I played last night again; BEP Black Eyed Peas - Live from Sydney to Vegas (Sydney has amazingly good sound for a concert, Vegas sucks!).
I compared it to Pulse ( a highly rated DVD in these and many threads ). While I prefer the music of Pink Floyd, there is absolutely no comparison to modern 5.1 recording techniques from this Floyd 1994 concert re-mix to last years BEP concert tour (with multiple Grammy award winning engineering behind it).
I also got my sound meter out to figure out what was going on. It was such a startling difference and I am not one easily given to hyperbole!
While you may not like Pop-rap you owe it to yourself and to test your sound system with what engineer Tal Herberg has achieved on this BEP DVD; a new gold standard in concert recording...absolutely astonishing dynamics and clarity!
The sound SPL meter was all over the place (I could not find a comfortable position for the ratshack meter, as it was consistently indicating either too Low or too High!)
This is one of very few recordings WITHOUT compression. Microphones sound just like live microphones do at a real concert (no doctoring). Normally compression is always used in Rock/Pop to even out the dynamics of drums versus guitars, so music never sounds anything like it does at a real live event. Not so in this case! You are there.
If you go for it and crank it just be careful....this BEP DVD has the type of dynamics that can easily BLOW speaker drivers if you are not very careful. Unlike the usual compressed stuff, it will not sound loud or harsh even at high volume levels (I found that an average of 95 db SPL at the listening position was best for this concert with peaks about 20 db above this).
I have over 50% of the DVD's already mentioned in these threads. I also prefer Classical, Rock, Jazz, Blues, country, you name it to pop-rap....but a great live recording is a great recording so I feel I must spread the word about the BEP's...especially given how BAD normal pop recordings are these days.
Is there a glimmer of hope that sound engineers and artists might once again begin to give us decent uncompressed music? I am pretty doubtful when it comes to CD's ...but DVD's, well perhaps, finally, after years of frustratingly bad DVD's, there are some signs of hope...
