The Doors: Immersed Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		5.0

The Doors: Immersed Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 13, 2025

Rhino has already whetted the audio Blu-ray appetites of fans of The Doors with The Doors: The Singles and The Best of The Doors, but some fans may feel they've reached, well, the end or at least the mother lode (so far) with this new collection, which offers hi res audio of the first six Doors albums. Legendary master engineer Bruce Botnick, who helped define The Doors' sound on LP, is on hand here providing the stereo, 5.1 surround and Atmos mixes, which should certainly give this collection an imprimatur of authenticity.

I've provided screenshots of all six discs' menus which offer track lists for each of the six albums presented sequentially in terms of original release dates in positions 1 through 6. Screenshots 7 through 10 offer a few examples of how the font / color of the track names change when scrolling through subsequent selections.

The Doors: Immersed Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The only video content here is the static menu each disc offers. As mentioned above, see screenshots 7 through 10 for a look at the only change on tap, namely the color / font of selections when scrolling through titles.

The Doors: Immersed Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

All six albums offer DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Dolby Atmos options. An insert sheet offers some comments from the legendary Bruce Botnick himself:

Once upon a time, and not too long ago, there was AM radio, and the Top 10 playlist was championed by a local DJ who played your favorite Doors song every hour, in beautiful amplitude modulated mono sound.

This boxed set includes the original Doors albums in high resolution stereo (192/24) as well as remixes in 5.1 surround sound and immersive 12 channel Dolby Atmos. With Atmos, having loudspeakers on the ceiling allows "Riders on the Storm", for example, to really come alive with rain and thunder, and on "Horse Latitudes", it highlights the theatrical claustrophobia of Jim's poetry.

Because of vinyl's time limits and the FCC morality rules for over the air broadcasting, we sometimes left off extended verses, choruses and vocals. Paul Rothchild so aptly called it the "f*** barrier" - no bad words, like the word "high", which caused The Doors to be banned from The Ed Sullivan Show.

The Doors will never get old.

That last sentence in particular may be particularly relevant since listening to the "traditional" surround and Atmos mixes offered on these discs can be surprisingly "new" sounding. To cut to the chase, this is an appealing release from Rhino with some very beautifully immersive moments in each of the six albums, at least overall (more about that in a moment). I've tried to select a salient example or two from each of the albums in the following comments, but there are countless other examples that I'm sure other audiophiles will be able to point to.

Impressive clarity is evident in little flourishes like the high hat in the first album's very first tune, "Break On Through (To the Other Side)", and interestingly in that regard that very example is also just one of countless ways audiophiles can hear differences between the 5.1 and Atmos mixes (I actually preferred the more forward sound of the percussion on that particular tune in the 5.1 mix to a slightly more diffused sound in the Atmos mix). I actually found a lot of the first album to be more forward focused than I personally may have preferred, with the rear channels often left for ambient spill.

That is most definitely not the case with the second album, which in fact begins with a nice rear channel flourish of the organ (which soon completely surrounds the listener). There are certain moments on the second album, as in the first verse of "People Are Strange", where things are once again anchored pretty forward, but then all of a sudden there are bursts from the rear channels as the first chorus starts. That tune offers some nice separation of the keyboards between front and rear channels for the solo section. Good surround engagement continues from the get go with Waiting for the Sun, with even riff driven material like "Hello, I Love You" offering those riffs coming at the listener appealingly from all sides. That "swoop" effect in the tune at circa 1:23 is especially fun in the Atmos iteration.

The Soft Parade offers some production luster that is nicely rendered again in both of the surround tracks, with some of the brass work in particular especially immersive. Interestingly in that regard, "Touch Me" is another tune that begins pretty much solidly anchored toward the front, until first the entrance of the brass and then the strings offer great rear channel presence. The 5.1 and Atmos mixes can differ at times in terms of how far forward Jim's voice is. I found parts of this album to be a bit on the bright side. Tunes like the almost Roy Orbison-esque "Waiting for the Sun" on Morrison Hotel offer some really fun panning effects. Other moments like the opening of "The Spy" can offer guitars forward and piano and drums in the rear.

While some may feel like L.A. Woman gets off to a once again kind of forward focused mix with "The Changeling", "Love Her Madly" is another fantastic example of just how immersive the new 5.1 and Atmos mixes can be, with clear engagement completely surrounding the listener, but still keeping Morrison's voice nicely prominent. As Bruce Botnick alludes to above, this set goes out with an "ambient environmental" bang with the appropriate rain sounds on "Riders on the Storm".

The only other niggling qualm some may have with these discs other than an intermittent prevalence of forward mixed material is that they're all authored so that navigating to the list of codecs at the bottom of the menu is necessary to change things, and even more unfortunately, changing the codecs starts the song over.

The Doors: Immersed Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements per se on any of the discs, but this is another really handsomely packaged effort from Rhino. A nicely designed slipbox encloses six separate gatefold "mini LP" sleeves for the six albums (and according to my research and maybe even my memory, I don't think all of the original albums had gatefolds). The front covers reproduce original cover art, with the rear covers listing credits. Interiors offer either photos, lyrics or "The Celebration of the Lizard" inside Waiting for the Sun. All of the discs offer "vintage" Elektra LP labels ranging from the old puce and then red label with the big E to the later butterfly label.

The Doors: Immersed Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Listening to these albums again in surround sound was a real delight, and made me "newly" appreciate The Doors, which obviously gives credence to that statement by Bruce Botnick about The Doors never getting old, above. I can't imagine fans of this band not being similarly pleased with this effort. If this is "the end" for hi res audio presentations of The Doors' albums, it's a fitting one. The Doors: Immersed easily comes Highly recommended.