Sony G90 manual With the sound either way, or with the sound of the Scala, Performances

Page 53

ing the language of written text), it seems to vio-

late the spirit of the DVD interface to provide no

way to pick a language once, and stick with it.

The Karajan discs also let you choose sur-

round or standard audio. But I’m not impressed

with the sound either way, or with the sound of the Scala

discs, which also offer 5.1 surround, but (and this applies to

Karajan, as well), not convincingly. Yes, it surrounded me, and

provided a momentary high. (“Look, ma! More sound!”) But

the effect wasn’t in the least realistic. We know that it was

faked, not to mince words, in the Karajan releases (see Heidi

Waleson’s piece, in this issue, for Sony Music’s acknowledge-

ment of that), and when I listened, I found I’d choose the

merely “stereo” option to get something even vaguely like the

real spatial layout of an orchestra. The Scala discs – like the

Karajan, transfers from VHS – also have an engineered sur-

round effect, and with no way to turn it off, I had to mute the

rear speakers before I could hear where the singers were on

stage. The surround sound, on both series, was richer, more

full of pomp and circumstance, but much less lifelike.

The Performances:

Not, though, that we’re talking about sound that’s all that

lifelike in the first place. The two Scala discs, especially Adri -

ana (which has refreshing clarity), aren’t all that bad, but the

Karajans are awful. Or let me qualify that. The Karajans, I’m

sure, sound just the way the great conductor wanted them to.

At this late stage of his career, he favored a rich, undifferenti-

ated, beefy orchestral sound, and clearly reveled in every arti-

ficial way to make it even more that way on his recordings.

There’s certainly something impressive about the result, but

not in any way that reminds me of real music. There are won-

derful, pop-production sonic moments, one involving a bass

drum on the Vienna disc that made me feel that I’d descended

to the roots of all the earth. But a bass drum would never

sound that shivery and intimate in a live concert. If you have

any taste for live orchestral music, the sound of these DVDs

will be, at best, severely puzzling.

I might say as much for Karajan’s performances. By one

standard, they’re wonderful. On the Vivaldi disc, he leads the

Berlin Philharmonic; on the others, it’s the Vienna orchestra.

Both orchestras reach the highest levels of achievement, or at

least they do if all you care about is pure technique; their

sound, in a detached, not quite human way, is ravishing. The

performances, for that matter, do everything performances of

these pieces are supposed to do, except maybe touch the

heart. There’s something contrived, almost undifferentiated

about them, as if Karajan looked at all music as some kind of

abstract challenge, and even if he didn’t sacrifice the most

basic musical values, worked to make them sound like him,

not like Dvorákˇ or Vivaldi.

In one way, the Dvorákˇ is the best of the three, because

the music ends up speaking for itself, once you get used to

Karajan’s trademark sheen. There aren’t issues of Baroque

style (which might stop a purist from enjoying the Vivaldi), or

Viennese frivolity. But then, from another point of view, the

New Year’s Concert is the best, because it raises no deep

musical issues, and the sheer virtuosity of the orchestral play-

ing can stand on its own. I’d rank it lowest, though, because

this virtuosity seems almost unhinged, torn away from any

real contact with human life.

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Contents Sony G90 Size Does Matter Than ever we needed in strange, dark caves Ingly just beyond reachExperience before he finds a little of It Sound and vision at the same time every timeBergman’s The Seventh Seal DVD Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut HPBarco Vision Watch Follies & FrolicsCan All That Counts Be Counted? a Forum Begins Editors will respond next issueII Janet’s Index EditorIf The Perfect Vision is to push Problem with DVD Digital ArtifactsTargeting 14-Year-Old Boys? Azine Widescreen Review perhaps? Down Primrose Path Toward Perfect Vision Forever?At all. So it doesn’t take Hdtv or Digital Cinema The Good Bad of It What Not To See on DVDJohn Eargle Lossy Data Compression & DVD Sound TV Is TVSeries such as Star Trek The Next Generation . Each I L L E RE G Movie TriviaDVDs Gaining Momentum E G S a N D O W S I C & M U L T I M E D I aM M a R T I N Panasonic DVD-L50D PalmTheaterViaTV VC 105 Videophone Encountered R R Y R a W L I N S O NInfocomm Report Significant New Products and TrendsWorld of displays Ogy near its limit and its days are numbered. The display To recreate the theater experience in the homeLight projected on the screen. These considerations have Tunately, there are trade-offs for the small size of ultraAn Ideal Cinema? Ometimes I think that every position on a Real movie where there was none before, or at leastMoviemaking crew comes with its special privi Leges, its perks, as it were. If you’re the script superIty between when they are and when One way or another when it comes to working withAssistant directors, service people, FootageMovies Certainly a serviceable way to editLikely to get you Directors seem to trust me to use my Into any troubleTakes and setups meaning the master Allowing for camera setups, lighting, and rigIt’s a funny thing about matching in editing. Most lay Enjoy prelaps to pull the narrativeSion? In Understanding Media, McCluhan R L E Y Lexicon MC-1 ControllerSonic Flavors To Slake Every Thirst Listening to Movies Logic 7 Digital Signal Processing for Movies and MusicLexicon’s Music Surround Modes Listening To Music Surround Ing the Denon Anechoic Orchestral Music Recording CD ConclusionControllers DSP and the Future-Proof Controller Two-Channel Bypass ModeSurround Decoding and Digital Signal Processing DSP Bass Management THX-Certified Controllers…the controller represents High-Resolution Digital AudioRadical new path to Future…InterFacing the User After DSP Digital to Analog ConversionEpisode One The Ancient Enemy Revel Ultima Speakers From 2 to 7.1 ChannelsMeet My Enemy M M I I L L E R59 by Deploying the Troops RPG Room Optimizer SoftwareStart and go get a beer, or two Revel Ultima Salon Noble WarriorYou wanted to cross over your subwoofer at 40 Hz Tion coefficient for the surfaces that is comparable toLikewise for the 15-inch woofer in the Sub-15 Our noble warrior against the ancient enemyEssary to achieve the Revel design team’s led by Kevin Research effort to quantify in-room speaker behaviorBy Keith Johnson for Reference Recordings Direct radiator to bloated. The Salon’s soundstage comNal processing in controllers hadn’t made subwoofer Speaker? Removing the bottom octave from the Salon’sFormance. Orchestral music, for example, is performed Woofer, when it is well integrated with your main speakersCians often use emphasis in the intensity Battle Summary Stand-off Cy, phase, and time. It then develops adaptive filters thatEpisode Two a War On Two Fronts Get that the fight for the lowlands was far from overSearch of the Mythical Beast LINN-AV5103 Aktiv Multi-Channel SystemQuest Begins Company of the BeastRemote Interface Working the EnvironmentJust the Basics, Done Well NAD T770 Audio-Video ReceiverSumming Up I L G a D E RGaines’ Stormy Monday I’ve Got the T-Bone Walker Das Boot, The Director’s Cut Wolfgang Peterson, directorManufacturer’s Corner Steering in DD mode is precise and smoothRPG Diffuser Systems Inc., Room Optimizer Designs go, the NAD T770 is all steakI D I W a L E S O N Want My DVDMajor Labels’ Plans for Classical Music on DVD Tan Opera Guide to Opera on Video and executive direc Tion from the main mikes as well as the spot mikes Audience, he says. We fed that information to the rearFrom the two main mikes and brought it to the rear ones Have been considered typical indeed, good for aQuering technology issues, Moorhead says. Most of our See review, this issueFall was so high. This was an elaborate joint Computer and TV combinedStars. God, was I skeptical Made for DVDOriginal, so they’re not going to fake it for DVD Must answer three riddles. If his answers are correct, she Dramatic confrontation, in the second scene of Act TwoTo Turandot’s collection the Chinese nation, ruled by an Ple either turning cynical, or lusting for more bloodPreoccupation like that made more sense, but Turandot. And why would there be? Yes, Puccini conscienTucks into a tiny corner of the staging. Hordes of Chinese Moon onstage we see a corps of Chinese dancers, wearingDVD-ness Classical DVD SamplerWith the sound either way, or with the sound of the Scala Ment of that, and when I listened, I found I’d chooseFull of pomp and circumstance, but much less lifelike PerformancesStart of each one, there’s Karajan on screen, his face Role mostly as a force of nature, powerful but blankLike institutional persona, Herr Music Director of All That’s simply ravishing This performance is broadSurrounded Roger Reynolds Watershed Mode 70, DVDJargon Experiment in a New MediumThough, is that Reynolds is way too impressed with Are so new that we all need orientationYes, theorists can find all sorts of relationships among Areas of music rhythm, loudness, and tone color, forMaybe, succeeded by metallic effects Musical scoreBut in rhythms he himself creates. In practice, these, to That, while Otto is allegedly creating syntax by movingB G E N D R O N Pop With a TwistMents of a Clockwork Orange What Ever Happened to Baby Performance we see on DVD begins with a filmBelow-average vocal performance Perfect timing and careful choreographySon’s Dead to the World. Nope Horizon, probably to his death. It is a scene that demandsTabloid, because of its sensational pur DVD, with its digitally clear resolutionInsignificance of the media and with a Ly slurs the tune’s climactic line,WhatGodzilla, Armageddon, Instrument is better than Dent films Gods and Monsters, Cookie’s Fortune thatWith 1991’s In on the Kill D R E W Q U I N T Close EncounterVoices of Light/The Passion of Joan of Arc Special presentation of Voices of Light/The Passion of Joan Other instances, were not merely happy coincidences, nor Obvious. The movie is about as complete as it can be.Each other. Seen together, they seemed inseparable yet By much of the sound reinforcement heard in BroadwayPart 2 Video Color Concepts An Introduction to Digital VideoPhysics of Color Human Color PerceptionColor Concepts for Video Additive Color ColorblindnessLuminance Hue and SaturationDisplay Color Accuracy RGB Primaries The Color Triangle CIE Chromaticity DiagramColor Measurement Color Bars White Reference Color TemperatureGrayscale Color Temperature Color errors. Other color signals will alsoAre used in some circumstances Instrument known as a color analyzer or a spectroAvia Guide to Home Theater pro AdjustmentsColor and Hue E G R O G E R S Sony VPH-G90U Multiscan ProjectorPhysical Connections Installation and Set-upScan Rates Operating FunctionsSummary PerformanceDescription SpecificationsRunco DTV-930 Multiscan Projector Inputs/Outputs Formats can be selected directly from the remote Convergence Labs Test Report Greg RogersBe noticed Horizontal and vertical scan frequencies and other sourceRange Combination is about the reasonable limit to achieve anLine Doubling = Deinterlacing Remote ControlIEV Turboscan 1500 Line Doubler Creates progressive video without deinterlacing artifacts Video outputs. As a progressive video reference, I used aIcs-grade front projector 3Dfusion do each in different ways. The TurboscanL L C R U C E Pioneer Elite DVL-91 Combination CD/LD/DVD PlayerLook and Feel Meaning clear Up menus allow you to configure such things as onscreen lanLD Performance DVD PerformanceLy, the remote of the DVL-91, like that Wrong one in the darkDvdo iScan Plus Line Doubler Celebrate Film L M & M O V I E S Classic Comedy’s Second Coming Roberto BenigniQuently escape was Benigni’s first American and English Though a number of films in which BenigniRoberto on the Internet Aspect ratio and running time incorrectly Cute cameo which perhaps hints at a sequelSound Original Pink Panther film go figure. Sad to sayFirst wave of anger and incredulity. The DVD set was Special Editions Kubrick and The Space MonstersNo thanks to Warner’s folks Small wonder Set consists of Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001 aBoth Clockwork and Full Metal Jacket exhibited pinkish What Dreams May Come Special Editions Few Weird ThoughtsNavigator a Medieval Odyssey, the other is Map Human Heart Worth a Look Relatively Recent ArrivalsMovie would have had the solid foundation it needed How beautiful she was when she was married to RogerTo say that the film is developing a cult following some Smooth as could be and given the importanceLove.1 As Biopics Three British RoyalsOtranto Old Dark House 1932, The Invisible Man Man in the Iron Mask 1939. But it is hisHP Comments You have an idea of what’s really going on in the film Ic in this context in cloud cuckooland, with theirMon with The Shining than with any other Kubrick opus Food-storage roomN a T H a N V a L I N From Art to CultSuch blatant symbolism can sustain an entire movie Only later goes on to give them human dimensions. EvenNot content to present us with an allegory of the eternal Face the questions that vexed and hauntedIssues 111 Questions About Your Subscription Back Issues Website Change of AddressLetters to the Editor Editorial SubmissionsName Company Address CITY, State , ZIP A S S I F I E D a D O R D E R F O R MVision Watch