FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING: The Complete Recordings - RE-ISSUE now available (3CD/1BD or 5LP)

[Holko 9,499]

Shit, I was joking with that! And now I can hear it in Flaming Red Hair! No way!

 

I'd say stuff like the cimbalom, which is incredibly popular here, mostly in gypsy bands, but... it's one of the most prominent semi-solo instruments in Two Towers, playing Gollum's Menace.

[Chen G. 3,943]

Yep. And you also have the more rudimentary version of it (a Hammered Dulcimer) in the Hobbiton music, and I think Smaug's music occasionally features the chinse version (Yangqin) of it, as well.

[Jurassic Shark 12,030]

23 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Gamelan's a big thing in New Zealand, given its geographic location.

 

I'm quite certain that kind of thinking went into it. a bit like the Maori choir (another stroke of genius) in Fellowship of the Ring.

 

Oh, you're quite certain. That settles it, then.

 

[Nick1Ø66 4,688]

5 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Oh, you're quite certain. That settles it, then.

 

 

I strenuously object to this comment!

[Jurassic Shark 12,030]

 

24 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

 

I strenuously object to this comment!

 

Are you quite certain about that?

[Nick1Ø66 4,688]

2 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

 

Are you quite certain about that?

 

Crystal clear.

[Smaug The Iron 510]

It is now less than a month until it is released, but has it been any news about a digital release?

[Jay 37,287]

If any news had popped up about it it would have been mentioned here for sure

[Faleel 5,340]

It's going to be available via a US only app at 56 kbps

[Jay 37,287]

[Bilbo 3,709]

10 minutes ago, Fal said:

It's going to be available via a US only app at 56 kbps

 

Yeah but people only think they can hear the quality at anything above 56 kbps!

[bollemanneke 3,337]

Does anyone here think that the Blu-Ray audio might actually be better than the high-resolution DVD audio? In all fairness, that wasn't great at all.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

Did that many people who bought the original actually have the equipment needed to play the DVD? I never did. It feels a bit of a gimmick to me.

 

Although that they going back into print is really good news.

[bollemanneke 3,337]

Well I have the quipment now and it's really nothing spectacular at all. Just... a little more powerful, but you do not hear any extra details. A completely missed opportunity.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,498]

7 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Does anyone here think that the Blu-Ray audio might actually be better than the high-resolution DVD audio? In all fairness, that wasn't great at all.

 

I like them, but, yes, they're not the best 5.1 remix of a soundtrack.

What don't you like about them @bollemanneke?

Are these the film mixes, which have been transferred? Has anyone done an A-B comparison?

[bollemanneke 3,337]

I don't like them because they really offer nothing new. Okay, the voices in songs are in the centre channel, but that's it. No extra details, just a 'bigger' sound. The only other score in 5.1 I can compare them to is HP7 and that does sound notably different. In that score, cues like Obliviate have completely different accents on different instruments, the cellos are more clearly audible, you hear more percussion etc., LOTR has none of that, it just sounds a bit fuller, like in the film mix.

[Chen G. 3,943]

20 hours ago, Richard said:

Are these the film mixes, which have been transferred? Has anyone done an A-B comparison?

 

The CRs are decidedly not the film mix. Just look at the prominence of voices in the mix of the film (which is to say nothing of the OST!) compared to the CR. There are times in the Fellowship of the Ring CR where the choir is drowned in the orchestra.

 

Its also true of The Hobbit: The film mix of The Battle of the Five Armies is not nearly as bass-y as the album, fortunately enough.

[bollemanneke 3,337]

The Hobbit 3 album sounds really weird at times, especially the opening of Sons of Durin.

[Wojo 2,453]

I tried listening to it the other day. It was all underscore. Not sad it's the only one I didn't buy. 

[John 2,032]

It's the AOTC of the Middle-earth scores.

[Wojo 2,453]

Hobbit scores wish they were LOTR scores. 

[Chen G. 3,943]

I actually appreciate how dense they are, thematically, and how full of unusual colors they are. Anything from bagpipes through a Gamelan orchestra to didgeridoos. Both aspects, which are very much at the heart of these scores, are more pronounced in The Hobbit than in The Lord of the Rings.

 

Their flaw from a dramatic standpoint is the complete ommision of the company's thematic material. I understand that doing away with those very bold themes accentuates the more foreboding tone of the later two entries, but they should have at least made a cameo in one, if not both, of the later scores.

[John 2,032]

They are worthy companion pieces that don't quite reach the heights of Shore's work on LOTR.

[Chen G. 3,943]

I dunno.

 

Part of why I like the scores (and films) is the role of the Dwarves and their thematic material. The dwarf material in The Lord of the Rings is amazing, but sparse. But The Hobbit, re-imagined with Thorin as its protagonist (thank goodness!), puts that music at the forefront and expands on it very effectivelly.

 

There's so much yearning imbued into the Erebor and Thorin material, which is very much informed by the films' depiction of that yearning. Its all very effective, to me. Does it make them as good as The Lord of the Rings? I'd have say not quite, no. But clearly they come much closer, to me, than they do to you.

 

To my mind, they are both of a piece. They're a single, huge work. a magnum opus indeed.

[mstrox 6,647]

17 hours ago, Chen G. said:

The Hobbit, re-imagined with Thorin as its protagonist (thank goodness!)

 

I look forward to the day when my opinion aligns with yours about something, Chen!  Today is not that day.

[Chen G. 3,943]

But, technically, its true: Bilbo is kind of a false protagonist. Sorta like a lot of people see Frodo as a false protagonist, standing in for Sam. Its clearly what Jackson intended: whenever he was interviewed about the trilogy, he described the story as the company making their way to reclaim the mountain, not as "Bilbo discovering his courage." Essentially, Bilbo's story concludes at the end of An Unexpected Journey.

 

I like it the way it is, you don't - fair enough.

[Holko 9,499]

I think everyone can agree on that; he may have had more of a problem with the "thank goodness" part.

[Chen G. 3,943]

Oh, I get that.

 

Like I said, I like that it is the way that it is! Certainly from a musical standpoint, but also in terms of the narrative.

 

I don't think I would have liked the alternative, loyal to the source material though it may be, nearly as much.

[BlueDude 2]

For what it's worth, I have all 3 DVD-Audio discs and the equipment and room to take advantage of them. The mix is the same as the CD's, meaning they were the same edit from the same takes, and there was no obvious attempt to change the balance between sections. The bit rate is functionally identical to CD - you can't perceive a difference between 44.1k/16 and 48k/24 given the same mix. The advantage is in the channel separation. The orchestra direct mikes are in L/C/R, the vocal soloists are in the center, and the very wet ambiance is in the L/R surrounds.

 

I listen to music in my room in its original format, with no upmixing. If stereo, then only 2 speakers (and subs) are active. If 5.1, then 5 speakers (and subs) are active, and so on. High quality stereo mixes can be strangely holographic, but high quality multi-channel mixes are even more so. This 5.1 mix places me in a privileged seat in a vast concert hall, with the orchestra arrayed in front. It doesn't attempt to put me in the midst of the orchestra or play with discrete sounds in the surrounds. It's a completely natural experience. So the CDs and the DVDs are similar, but not the same. I find the stereo mix a little too wet, but the multi-channel mix opens up and lets it breathe.

 

I used the physical discs for a while but I ended up ripping the lossless DVD-A tracks to multi-channel FLAC once the tools became available. They are bit for bit copies of the DVD-Audio. Now I simply listen from a music server. I fully expect the Blu-ray to have the same mix in the same format, just encoded differently. There's room to spare and there's no bit rate bottleneck (as can happen with DVD-Audio) so it'll probably be straight PCM, which is compatible with any HDMI receiver and any Blu-ray player.

[LOTRHobbitFan 20]

12 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Oh, I get that.

 

Like I said, I like that it is the way that it is! Certainly from a musical standpoint, but also in terms of the narrative.

 

I don't think I would have liked the alternative, loyal to the source material though it may be, nearly as much.

 

I agree here. I think the narrative would have been far too slow and dragged out following the source material. Bringing out the Appendices in the Hobbit actually connects this trilogy to LOTR in a major way.

 

The music is also a major boost to the movie and as a listening experience. There is nowhere near the kind of musical depth on display in the 2010s' as Shore expresses with The Hobbit. As Chen says, BOFTA's problem is the music mix. The music sounds like it's choking from compression.

[Chen G. 3,943]

Yes. It’s not quite a re-imagining of the book; it’s just that the adapted material isn’t just The Hobbit - it’s also the appendices, mainly Durin’s Folk. In fact, I would argue that it’s an adaptation of Durin’s Folk, first, seeing how dwarf-centric the films are.

 

And again, I like it better as a dwarf-centric story! There’s no other story like it in Tolkien’s work, and it also sets it apart from not just The Lord of the Rings but also from most film franchises of this sort, while still lending itself to the epic scope. And it makes the music bloody awesome.

[Nick1Ø66 4,688]

On 3/18/2018 at 7:41 PM, Chen G. said:

I actually appreciate how dense they are.

 

12 hours ago, BlueDude said:

For what it's worth, I have all 3 DVD-Audio discs and the equipment and room to take advantage of them. The mix is the same as the CD's, meaning they were the same edit from the same takes, and there was no obvious attempt to change the balance between sections. The bit rate is functionally identical to CD - you can't perceive a difference between 44.1k/16 and 48k/24 given the same mix. The advantage is in the channel separation. The orchestra direct mikes are in L/C/R, the vocal soloists are in the center, and the very wet ambiance is in the L/R surrounds.

 

I listen to music in my room in its original format, with no upmixing. If stereo, then only 2 speakers (and subs) are active. If 5.1, then 5 speakers (and subs) are active, and so on. High quality stereo mixes can be strangely holographic, but high quality multi-channel mixes are even more so. This 5.1 mix places me in a privileged seat in a vast concert hall, with the orchestra arrayed in front. It doesn't attempt to put me in the midst of the orchestra or play with discrete sounds in the surrounds. It's a completely natural experience. So the CDs and the DVDs are similar, but not the same. I find the stereo mix a little too wet, but the multi-channel mix opens up and lets it breathe.

 

I used the physical discs for a while but I ended up ripping the lossless DVD-A tracks to multi-channel FLAC once the tools became available. They are bit for bit copies of the DVD-Audio. Now I simply listen from a music server. I fully expect the Blu-ray to have the same mix in the same format, just encoded differently. There's room to spare and there's no bit rate bottleneck (as can happen with DVD-Audio) so it'll probably be straight PCM, which is compatible with any HDMI receiver and any Blu-ray player.

 

 

Aside from a higher bitrate, how is the DVD-A any better than the DD 5.1 tracks, which anyone who has  a DVD player should be able to play?

 

I have the CR's, but have never been able to hear the DVD-A simply because I had no desire to invest in the player.

[BlueDude 2]

4 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

Aside from a higher bitrate, how is the DVD-A any better than the DD 5.1 tracks, which anyone who has  a DVD player should be able to play?

 

I have the CR's, but have never been able to hear the DVD-A simply because I had no desire to invest in the player.

 

I don't know. The DVD-Video folder is Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital Stereo, which are lossy. The DVD-Audio folder is Meridian Lossless Packing 5.1 and MLP stereo, which are lossless. It's like asking how a CD is any better than an mp3 rip of the same disc. It depends. I do know that the MLP content takes up most of the disc, meaning that the DD content may have been heavily compressed just to fit everything on the disc. Since MLP takes up a fixed amount of space after compression (you can only crunch lossless data so far), the only variable the mastering tech could use to fit everything was DD compression. This may - or may not - have compromised audio quality.

 

I'm taking a look at the waveforms for comparing the lossy and the lossless versions right now. I'm curious to see what - if any - differences there are.

 

Edit: OK, so I ripped the DD 5.1 track from the FOTR DVD and converted it to WAV for analysis. I cut the first 7 minutes of the track and compared it to the lossless MLP track. Both are sampled at 48k, though the MLP has 24 bit depth vs 16 on the DD track. This probably doesn't have an audible difference. However, the DD track is a little hotter than the MLP, by about 0.75dB. This is enough to possibly clip a few samples, but it likely isn't all that noticeable either most of the time.

 

What *is* noticeable is what is left out of the DD track. I accounted for the sample offset between the two tracks (the DD has 625 more samples of silence at the start), cut the amplitude of the DD track by 0.75dB, then inverted and overlaid it on the MLP. This leaves the actual difference between the two tracks. What is left over is a sort of white noise that follows the dynamics of the music. Would you miss it? It's hard to say. If you were able to A/B the two tracks, once level matched, you may very well notice the difference, even though you wouldn't be able to describe the difference.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

When you say that the primary difference is in channel separation, does that mean that the vocals are entirely confined to the centre (i.e. only vocals, no music), or that it's just mixed more in that direction?

[bollemanneke 3,337]

Solo vocals are in the centre channel with a little echo remaining on the other ones. Choir is all over the place.

[BlueDude 2]

24 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

When you say that the primary difference is in channel separation, does that mean that the vocals are entirely confined to the centre (i.e. only vocals, no music), or that it's just mixed more in that direction?

 

The solo vocals are only in the center, but there's artificial reverb on those that is sent everywhere (notice the ping pong reverb in Gollum's song). Choir is miked and mixed like the orchestra: L/C/R with room reverb sent to the surrounds.

[Nick1Ø66 4,688]

3 hours ago, BlueDude said:

 

I don't know. The DVD-Video folder is Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital Stereo, which are lossy. The DVD-Audio folder is Meridian Lossless Packing 5.1 and MLP stereo, which are lossless. It's like asking how a CD is any better than an mp3 rip of the same disc. It depends. I do know that the MLP content takes up most of the disc, meaning that the DD content may have been heavily compressed just to fit everything on the disc. Since MLP takes up a fixed amount of space after compression (you can only crunch lossless data so far), the only variable the mastering tech could use to fit everything was DD compression. This may - or may not - have compromised audio quality.

 

I'm taking a look at the waveforms for comparing the lossy and the lossless versions right now. I'm curious to see what - if any - differences there are.

 

Edit: OK, so I ripped the DD 5.1 track from the FOTR DVD and converted it to WAV for analysis. I cut the first 7 minutes of the track and compared it to the lossless MLP track. Both are sampled at 48k, though the MLP has 24 bit depth vs 16 on the DD track. This probably doesn't have an audible difference. However, the DD track is a little hotter than the MLP, by about 0.75dB. This is enough to possibly clip a few samples, but it likely isn't all that noticeable either most of the time.

 

What *is* noticeable is what is left out of the DD track. I accounted for the sample offset between the two tracks (the DD has 625 more samples of silence at the start), cut the amplitude of the DD track by 0.75dB, then inverted and overlaid it on the MLP. This leaves the actual difference between the two tracks. What is left over is a sort of white noise that follows the dynamics of the music. Would you miss it? It's hard to say. If you were able to A/B the two tracks, once level matched, you may very well notice the difference, even though you wouldn't be able to describe the difference.

 

  

 

So it sounds like, even without the DVD-A equipment, pretty much anyone who has a standard DVD player can at least enjoy the music in 5.1, even if it does lack bit of the depth of the high res track. As i said, I have the set and have never heard the DVD-A track.

 

It's moot anyway. For most people, they'll have the Blu-Ray in the new set. It will be interesting to see the specs on that.

 

Anyway, great post. Thanks for taking the time to share your analysis!

 

 

[BlueDude 2]

Yeah, you can use it, but from a user interface standpoint, it's a real pain. The DVD-Video spec allows audio tracks to be attached to still frames, which is what this does, but as a consequence you can only play, pause, or skip chapters - fast forward and rewind within "tracks" aren't supported. The DVD-Audio spec allows it to act like a CD, even without a display device, so FF and REW are supported. You could use software tools to rip the DVD-Audio tracks losslessly, but then you'll need a suitable playback software or device to output the multi-channel files. The Blu-ray should solve all these issues.

[Nick1Ø66 4,688]

That's just what I did...ripped the DVD-A tracks.  

 

I won't double dip on this set just to get the BD, however.

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

My TTT CR DVD won't play anymore.

 

I may have to look into the TTT re-issue when it arrives.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

What did you do with it?

 

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

Nothing unusual. It just didn't play last time I tried. Other than being played a few times a year, it has only ever been kept in its original box.

[mstrox 6,647]

I blame the rubber nub

[BlueDude 2]

4 hours ago, Mr. Breathmask said:

My TTT CR DVD won't play anymore.

 

I may have to look into the TTT re-issue when it arrives.

 

That's really weird. Mine doesn't either. More specifically, the first layer plays fine, but it has the DVD-Audio information for the first 2 CDs. The third CD and all of the DVD-Video information is on the second layer, and won't even load. I didn't know DVDs could just "go bad" over time like that.

 

Thankfully, I ripped the DVD-Audio tracks a number of years ago for convenience. I didn't realize at the time that it was for archival purposes also.

 

I tried to find out how to exchange the disc for a usable copy from the publisher but couldn't find any information at all. (Yeah, like they have a stack of them in the office...)

[Kühni 485]

.

[Gollum Cat 24]

Does this mean it's already out of print? "Currently Unavailable"

 

https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Fellowship-Complete-Recordings/dp/B079PDFGZK/

[Richard Penna 3,671]

Well, if it hasn't been released yet, then by definition it's 'Currently Unavailable'.

[Gollum Cat 24]

3 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

Well, if it hasn't been released yet, then by definition it's 'Currently Unavailable'.

 

No, it was available. I pre-ordered it from Amazon on February 22.

[Jim Ware 526]

Still available at amazon.co.uk.  The vinyl is a limited edition, so it's possible that Amazon US has already sold out of their allocation.  The CD/BD combo is still available.

[Gollum Cat 24]

On 3/25/2018 at 5:40 AM, Jim Ware said:

Still available at amazon.co.uk.  The vinyl is a limited edition, so it's possible that Amazon US has already sold out of their allocation.  The CD/BD combo is still available.

 

If it's true that Amazon US has run out, then boy, I'm glad I snapped mine up. Looking forward to TTT and ROTK.