The African Queen - Page 9

Simple. They don't let you compare it side by side to a superior format. As well theater sound systems are pure crap compared to what most people have at home. They just trade quality for quantity. Every thing sounds good when the floor is shaking.

It also depends on acoustic treatments & calibration. I saw Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer in Imax & although it was not a blowup & just a 35mm print shown, it really knocked me off my socks to hear lossy audio sound that good! I know that most theaters have crappy sound systems, like when I saw the A-Team the other day & it sounded like a crap. Most 35mm features only use 320kbps, & I don't think the Imax theater was using DTS, SDDS, or Sonics-DDP. The soundfield was completely enveloping, & it was the best audio I've ever heard!

jvillain, I know that Uncompressed audio is superior, but if done right lossy audio can come pretty damn close!

What irks me the most about Dolby encodings is that they always tamper with the sound mix. If they are making an AC3 encode from a PCM master, why are they messing with the volume. Couldn't they just do a direct encode, like taking a WAV or Flac file & converting it to 320kbps MP3 without Normalizing & tampering with the sound levels? I Know it won't be as good as the uncompressed master, but wouldn't it come really close? Why screw with the track volume? I can understand why people dislike Dolby.

I noticed this when I took an HD 720p MKV file with a Full Bitrate DTS Core track & burned it to a DVD & converted it to DD 5.1 448kbps. Dolby encoders seem to normalize the tracks at a very low volume, causing it to sound weak & sterile. When i tried to up the Decibel levels in Convertxtodvd, it caused the soundtrack to be clipped. Is there a way I can do it without clipping the track?

The UK release by ITV has worse video encoding but PCM audio: http://www.dvduell.de/artikel/screen...1-john-huston/

The Technicolor grain is completely gone on the ITV disc, glad I didn't take a chance on it.

Yahoo!
Patience pays off!!
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-African-Queen-Blu-ray/9798/#Review
Lossless!!!

That's the exact same disc paku and eric.exe referred to in their posts.

Your right ! 2010 release; no "yahoo".
I was setup by Blu.com:
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-African-Queen-Blu-ray/9798/
they say its the "same" transfer w/lossless, sooooo...
Edited by BIG ED - 7/13/12 at 7:11pm

The UK lOOks glorious (and sound is glorious as well/the jungle comes alive) too me!
Of coarse I don't have the R1 too compare it too.
I'll go w/Dr. Svet Atanasov (Doctorate in Music) for now.
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-African-Queen-Blu-ray/9798/

Even the about an hr doc looks great; w/old sources even. All except Houston interviews (???) which lOOk like Comcastic HD PBS SD Programing (not good).
The film's way weakest parts are the rain scenes (done on set & done on location are OK) which were poorly processed (maybe not as badd as the bug scene which lOOks like a joke in HD/in SD I always though the 'bugs' at least lOOkED blk).
The restoration addressing the blue screen probs makes this one of the super rare occasions were one could/might say: "Better than Ever".

What a great flick!