Billy Cobham-Spectrum (DVD-Audio) (1973) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Booklet Featurette-Video Interview Gallery-Photo Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	1973
Running Time	38:03
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Sided	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Ken Scott
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Billy Cobham
Case	DVD-Audio Jewel
RPI	$32.95	Music	Billy Cobham

    This is legendary fusion drummer Billy Cobham's first album, Spectrum, originally released in 1973. Born in 1944 in Panama, he has always been fascinated by percussion instruments. He has played with legends such as Miles Davis and was one of the founding members of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, along with John McLaughlin. When Mahavishnu broke up, he formed a new band called Spectrum and this is the resultant album, widely regarded as his best.

    Billy plays percussion and drums and is also the producer of the album. The key accompanying musicians are:

• Tommy Bolin - Guitar
• Jan Hammer - Synthesizer, Piano, Keyboards, Piano (Electric), Moog Synthesizer
• Lee Sklar - Bass

    Other musicians include:

• John Tropea - Guitar (Le Lis)
• Ron Carter - Acoustic Bass (Spectrum)
• Joe Farrell - Flute, Sax (Soprano) (Spectrum), Sax (Alto) (Le Lis)
• Jimmy Owens - Trumpet (Le Lis), Flugelhorn (Spectrum and Le Lis)
• Ray Barretto - Congas (Spectrum and Le Lis)

    Most of the songs start off with a drum solo, then in the second part the other musicians come in. One song (Stratus) however starts off with keyboards.

    For this DVD-Audio release, Billy Cobham is also responsible for supervising the surround sound remix and also features in a retrospective video interview.

Video

    Like most of Warner DVD-Audio discs released to date, the video content on this disc is in full frame NTSC. We get one photo still per song that includes the song title.

Audio

    This is a recent DVD Audio release, and features what is very close to my ideal set of tracks and layout for DVD Audio discs. Basically, this is a dual sided single layered disc, with both DVD Audio and DVD Video surround mixes on one side, and DVD Audio and DVD Video stereo mixes on the other (totalling four separately playable versions on the one disc). Furthermore, the menu arrangement and extras are very similar to one another so no one loses out no matter what equipment they own or their stereo vs. multichannel listening preferences.

    In particular, those who do not own DVD Audio players are not short changed. The surround side includes both dts and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks, and the stereo side has a Linear PCM 96/24 audio track.

     Let's start off with the stereo side. I listened first to the MLP 96/24 2.0 track (not 192/24 as stated on the back cover). I found the audio quality of this somewhat disappointing. Although the end result is probably better than a typical CD, it wasn't as good as I hoped and somewhat lacklustre compared to other DVD Audios I have listened to.

     Although low level detail is there (as a example the slow decay of cymbals are very well reproduced), extreme high frequencies seem to be slightly rolled off and the overall sound is a bit muffled and dull, sounding almost like an LP that has been played too often.

    In other words, the recording seems to be realizing the benefits of additional sample depth from the increased word size (24 bits) but not really taking advantage of the increased sample frequency (96kHz).

    I also sampled the Linear PCM 96/24 2.0 track from the DVD Video part of the disc and it sounds identical to the MLP stereo track.

    Now for the surround mix. I listened to the MLP 96/24 5.1 track on the DVD Audio portion of the surround side. Again, it was somewhat disappointing although sounding slightly better than the stereo track.

    The main issue I have with the surround mix is that it is a little bit too front centre focused and too much music got steered to the centre. The rears seem to be mainly used for ambience, apart from two tracks: Track 2 (Searching for the Right Door/Spectrum) and Track 6 (Snoopy's Search/Red Baron) - where the synthesizer is imaginatively panned across front and rear channels.

    The subwoofer was used lightly to support the low frequency portion of the music.

    The full bitrate dts 5.1 audio track (1536Kb/s) on the DVD Video part of the side sounds very similar to the MLP track except possibly sounding slightly duller. Finally the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track (448Kb/s) is also similar but slightly harsher and recorded at a slight softer level (dialog normalisation -2dB).

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The extras are exactly the same no matter which part of the disc you select (DVD Audio or Video, Stereo or surround) which means there are four copies of everything (well, in reality probably only two for some of them as both DVD Audio and Video portions of any side can link to the same content on the disc).

Menu

    The menus are full frame and static.

Booklet

    This is a 12 page booklet that includes both colour and black and white photographs, a lengthy essay by A. Scott Galloway, track listing, and musician/production credits.

Featurette - Video Interview (8:43)

    This is a full frame retrospective interview with Billy Cobham, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (Kb/s). He talks about the themes behind the album, the recording (which took ten days), his reasons for making the album, and other artists he has worked with.

Photo Gallery

    This is a set of ten colour stills capturing the musicians during their performance. The photos look a bit grainy and yellowish/reddish in colour.

Credits

    This is a set of seven stills listing musicians and production team.

    This disc appears to be identically featured across all regions.

    Spectrum is fusion drummer Billy Cobham's first album as leader and widely regarded as his best.

    This double sided disc contains a full selection of audio tracks, including MLP 96/24 5.1, full bitrate dts 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 on one side, and MLP 96/24 2.0 and Linear PCM 96/24 2.0 on the other side. Unfortunately, the quality of the audio is a bit disappointing.

    Extras include a video interview.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall