Excellent PG DVD with a brilliant, aggressive surround mix by Daniel Lanois et al. One caveat: my region 4 PAL DVD suffered from the problem outlined here (Peter Gabriel forums):"Since the release of the PLAY DVD we have become aware of an issue affecting the DTS soundtrack on the latest generation of surround amplifiers.PLAY is the first disc produced using a new DTS encoder and it seems that the version we used has set a flag within the DTS audio stream that can cause a 30db reduction in volume.We have only experienced the issue on a Denon AVR-3805 amplifier (kindly lent to us by Denon UK), although it may be more widespread as new audio decoder chips reach the consumer market in other products. Reading through our DVD forum, our experience would tie in with the comments of people on the boards . A 30db volume reduction is very noticeable, so the DTS audio heard through these amplifiers is going to be both disappointing, and give a you big shock if you turn it up and then flip back to one of the other audio tracks, or navigate back to a menu.Only the latest amplifiers are reading the 'Dialogue Normalization" setting in the DTS audio which is causing the volume reduction. Other amplifiers are simply ignoring this information, so during the product development and testing, and to most consumers the DTS was and still is the best sounding audio on the disc.We are currently working with DTS, Warner Vision and Denon to find a solution, and will keep you posted."At first I thought there was something wrong with my new Yamaha RX-V3800Bi receiver, but all the other DTS 96/24 discs were playing at normal volume. I can verify that there is a newer edition available for regions 2,3,4,5 PAL which has the Dialogue Normalization flag error corrected, and it sounds great. As far as I know, the region 1 edition hasn't been fixed, so the only way you can experience DTS 96/24 from this disc is if you have onboard DTS 96/24 decoding and analogue outputs, or you have an older AV receiver that doesn't recognise the flag. Those who haven't experienced this problem are most likely only hearing the core DTS 48/24.These are the only surround mixes of Peter Gabriel's studio work available apart from his "Up" SACD, and they bring a new dimension to the music. Excellent.
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