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Stone Temple Pilots: Core

Warner Bros. // DVD Audio

List Price: Unknown [Buy now and save at Dvdempire]

Review by Aaron Beierle | posted June 15, 2001 | E-mail the Author

The Music:

1. Dead & Bloated
2. Sex Type Thing
3. Wicked Garden
4. No Memory
5. Sin
6. Naked Sunday
7. Creep
8. Piece of Pie
9. Plush
10. Wet My Bed
11. Crackerman
12. Where

The DVD

SOUND: One of the first DVD-Audio titles that was released, I picked up "Core" the first week of release to hear the Dolby Digital 5.1 presentation that is included on the disc, since I didn't yet have the capability to play DVD-Audio. After listening to the Dolby Digital version for mere moments, I had to turn it off. Not because I disliked the album - although I'm not a fan of the band, I certainly think there's some good songs. It was because it simply sounded horrible. The surround presentation essentially played the same thing through every speaker; the vocals came loudly and consistently through both the surrounds and the front speakers, making for a very basic and very distracting experience that really isn't the way that surround sound music should be presented. I've never been against having musical material come from the surround speakers, but the front has to be the focus. Here, the focus is from all sides, which quickly becomes annoying. I've heard quite a few surround music presentations and I have to say that this still ranks as one of the least impressive.

There were some other problems with the Dolby Digital presentation; it sounded harsh and thin, certainly too bright and without much in the way of bass. It was just loud and blaring from all sides - personally, I found it too hard to listen to.

Now that I'm able to review DVD-Audio titles, I decided to revisit this album to hear what the 96khz/24 bit DVD-A 5.1 presentation sounded like. After listening to this version of the album, I still was not entirely pleased, although certain elements were definitely improved in comparison to the Dolby Digital presentation. The good news first is that the audio quality was improved, if not entirely. The album still sounded a bit harsh at times, lacking a full, warm sound and instead going with a slightly sharp one. Definitely though, the DVD-Audio version was much prefered, offering a much more listenable experience, if still not displaying quite the kind of quality that I'd expect from an album recorded fairly recently.

The bad news is, of course, this is still the same presentation in terms of how the music is positioned around the room - seemingly everything coming from all sides. It's still a very uncreative way of presenting music in surround and almost all of the songs seemed to follow this method of offering the music, as well. After listening to the Metallica DVD-Audio edition and being amazed by not only how fantastic it sounded but how creatively their hard rock sound was remixed for surround, the way that "Core" was done seems very dissapointing.

Extras: Video for "Plush".

Final Thoughts: The album is certainly a fine example of good rock & roll for the most part, but it's unfortunate that this remains a dissapointing example of surround sound music.

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