The Doors - L.A. Woman - DVD audio version

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Not a bad release but the enhancement of the sound quality is hardly great unless you have a fancy stereo system......
The big plus on this is the extra verse to 'Cars Hiss By My Window' and there are some nice touches to some of the other songs but nothing really that could not have been added to the remixed Doors cube.....interesting but not great value for money.....AP.
BTW thanks King G for reminding me I had some stuff on this in my files



The Doors - L.A. Woman - DVD
This was the last official studio album The Doors recorded before lead singer Jim Morrison was found dead in a bathtub in Paris in the summer of 1971. This was the sixth album which followed a string of hits which included Break on Through (to the Other Side), Light My Fire and the fantastically groovy, People are Strange.



The Album
Ten tracks long, this album was well received by fans of the band. The title track opens with the base effect swirling around the speakers which is a positive way to open, however after the song gets going if is obvious that the rear speakers are not used well too often. The drums and bass rise from the centre speaker along with the vocals while the guitars are predominately from the front speakers, but also available from the rear speakers (if a little subdued). There are a few piano and guitar touches from multiple sources which help the song but with so much coming from the centre speaker I tended to find the guitars were drowned out a little by the loud vocals and drums. The source material is old and it shows a little in this high resolution format. Vocals come across a little less crisp than you might hope. The very nature of this album has many stereo effects on the CD such as guitars chiming in on one side and the moving to the other meaning that the CD already has a reasonable amount of positional audio on it. While the full surround option is a step up from this, it is not as dramatic as experienced on other DVD-Audio titles.

The Changling which is the opening track and Love Her Madly, like many other titles on the album, feature fairly weak sound levels from the rear speakers. The vocals are just so powerful that they tend to drown out some of the more subtle effects from the rear speakers. There is a drum fill in during this track which moved all around the speakers. While this is a nice change making use of the rear speakers, it is a little gimmicky and the second time made me think they were more playing with the DVD-Audio format, rather than thinking how the fans would feel about this.

One track that does work well, is Riders On The Storm. The song opens with some thunder which does sound better on the DVD-Audio when compared to the CD, is not as boisterous as I was hoping. The vocals use echo and on the CD this sounds a little odd, however on the DVD-Audio this really sounds good. The echo uses all the speakers which is a little odd since there are no backing vocals on many if not all of the tracks on this album, but it does give a fuller sound however this is still not a fantastic audio experience.

Extras
A lot of work has gone into the extras on this disc and it is by far the most impressive of my current catalogue from this aspect. Of course we get the two DVD-Audio soundtracks, and the Dolby digital 5.1 option for those without DVD-audio players however unlike the other discs, there are a few decent extras for DVD-Audio users. Firstly, each track is presented with its own menu offering the options of Photo Gallery, Lyrics, Playlist and Previous/Next Track. These like each extra feature on this disc, are not available to the Dolby Digital only crowd. Each photo gallery is made up of several, mainly black and white photos of the band and accessing these does not affect the music being played. A similar story goes for the lyrics for all you budding Pop Idols in that it is possible to select the lyrics and sing along if you so wish without interrupting the playing music.

There is a video for “The Changeling” however this is just a collection of photos of the band put to music. This primarily features the band lead singer, Jim Morrison. It was a little strange to see that even though this feature is only accessible to DVD-Audio players, the soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 so this could have easily been made available to both types of DVD players. The remaining extra feature is a selection of snippets from the bands biography published by Elektra Records in 1967. A few nice quotes and some information that screaming girls will go wild for (such as what Jim looks for in a lady) leads me to believe this publication was originally aimed at a younger audience.

Overall
Sonically, not a great DVD-Audio release when compared to other releases, however this is about the best L.A. Woman is going to sound ever. Warner have made up for less than outstanding source material by including some quite reasonable extras which could be enough for die hard fans to consider upgrading to DVD-Audio for. It might not win any new fans from this release, but I think fans of this band are going to be happy.

Reviewed by David Beamish

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The last official release by the Doors, this album has been remixed from the original 8 track analog 1" masters, offered in 5.1 surround at 96khz/24bit resolution for DVD-Audio.

The DVD


SOUND: Someone who happened by while I was reviewing this title said something that really summarizes perfectly how the audio sounds - "it sounds too good." Offered in DVD-Audio's Advanced Resolution 96khz/24 bit resolution 5.1 surround or 2.0 stereo, the sound is almost too smooth, too clean. The rawness of previous Doors recordings is all but lost here and honestly, "L.A. Woman", with a few little exceptions, sounds like something that was recorded today - if not today, quite recently.

Audio quality is quite impressive, but what I didn't always like is something that I'll often find when music is re-purposed for multi-channel audio. There's simply some surround use during the album that becomes rather gimmicky and unnatural. This is especially evident in the opening guitar part of "L'America", which bounces from speaker to speaker around the room. I generally don't mind if guitars or other instruments are occasionally placed in the surrounds, but to have instruments move around the room starts to become distracting and too noticable. Audio trickery like this pulls the viewer out of the experience and forces them to notice what the audio mixer can do, even if it's not right for the material. You'll notice a similar, although somewhat less annoying instance of this in "L.A. Woman", when the vocals suddenly bounce back and forth between the front and surrounds during one passage of the song. There's only one little bit of surround work that worked well for me - during "Riders On The Storm", the sounds of the storm are placed all around the viewer, making for a very enveloping feel without getting in the way of the music.

Thankfully, most of the other tracks on the album go for a more traditional approach to delivering the music with the 5.1 format. The instruments are placed around the viewer quite well, allowing for almost a "front row" feel. I found it interesting to compare even the stereo version to previous incarnations of the album, both on CD and cassette. I know that obviously, the DVD-Audio version is going to sound superior, but I was impressed with how vastly superior it sounded to the tinny, thin CD version. Fidelity is nothing short of terrific, with a suprisingly smooth, clean sound that never sounded the least bit "thin" or "edgy", although the vocals didn't always sound consistently crisp, but they certainly sounded great for the most part. Morrison's vocals shared space quite well with the rest of the music, having great presence in the mix.

The music itself also sounded superb. The detail to the playing of the fabulously talented band seemed slightly murky on the CD version, where on the DVD-AUDIO version every instrument came through distinctly. I've only taken a listen to two DVD-AUDIO tracks so far. Although the first one, the Corrs latest album "In Blue" sounded terrific, it didn't impress me quite as much as how well the format presented this older release. I was able to overlook the 5.1 presentation's occasional over-doing the surround use due to the terrific sound quality. And, the great part about DVD-Audio is that, if you don't care for how the music is presented in the surround format, there's still the stereo DVD-Audio track also included on the disc. Does it sound too good? Maybe, but I'm not complaining since it really does provide an excitingly fresh way to experience this great album with stellar sound quality.

For those who do not have DVD-Audio capability, there is also a Dolby Digital 5.1 presentation included for DVD-Video players.

Extras: Not a whole lot - a video for "The Changeling", bio and DVD-Audio mastering credits.

Final Thoughts: The last album from the Doors is a great one, and the DVD-Audio presentation is wonderful, with superior audio quality.
Highly Recommended.
currentfilm.com

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

LA Woman DVD Audio Edition
At last this release is more readily available to DVD owners and some of the difficulties (but not all) that plagued it a year ago have been ironed out.
First of all it is not possible to play all that’s on the disc through a normal DVD or your computer which is a bit of a pisser after forking out nearly £20 and the improvement in quality hardly makes up for that.
The sound quality is superb without doubt but too much tinkering can lose a lot of the heart and soul and the passion that made the thing so good in the first place. Led Zeppelin’s Re-mastered CD’s are a perfect example of this.
Here we get a few ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ that we missed in 1971 along with a bit longer introduction to a song or two but is it a worthwhile exercise?
I would say ‘Yes’ to that but then I am rather biased
'Cars Hiss By My Window' is the obvious highlight with an extra verse tacked on to the album track. It may well be an out-take as it sounds considerably different to the original but it’s cool nonetheless.

"Dog crawl by my window.
in the cruel morning yard
Dog crawl by my window.
in the cruel morning yard
To lose your love & keep her
that's more than hard"


Maybe this is an example of Bruce Botnick doing a Paul Rothchild and taking part of one cut and mixing it with another. Subtle differences which abound on several more tracks such as ‘Love Her Madly’, ‘LA Woman’ with it's Hendrix style US anthem intro, ‘The WASP’ & ‘Hyacinth House’ are interesting enough and it may be worthwhile doing this to the other Doors LPs. L’America is the only other really outstanding track with it’s enhanced ‘Eleanor Rigby’ Robby solo in the middle of it which may well be another unused cut. The extras don’t amount to much which is nothing new with The Doors.
A video of The Changeling similar to the NOHGOA documentary and a photo gallery which I could not access but nevertheless a cool release.
Scorpywag Rating 7/10.
Not bad but could have been a lot better! AP.
TheDoors4Scorpywag Summer 2002

[othercircles]

Ahh I was interested until I read that long winded discription of the mix. Sounds like it wasnt done that well.

Gimme the old vinyl any day. If you have a good quality turntable and a vinyl that was taken care of, it sounds better then the CD.

[othercircles]

Not bad but could have been a lot better! AP.

Should we really expect any different? lol

[othercircles]

The last official release by the Doors, this album has been remixed from the original 8 track analog 1" masters,

That doesn't make sense. The master tapes then were 2 track. Stereo... one track for left speaker.. one track for right. The session tapes were 8 tracks... but thats not a master.... thats a session tape... So did they re-mix it or re-master it? There's a difference.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Been listening to it a lot lately and have finally been able to access the extras on my new computer.
The sound is obviously 'technically' better than the vinyl but as Ian points out I enjoyed my old copy of the album that I had for 20 years just as much before it got worn out so how much can technology improve what was great from the outset. The 'heart' of what was recorded can ultimately be lost in the search for technical perfection........the new Doors box set will feature DVD/5.1 (whatever that is) sound and I am sure we will be able to hear every nuance but I still remember Paul Rotchild once saying that they never recorded Doors albums until they were perfect but always (Soft Parade excepted ) sought to stop when the 'muse' visited the studio.
This obsession with perfection will ultimately eliminate that 'muse' and leave us with a sanitized version of The Doors.....I'm half deaf from 30 odd years of listening to heavy rock so it does not matter to me but where will this lead us for future generations ..........the first CDs of The Doors albums were not that much different to the vinyl but since then the remasters craze has given us a couple of upgrades that don't do anything for me....the DVD version is nice and yes the sound upgrade is interesting but if I'd never heard it I would not consider it that much of a loss.......the search for perfection is like the search for immortality in Samuel Taylor Coleridges' Kubla Khan ....once attained was the price really worth all the effort.....

One thing about the DVD does really annoy me and that also goes to the heart of the way The Doors are now marketed with a view to 'the next little dollar' (the line they missed out in Alabama Song)....the Changeling video has a photo collage featuringevery aspect of Jim Morrison during the song except one.....the Jim Morrison of Paris 1971 is not represented......the fat bloated Jim not in keeping with the Myth of Morrison the SuperStar.....for me I find that insulting as Jim Morrison's final 'change' is not good enough for the 'money changers' who now infest The Doors world in the 21st century.
A Jim Morrison you will never see gracing a Doors album cover....bearded poet with a paunch yes as thats acceptable if the light is right but the Jim Morrison of the last days of his life just too radical for the people whose meal ticket is the pretty Jim of the Young Lion session.........and these people actually portray themselves as the guardians of The Doors Legacy.........
Only The Fans are true to the Artistic Legacy of The Doors and most of them are too timid to open their mouths sadly for fear of rocking the boat.......having come from a family of boat rockers myself I have no such problem.....just a pity more fans could not get off thier arces and speak out about the way The Doors are being sold out and not be fobbed off with Jovial jeff and his drivel on the Official Forum......

[othercircles]

Yea alex.. i got into a debate again with Jeff over there about all this. I mean call me crazy.. but I think we aught to get EVERY album in a basic CD format first... THEN you start your fancy bullshit mixes. It seems incredibly stupid to me that they're mixing and remixing and remastering 5 times over those 6 albums.. and here OV and FC STILL have not even gotten a plain old 16 bit CD release.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Yeah thats spot on Ian......but as we all know the reason that certain parts of the History of The Doors are shunted into a siding to be forgotten is because of one thing......if you can't slap Jim Morrisons mug on it then its worthless to these people.
This new box set is a joke.....a high priced rip off (and I have no idea how much it will be but based on recent Doors product it won't be cheap) with a promise of the out-takes to sell it.
OV & FC could easily have been incorporated and there is no doubt that out takes from these sessions exist.......but Jim ain't part of that so who cares?
Me and you for a couple along with a significant amount of fans.
Doors History is important and not all of it is about Jim.....