It's not often that I have $20 to burn, but at Best Buy, the Eagles'
"Hotel California" DVD-Audio disc succeeded in tempting me to give it
a try.

Like many rock music fans, I'm well familiar with the original 1976
LP, and its overall quality -- in singing, musicianship, production,
and mastering -- continues to impress me. Playing it on a new
turntable is like rediscovering an old friend. Thus, I have become
very intolerant of any unreasonable facsimilies of it. Any kind of
compression and/or tonal equalization simply ruins it.

Unfortunately, that unacceptable category would include the current CD
release of the album. All you need to see is the sentence "Digitally
Remastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound" and you know that you'll
be subjected to an over-compressed, over-equalized reproduction with a
dearth of dynamic range and a complete lack of the original's auditory
artistry.

Thus, I was eager to give the new DVD a try, to see if it would fare
any better. Once opened, I stopped in my tracks upon seeing Mr.
Jensen's name again. Still, I pressed on, resisting my temptation to
apply my bench grinder to the disc and turn it into a shiny coaster.

I must forewarn that my player is not capable of DVD Audio, so these
conclusions were based upon listening to the Dolby Digital DVD
Video-compatible section of the disc. But as that's what the majority
of buyers will likely be listening to, it's a valid point of
reference.

First of all, no stereo mix is offered, so headphone listeners and
stereo purists will feel abandoned. And right away from the beginning
of "Hotel California", it becomes clear that the DVD seems to be
nothing more than a 5.1 remix of the inferiorly-remastered CD. After
the introduction, those two drum thumps are supposed to really be
heard and felt as they accent the start of the vocals. Instead, on
the DVD, the song actually seems to *decrease* in playback volume at
this point!

It also becomes apparent that everything seems to have a greater
sustain to it... the guitars in the background take noticeably longer
to fade out as they hit each note. Also, the surround-sound effects
are wholly artificial, with the mixing engineer choosing to separate
the lead and background vocals, which annoyingly destroys their
original coherency -- and again, you're left with no choice, because
no stereo mix is offered (at least on the Video-compatible part of the
disc).

Upon the second track, "New Kid in Town", the difference as compared
to the original LP becomes even more obvious. In original form, this
song is basically one long crescendo, gradually and subtlely
increasing in loudness as the song picks up and gathers momentum. One
notable point is right after the key change in the middle, where on
the LP anyone paying close attention can notice the increase in
loudness that accompanies the start of the next verse. On the DVD,
there is no such increase in loudness at all! And the final chorus,
with its vocal embellishments and cymbal crashes, sounds particularly
wimpy and lifeless, failing to capture the dynamic intensity of the
original LP.

I may be talking in a lot of subjective terms, but if you've got $20
to burn as well, give the "Hotel California" DVDA a try and be
prepared to be disappointed. I'm not knocking the DVD Audio format --
I have Linda Ronstadt's "What's New" on both vinyl and DVD-Audio and
in every way, the DVD is at least as good as the original, with the
bonus of no surface noise marring the beautiful vocal talent and
orchestral arrangements. However, this Eagles DVD just sounds like
poopy, pumpy crap to my ears. But it's the old "garbage in, garbage
out" scenario. Today, few CDs even come close to making good use of
the true quality that the media has to offer, especially in terms of
dynamic range, and of how clipping distortion is now a "style" rather
than a *defect*. But even more sad is how even supposedly superior
audio formats like DVD aren't being allowed to live up to their full
potential either.

However, along with the help of the DVD-Audio disc of Faith Hill's
"Cry" (another hyper-compressed, hyper-autotuned disaster), I've
discovered a new use for my pair of useless DVD-Audio discs... if you
glue them together front-to-front and hang it front of a sunny window,
the reflective playback surface makes brilliant rainbow effects in
your room!

I also have to credit Ms. Hill for using the best euphemism for
Auto-Tune that I've seen so far... in her song credits, it's called
"ADDITIONAL VOCAL ENGINEERING". LOL! And in the "Studio Sessions"
video on the DVD, she even almost literally refers to it, saying to
her producer something like "Okay, I'll just sing it like this... you
can always tune it later"!