After a very long wait I was excited to finally get my hands on the much desired surround mix of IICORMN. From what I’ve been hearing from some friends I was fortunate that it played fine on my Toshiba DVD player. I have had several people tell me that it would not play properly on their decks. I hope that the bugs get worked out soon and those folks get replacement discs that have been corrected.

This release is too good for issues like that to stand between the fans and this work of art. I was completely blown away by the incredible resolution as well as the 5.0 mix. The only thing that I could imagine sounding better would be to have sat right in the middle of the band during the sessions. The mix was tastefully done and I never found it distracting. You are truly able to immerse yourself in the experience and I promise you that this has been worth the wait.

It apppears that Rhino/WB applied scant QC in regard to the current IICORMN DVD, and perhaps to the CD either. Reports of HDCD lights not coming on, and DVD-A content not playing on tried and true players by technically informed listeners (the only ones that have the patience to put up with archane navigation systems and bad or incomplete menus).

The final straw was that this producer (me) tried to play his own copy of the new release. I could see the indexes, but no sound. I spent hours with the players settings, etc . No DTS, No DVD-A. The CD worked, anyway.

Dammit.

I can now fully sympathize with the hard core out there.

The net result is that I feel responsible, even though I had no control of things that Warners/Rhino did. All I can do is try to sort it out through this website.

So I hope people that wanted to hear “If I Could Only Remember My Name” in true, high definition surround and can’t because of technical limitations - don’t give up - please register to this site and publish your complaints to the “Bad Disc Reports” category. Note that registration is only needed for posting — browsing the posts and the photos does not require registration.

I hope to have a conversation with someone at Warner/Rhino this month. Hopefully I can find out about or organize some kind of return/replace program.

stay tuned.

in other news…

I should have some photos relating to the iicormn sessions and more technical tours soon.

sqb