Audio Movie Reviews

"Sex without bodies" is not a movie ... it is an audio only recording -- using the DVD video format. As the Amazon documentation notes it is a PCM 2 channel deal, not the 5.1 which "flowerboy" asserts.

I wonder if the "boy" was out there with the Protocols reviews.

Even without the external converter, the high resolution of 96 x 24 is like nothing you've ever heard before. It blows away CD on depth, width, timbre, reverberation and sense of space, and because of all of this, the emotional impact and involvement in the music.

The tunes here are beautifully arranged and performed. They're sexy jazz and pop pieces played with minimal instrumentation, a perfect beat, top-notch playing, and outstanding recording engineering. The music is at the same time engagingly fun and incredibly cleanly recorded. The topic of most of the songs is sex, but in a way that's intelligently stimulating, rather than bludgeoning as in mainstream rock.

I'm new to Jazz, but get a feeling I'm listening to some of the best of it in these Chesky DVDs.

A word about the warnings on the disc. In a couple of places, you are warned about turning your speakers off before going on to the test tones. I couldn't understand why, so I gave Chesky a call. I don't remember the name of the person I spoke to (she was, I think, their main engineer). You don't have to exercise any more caution than you would using any other test disc. Test tones are very clean recordings (usually), and because of the dynamics involved, you want volume settings very low. For those of you with meters on your amps, output readings should be around 1/10 of a Watt. For those of you without meters, turn the volume down to zero, then bring it up while the test is playing.

For the novice, something recorded at 0dB FS is brutally loud when compared to everything else. Use extreme caution when using any test tone CD.

At the risk of calling down the wrath of Cheskians (Cheskites? I don't know the proper term for Chesky worshipers), I think there is a significant shortcoming on this disc: too much music.

There is about an hour of music on the disc that serves (partially) as a test bed. My personal preference would have been for less music and more tests tones, including more spot frequencies and disc error correction tests.

The sonic impact of the music and the new technology behind it could have just as effectively been relayed using three of the nine music tracks included. I understand part of this disc's intended function is to serve as advertising for acts on the label. That might not be so bad, except the disc runs full price.

Delivering short where it counts (for me, test tone content), and going long where it hurts (price) is why I'm giving three out of five stars.

I guess, I wanted to know what music was available using DVD's higher resolution and if it were worth the higher price. If I hadn't bought this DVD and listened to it for a year, I would have had no other way to find out about the various music available using DVD's higher resolution without buying them all.

In short, I bought this DVD to answer the questions, "Does a variety of music recorded on DVD's 96/24 format sound better than what I'm generally used to from CD," (my answer: YES, much better.) "What, of the music available in this format, are recordings I'd like to own?" (My answer: more than half.)

It seems to me that this format makes it easier to produce a spectacular musical recording--almost all the musical selections on this demo DVD were as good as the best CD recordings I'd heard from Eargle. The best John Eargle recordings match this in quality of recording, but few others. The musical selection ranges from pop, jazz, and classical to Celtic, African, and Caribbean.

So if you're looking for a stereo demo DVD to give you an across the board look at what DVD's higher audio resolution sounds like, using selections from available DVDs, then buy this one. If you're looking for a complete collection of test tones on DVD, maybe there's a better one out there, I don't know.

After wasting far far too much time figuring out how to navigate through the DVD I then undertook to calibrate my system. The author's introductory chapters are interesting and informative, BUT he fails to follow up on the initial promise of the DVD by leaving you without adequate instructions on how to use the test tones and video tools.

For instance, he has half right speaker tones, but never explains what in the heck they are for. After a brief and disappointing intro to both audio and video he simply throws the test tones at you. Why didn't he have a thorough step by step explanation of exactly how to use them.

The other problem is that he uses terms he does not completely explain or define leaving this user confused and scratching his head.

If you are an expert and know what you are doing then this DVD might be more useful than it was to me.

Hopefully, I'll eventually figure out how to use the darn thing.

Summary impression: EXTREMELY cumbersome navigation! Poor incomplete explanations of vital information. My next step: Try Avia with hopefully better luck!

But something recently just amazed me. The text menus on my DVD player started looking funny and were hard to read. I really thought something was wrong with my DVD player or maybe the component video cables. Well, finally I put this disc back in and re-tuned my TV and it looks perfect, once again. I guess my settings were messed up at some point...