2007 DVDs

[hughesmr]

Because people equate loudness to quality. They shouldn't, but they do. On $5 headphones, only amplitude can make up for poor equipment.

Truer words were never (unfortunately) spoken.

Tin ears abound these days due to lousy engineering on popular music recordings. For a recent discussion on this in this forum, read this thread: http://www.drumcorpsplanet.com/forums/inde...&hl=isomike

Edited November 19, 2007 by hughesmr

[liebot]

:(

Crossmen's warm-up was not on the DVD. While I understand noone's was, that was a huge let down. Their warm-up was so cool, I would have loved to have seen it again (and show how cool some of hte visual stuff can be to a newbie).

Yeah, kind of disappointing. But I expected it to be like that. Oh well.

[Nex]

I'm kind of disappointed with the Div II/III DVDs, but I'll take it.

Same here. Same here . . . .

[Jared_mello]

Yeah, kind of disappointing. But I expected it to be like that. Oh well.

i put crossmen on yesterday, saw that the intro wasn't on there, and was ###### enough about it that i turned the dvd's off for the night. really disappointing....was it really not possible to include it, dci?

[dcimello2]

i put crossmen on yesterday, saw that the intro wasn't on there, and was ###### enough about it that i turned the dvd's off for the night. really disappointing....was it really not possible to include it, dci?

I was really really upset about that as well. I was really looking forward to seeing the cape work and I was very surprised as well as upset that they didn't put it on the DVD. <**>

[cmathis]

I found the "easter egg" in the DVDs, and might I say, it is AWESOME!!! Great job DCI!

[Ray Kimber]

Because people equate loudness to quality. They shouldn't, but they do. On $5 headphones, only amplitude can make up for poor equipment.

Hi All,

My name is Ray Kimber, I am the crazy nut behind the IsoMike recording experiments in Ogden Utah. We recording the Blue Knights this past summer. the dynamic range was tremendous and we didn't do anything to neuter the recording. This has resulted in a disc that is not the usual "normalized" offering. It does require a bit of re-calibration of the playback system to maximize, on playback, what we captured during recording. If you play any disc and it seems too soft then that could be an indicator that the recording is not compressed or maybe only compressed a little. You will need to replay such disc a few times, increasing the volume each time until you see where your volume control setting needs to be for that disc.

Here is my suggestion when you play IsoMike 2007B which contains the Blue Knight recording:

How to set your playback volume for The Blue Knights tracks 1 through 5 on IsoMike 2007B.

Make your listening area as quiet as possible - this is really important.

Track 1 is less than 1 minute. Play this track at what would have been your normal volume setting. You will notice that the volume starts at a very quiet level and then builds toward the paint-peeling section of the finale - it will likely seem way too soft to you. Re-play this track a few times and keep increasing the volume control until the loud part of the finale is LOUD, but not louder than you wish or louder than your system will play without distortion, whichever comes first.

Provided your system will accommodate the LOUD finale of track 1, we recommend that the LOUD part of the finale really be the kind of extra LOUD that makes you hold-your-breath or gives-you-goosebumps.

STOP your player, walk away for a few minutes and then come back and play tracks 2 through 5 without having changed the volume settings. Listen with your eyes closed.

Here is the story. Most recordings are compressed and peak limited, but we prefer our music to retain the full dynamic range so we don’t use compression or peak limiting on our recordings.

Compression serves to make soft sounds louder, i.e. the soft sounds are then close to the maximum allowed digital level of the disc, therefore the loud sounds can only be slightly louder than or perhaps only as loud as the soft sounds. Think of this as kind of artificially turning up (and down) the volume on YOUR system by remote control (but without moving your volume control setting). So when you play a disc without compression you will need to manually adjust your volume control to “calibrate” the dynamic range to fit within your system’s capabilities.

Naturally the wider the dynamic range of a recording the more demanding it will be on a playback system. The Blue Knights proved wickedly capable of very wide dynamics in their playing, and we worked ridiculously hard to have a quiet recording environment, and then we used lunatic-fringe recording equipment capable of proper capture. If your listening environment isn’t quiet enough and/or your system isn’t capable enough - then you won’t be able to hear the full result of how it really sounded live. But if you followed the volume setting routine using track 1, then you will have come as close as your system will allow.

There will, of course, be situations where compressed playback might be desirable, MP3 and smaller car stereos come to mind. For those circumstances there are always those tech friends who have programs that will compress the audio for you. What there isn’t - is a program that could precisely un-compress a compressed disc.

For the remainder of the tracks on IsoMike 2007B your volume control should be adjusted, up or down, track-by-track, as needed. For example, track 6 is a string quartet and the average level of the performance is less dynamic than tracks 1 through 5, therefore your volume control will have to be turned down relative to the level of the first 5 tracks of The Blue Knights.

[drumcat]

i put crossmen on yesterday, saw that the intro wasn't on there, and was ###### enough about it that i turned the dvd's off for the night. really disappointing....was it really not possible to include it, dci?

I happen to be able to answer this one...

DCI decided -- IN ADVANCE -- that the policy was judged content only. That went for all corps. Those running starts are not included because they are inconsistently done (not all corps), add to the total time (would require more dvd compression, lowering overall quality), and would be unequal to those that did not do them.

You guys all thought I was crazy earlier this year when I thought running starts are a bad idea. Well, here's one of the outcomes. It's only equal to put the judged content in the media. So either let's judge it, not judge it, change the time of shows, etc. etc., but if we continue with this, we either have to chop for fairness, not chop with unfairness, or better, amend the rules such that there is a break or one-chord hold. If we just add more to the discs, it's going to get more expensive, split more ways, etc...

But if you don't like it, and I understand that lost content is disappointing, the BoD set the policy ahead of the shows.

[Tony Flores]

I found it, its on disc 3. Go to recap and click carolina crown. There ya go.

Dude that was awesome...one of my favs was the "get the *bleep* outta my shot of the opening quartet