revisonary mixing and music as long as the original is included like King Crimson Yes and XTC albums which have come out in 5.1

As for the disc authoring pretty abismal as well.

It would have been a better mix if Andy Jackson who did the Division Bell and Endless River had done it that is for sure, but possibly because he is in the Gilmour camp that's why he has not had the opportunity.

 

Is anyone having issues with the 5.1 playback on the blu ray. I can only get the stereo version to play even when 5.1 is selected. I had a similar problem with a recent yes blu ray audio release. Thanks.

Jeff

 

I'm having a similar issue. when I do the system test and it sends a test signal to each speaker it sends the signal to the front when it says surrounds. The fronts also play when it sends the test to the fronts....lol very strage. Don't have this at all with the receivers own test

 

I'm baffled. Hardly a peep out of the center speaker.

 

I can't get anything to play 5.1 or stereo. My player just freezes. Never had this problem with any disc.

 

Got a replacement copy yesterday. Exact same problem.

 

Any updates on the surround mix?

 

I like it and I am pretty critical.

 

Though Amazon UK can't get Yes's Tales From Topographic Oceans in stock to send to me, they did send me the Amused to Death blu ray at a cheapish price.

These are some comments from my first play:

At first I was very disappointed with the sound quality, but playing it with a bit more detail than I play the Wilson 5.1 discs (by using my Direct mode) the recording got back it's life.

One thing that annoyed me is that it has been mastered for night mode - in that the quiet bits have been made louder and the loud bits quieter. So for it to sound 'just right' for me I have to alter the volume up and down so the quiet bits don't sound ridiculously loud and the heavy bits have impact. Whether this happens more than the original CD I don't know, but as this is one recording that is not suitable for background listening, it feels wrong to me to not have good dynamics.

The surround mix on the whole is not very adventurous. It also seem biased to put things on my left side/rear leaving the right side/rear often empty.

Most controversially this is a different mix in that creative changes were made. A major change to me was the beginning of Perfect Sense Part 1 which on the original CD has introductory music with weird sounding backwards speech, but on the blu ray both the stereo and the 5.1 don't have this backwards speech but use the voice of HAL from 2001.

Though most of the time the surround is fairly unimpressive, there are moments that work very well. I especially liked the way the choir filled the room with It's A Miracle.

Given that this is a very different mix from the original I am very disappointed that a hi-rez version of the original stereo mix wasn't included.

One very good thing is the menu system of the blu ray is very simple. No fancy logos and graphics at the beginning. So you don't need to turn the TV on. Just put it in and wait a short time so you know the menu is up, then press enter to play the stereo, or left then enter to play the 5.1.

For me it worked very well that when playing the 5.1 the screen was black all the time except for the beginning of each track where the title appeared in red text for a short time.

A missed opportunity in all the blu ray audio discs I own is that so far I've not found a disc where we have the option to turn subtitles on and thus view the lyrics.

As I said at the start, these are my impressions from my first play. So I may revise my views later.

 

Totally agree.
This one of the very few titles in my surround collection I consider inferior to the original stereo mix on CD. Feels lifeless to me and I do not understand the need for artistic changes in the mix especially the missing grand hammond slide in the beginning of "Bravery Of Being Out Of Range". Spoils the whole liistening experience for me. The newly added cheesy guitar lines in that song are no comfort for me.

 

My great disappointment with this release is that it was billed as a full remix with the changes to "Bravery" and "Perfect Sense" being put out front as indication that the entire album had been dramatically changed. Barring those two tracks, most of the album is just as it was, which seems beyond pointless. Why remix chunks of an album and leave the rest alone?

I don't have a surround rig, so I can't comment on that, but the lack of ambition when it came to the remixed tracks makes even more sense given what I'm reading about the surround mix.

 

James Guthrie for all his ability and a producer and engineer is just rubbish at surround, no imagination I dont believe that Roger cares that much for surround either or he this would be more exciting.

As someone else has said this is one of the few where the origianl stereo mix is streets ahead of the new surround and stereo mix, and why does it take so long for such a half arsed job?

 

I just found out today it was remixed.

 

is there any replacement plan for this, my receiver doesn't seem to identify the encoded signal (dts,dolby etc) only sees the disc as multi channel. No other 5.1 disk behaves like this. Anyone else have this problem. I could swear it saw it normally until recently.

 

I like the remix but I'm not dumping the original CD either

 

Ok played around with this tonight for a little more detail of whats occurring. It looks like its an issue with the bitstream. The player is set to bitstream auto but the disc wont go into dts or dolby and acts like its set to pcm audio. Now if I change the bluray settings from bitstream auto to DTS then it works. But I shouldn't have to do that and that will probably impact playing other discs. Is anyone having any issues like this??

 

sooooooo....that's a no?

 

Yes. Same happened to me. But I change to DTS and it's OK. Just have to switch back for other discs. Weird.