Post Description

AC/DC : Live at Donington 

Track listing: 

 1 - Thunderstruck 
 2 - Shoot to Thrill 
 3 - Back in Black 
 4 - Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be 
 5 - Heatseeker 
 6 - Fire Your Guns 
 7 - Jailbreak 
 8 - The Jack 
 9 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap 
10 - Moneytalks 
11 - Hells Bells 
12 - High Voltage 
13 - Whole Lotta Rosie 
14 - You Shook Me All Night Long 
15 - T.N.T. 
16 - Let There Be Rock 
17 - Highway to Hell 
18 - For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)

AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray, Video Quality

Filmed with Panavision cameras and lenses on 35mm film with 26 cameras, including one helicopter, AC/DC: Live at Donington is presented in high definition 1080p on this Blu-ray Disc release in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

The AVC/Mpeg-4 encoding which averages a bitrate of about 30Mbps on this Blu-ray release captures the full resolution of 35mm film perfectly and with all of the flashing lights and such I never once saw a compression artifact surface.

Because of the use of so many cameras from various distances and the differing levels of lighting throughout the performance the quality of the picture does vary, often times from one shot to the next, but this has more to do with the things I've mentioned than with the encoding. For example, in certain darker shots from more distant cameras, there is a higher level of grain present than in well-lit shots from cameras closer to or actually on the stage where little to no grain can be seen at all.

What truly harms the overall picture quality of this release, however, is the lack of care that was taken in transferring this film to high definition. The source was in obvious need of some repair; perhaps even some cleaning up in the digital realm to make it just right. For what is probably the whole second half of the disc, there are very visible scratches that appear frequently straight down the frames, often two or three at a time. This, in my opinion, is completely unacceptable for a high definition video release. After seeing the care with which a studio like Warner can take when transferring Elvis Presley films such as Viva Las Vegas and Jailhouse Rock to Blu-ray, or watching the flawless high definition transfer of Goldfinger on MGM HD in Mpeg-4, there is no excuse why a film that is only from 1991 should come to Blu-ray with these obvious flaws still in tact and they force me to knock the rating down for this release.

AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray, Audio Quality   4.5 of 5

For this release, Sony-BMG and Columbia Music Video have provided three listening options: 48kHz/24bit PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps) and PCM 5.1 48kHz/24bit. 

Listening to the 5.1 PCM mix on this Blu-ray release is an absolute aural treat - "high voltage rock and roll" indeed. This is one of the best mixed live Hard Rock shows I've heard a recording of in recent memory. Crowd noise is kept to a minimum during the performances and the music is not drowned in cavernous amounts of reverberation that turns everything into a muddled mess of sounds. Here, everything has the right amount of punch, and dynamics – what little dynamics there are in a maxed-out-to-11 Hard Rock concert, anyway – are preserved.

Of particular note are how well the thump of Chris Slade's drums and the raw overdrive of Angus Young's guitar are presented. One can hear all the feedback coming from those Marshall stacks, and the sizzle of the cymbals and whack of the snare from Slade's drums with amazing clarity.

Brian Johnson's vocals, are mixed in well and rarely get lost in the thunderous assault of sounds, and Cliff Williams' bass guitar lines are solidly placed and aided quite effectively, I would suppose, by the subwoofer.

If fault is to be found at all with this mix, it is that Malcom Young's guitar, placed mostly in the front left channel is often overwhelmed in the mix by his brother Angus' guitar, placed in the front right channel. I sympathize with Mike Fraser, the mix engineer here, for he had the unenviable task of having to mix two distinctly different model guitars – Malcom's early-60's Gretsh Firebird double-cutaway solid body double-humbucking guitar and Angus' '57 style Gibson SG double-humbucking guitar - with very similar tones, made even more similar by being run through Marshall amp heads no doubt. Still, it would have been nice to be able to hear Malcom's playing more distinctly. 

Besides, I also wonder how much better this all would have sounded had this been done at a higher sampling rate, like 96kHz. I know audiophiles will debate the benefits of this until pigs spread their wings and fly off into the sunset to visit Bon Scott down where it's now frozen over, but having worked with audio on a daily basis at various sampling rates and bit depths, I have my own personal preference for a higher sampling rate – yet 48kHz can still be exceptional when done well, as this recording, mastering, and mix certainly are.

AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras   

The supplements provided on this Blu-ray release are sparse, but in comparison to some other releases are actually worthwhile in one case at least. There is the obligatory commentary track, which is an interview/conversation of sorts with brothers Malcom and Angus Young in which they discuss the filming of the concert, amongst other things; the Iso-cam versions of select songs, where a camera follows around a single member of the band during the entire performance of the song (Angus: "Thunderstruck"; "Back in Black"; "Highway to Hell"/Brian: "Whole Lotta Rosie"/Malcom: "T.N.T."/Cliff: "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"); and finally, what is in my opinion the best extra of all on this disc, an in-concert and full catalog interactive discography.

When the in-concert discography feature is turned on, during playback one can bring up a graphic that will show the album cover and complete track listing of the album for the current song the band is performing and one can also scroll through the entire AC/DC discography album by album in chronological order. The full catalog feature does not work during playback, but using it the entire discography can be viewed at once on screen and scrolled through to select each album and see its track listing.

It is my belief, since this disc loads a Java app before playing, that all these features (or at the very least the in-concert discography) utilize BD-J, thus showing once again how flexible Blu-ray and BD-J interactivity can be.  
 
Video,

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Audio,

English: LPCM 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles :None 

Discs : 50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)

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