Remember how I said 2008 live DVD had worse sound quality than 2007 DVD? So one might think 2010 DVD would follow that trend. In a way, yes. But it didn't go from 10 to 8 to 6. It went from 10 to 8 to 1. Yes, that is a 1. The only next step is to go to 0. I don't know what 0 is, though, since the absence of sound would be greater than 0.
It is so bad, the discs (all of the SACDs, BD, and DVD) are unlistenable, and hence unwatchable too unless you enjoy staring at the video with no sound.
The crazy thing about it is that the sound quality at the actual live (Shibuya O-EAST) was excellent, with great dynamic range, proper sound level (I didn't need to use my Surefire Ear-Pro), with the only negative being noise level, which is purely an equipment quality (and therefore cost) issue and not set up issue.
So what's wrong with the sound quality? Pretty much EVERYTHING! Drum track is clipping, voice is compressed to hell, and mix is as unnatural as can be. A single shotgun microphone in the middle of the hall, recording directly from the amplified sound coming out of those big speakers, with all that white noise in place, would have resulted in better sound than this garbage!
The last two images are waveforms of short voice only section of "seiza." It's the beginning part of the second paragraph, that goes "anata no namae karada chuu ni...." Waveforms are from the first two letters (a na) where there is no instrument sound. The first image is from 2010 DVD, and the second image is from 2007 DVD.
You see a very clean and regular pattern in the 2010 version, where as 2007 version looks more chaotic. Guess what? Human voice is SUPPOSED to look chaotic. What did they do? For one thing, its dynamic range is compressed, which is why there's no sudden change in amplititude. I can draw a smooth line following the peaks of 2010 version. Second, I believe they filtered the sound. I don't know what kind of filter it was, though.
In the end, though, you can forget all this technical mumbo jumbo. The thing just sounds awful! No discussion required. You can listen for it yourselves. Better yet, don't! Don't bother with them.
That's my Fenix LD10, and so obviously, that is also me yelling CALIFORNIA.
Track 4, first beat of drum clipping. I can pick out a clipping from pretty much any track within seconds because they're everywhere!
