Alice in Chains-MTV Unplugged (1996) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Discography Notes-Band Time Line
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	73:17
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Joe Perota
Studio Distributor	Sony Music	Starring	Lane Staley Jerry Cantrell Sean Kinney Mike Inez Scotty Wilson
Case	Amaray-Opaque
RPI	$32.95	Music	Alice In Chains

    Alice In Chains were recorded live for MTV Unplugged three years after they left the music scene in 1993. The concert's directorial style here matches all previous Unplugged gigs, so if you're familiar with the template you'll know what to expect. Having said that, the format works pretty well. There are generous close-ups of the guitarists playing and mercifully few shots of the audience, who again sound like a bunch of college football jocks drunk on Bud.

    Track 14 was apparently a new song thrown together before the performance. If the name sounds unfamiliar to AIC completists then this DVD may hold the only digital recording of it, apart from the Unplugged CD of course! General opinion appears to favour the DVD sound over the CD – not surprising given the improved fidelity afforded by Dolby Digital's higher sampling rate.

Video

    I zoomed the full frame image to its intended widescreen ratio on my 16:9 TV. Sharpness before and after was satisfactory. You can pick out many details on the musician's faces and instruments as the camera perches itself in front of each band member. The metal mesh on the stage floor will test your TV's capabilities when the twisting camera pulls back to reveal finer and finer gridlines. Guitar frets also posed the same challenge, however in both cases the cross-colour artefact demon raised its head more often than not. Shadow detail was good and blacks were pleasing, with only the merest hint of low level noise after the image was zoomed.

    The limited colour palette of blues, reds, and various skin tones looked natural. Oversaturation, low-level noise, and colour bleed were no problem. The tightly controlled MTV lighting conditions and stage decoration all lent a nice, drowsy atmosphere to the proceedings. It's a pity that the blood red lava lamps had not been warmed up 30 minutes prior to going live. For most of the 73 minutes they looked like birth defects floating in formaldehyde.

    The only noticeable artefact was the occasional cross colour rainbow across gridlines on the floor or on closely spaced, foreshortened guitar frets and strings, for instance at 45:48. Generally this is a pleasing NTSC transfer, although it probably originated from the same analogue master used for the US VHS release.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The centred vocals are clear, as is the crack of the snare drum. Imaging for the remaining instruments is precise, with the bass and rhythm guitars on our left and the lead guitar on the right. The drummer's tom toms, high hats, ride cymbal, and crashes are roughly oriented to his kit set up. The bass drum is soft; you will not get much kick from the subwoofer on this concert. This seems to have been intentional, because close examination shows that the bass drum mike is about a metre from the front skin, behind a perspex shield. The bass guitar sound has enough volume to play its part adequately.

    The surround channels do well to draw this orthodox stereo mix into three dimensions. The result is a convincing sound field that envelops the viewer as the vocals, instruments, and ambient crowd noises fill the room. The only unsettling aspect is that the instrument's locations in audio space do not always match their positions on screen as the ever-mobile camera swoops and arches.

    Sound fidelity and synchronization posed no problems. This is a subdued, yet enjoyable live recording that sticks to the MTV Unplugged formula. The Linear PCM track features the same audio characteristics, but in stereo. It also got the toes tapping when turned up, with slightly more focus in the bottom end.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Band Time Line

Menus

Discography

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall