Pearl Jam: Binaural Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Pearl Jam: Binaural Blu-ray Movie Review

Note: Amazon has this incorrectly listed as an audio DVD.

Binaural was the sixth album by Pearl Jam, but it was the first after another Seattle grunge icon, namely Soundgarden, "loaned" their drummer Matt Cameron to the Eddie Vedder consortium, ostensibly initially for a tour, but in what actually turned out to be a long lived relationship that kind of amazingly saw Cameron also able to continue with Soundgarden (not to mention Temple of the Dog). Cameron's drumming really helps to propel several of the songs on this album spectacularly well. Binaural has a title that is probably instantly interesting to audiophiles, and it was a recording supposedly specifically engineered to provide a quasi-3D listening experience in that old fashioned technology known as stereo. Now the album is being offered with a Dolby Atmos mix, along with two stereo mixes.

Pearl Jam: Binaural Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Binaural is presented on audio Blu-ray courtesy of Epic and Legacy, and there is a bit of video accompanying this release, in an AVC encoded 1080 presentation that is basically of lyric sheets, as can be seen in the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review. Some very minor animation accompanies the disc boot up with the original album art, and the song titles also "appear" in the lower left after each new lyric sheet comes on screen. Because this really has no meaningful video content, I've left the score above blank.

Pearl Jam: Binaural Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Binaural features either a Dolby Atmos option or two LPCM 2.0 options, one 192/24 and one 96/24. I frankly was not always as excited by the Atmos mix as I had hoped to be, though it does at least occasionally significantly open up the proceedings, perhaps surprisingly for some of the (relatively?) gentler material than for some of the head banging stuff. In terms of the louder, riff driven material, I found myself repeatedly wishing the vocals had been mixed a good deal more forward. At times it's virtually impossible to hear Eddie over the sturm und drang of the band, and frankly the worst moments (typically the more energetic and hyperbolically loud tunes like Breakerfall) don't get that much better in the stereo versions, all three of which sounded at times to be more weighted toward the instrumentation than on my (way) old CD. A lot of the Atmos mix tends to be very front-centric quite a bit of the time (listen to Light Years for just one example), and in fact I'd recommend those interested to simply stand between their rear speakers to get a good idea of how generally forward things are in this mix. Still, there's superb fidelity and the onslaught of sound in several of the most propulsive tunes is quite visceral. I personally preferred the 192 stereo to the 96 and was actually surprised at how much of a difference can be heard, especially in the midrange.

Pearl Jam: Binaural Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no on disc supplements. This is packaged in a trifold cardboard sleeve which would be a Digipack if there were a plastic holder for the disc. Instead, the disc is housed in a mini sleeve of its own which is inside the right pocket of the trifold. The left pocket has an insert booklet with lyrics and photos along with production information.

Pearl Jam: Binaural Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's maybe a little ironic that the Atmos mix on this disc may not achieve the kind of "3D wonderment" the original stereo mix of the album was supposed to create, and in that regard, I frankly won't be surprised if other Pearl Jam fans end up liking the stereo mixes on this disc at least as much if not more than the Atmos mix. With Atmos caveats noted, Recommended.