Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by TA (A) on January 04, 2005 at 00:06:01

In Reply to: Any source of listings/reviews of DVD's with top-notch audio? posted by centurymantra on January 3, 2005 at 11:26:25:

check avsforum.com, where people who somehow manage to watch, catalogue and rank by PQ and audio (yet find time to work a job that affords) their 5,000 dvd collections somehow love DVDs more for the technology than the art.

Guilty! :-)

But more seriously, I am having a hard time trying to give a recommendation. Being an audiophile, it is one thing to compare a cello recording against what you hear at Carnegie Hall, but "good sound" in movies often means hearing explosions in oxygen-free outer space and other made-up sounds. But that's exactly the kind of film you want to get away from with this question.

Maybe you mean something like a movie with an ensemble cast that has good separation of the actors speaking? Or is a good example of how to restore a mono soundtrack right? Cuz that's the only kind of film with good sound that Victor would call a good film. :O)

I can recommend one popcorn movie that I did enjoy which happened to have crazy good sound -- The Butterfly Effect. People on avsforum were warning others not to set their subwoofer too high with this disc because it would explode. Yeah, I know it's Ashton, but it's more thoughtful, smarter, adult and scarier than I expected, like reading a fun Ray Bradbury pulp. Otherwise rent the new Goodfellas and you'll hear some great music thrown in. THX 1138 is well done but I recall people pointing out that it's not done in Lucas's THX, and it's a pretty quiet soundtrack (originally mono). Minority Report or AI or Saving Private Ryan are good sounding too, except everyone on this board thinks Spielberg isn't worthy. That's all I can think of at this hour.

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Today, with all the hard competition in the music business, it's almost impossible to come up with anything totally original. So we haven't. However, this disc was made with the accent on heavy music.