Eric Clapton - Live in Hyde Park

Eric Clapton. No introduction is needed. His is a legend. He is legend. Ex-'Cream', master axeman, songs that have become part of lore, part of music history. This is the Mastercard 'Masters of Music for the Prince's Trust' concert series. Fine use of sponsorship there...

This is live in Hyde Park London on Saturday June 29th 1996, that is, a modern recording. The combination of classics, blues and 'Cream' tracks makes it a winner.

Here is a track list, there's a bit of everything and it's full of favorites:

1. Layla
2. Badge
3. Hoochie Coochie Man
4. I Shot The Sheriff
5. It Hurts Me Too
6. Wonderful Tonight
7. Five Long Years
8. Tearing Us Apart
9. Old Love
10. I'm Tore Down
11. Have You Every Loved A Woman
12. White Room
13. Every Day I Have The Blues
14. Holy Mother

Full frame and of fine quality except where the original video is lacking. The director deserves some kudos for what is a well thought out and smartly edited production. I am quite sensitive to odd visual production and this one is fine; it captures stage and venue well with intelligent cuts and frame pulling.

Colours are fine, except there seems to be a pervasive yellow tint due to the overhead lighting. This does tend to wash out skin tones and light coloured material - the backup singers wear yellow or white jackets and this is a flat canary yellow lacking textures. This can be seen clearly on the guitars - it is hard to make out the pickups and strings on the white protector board. This problem gets worse as the concert progresses as it starts in daylight and progresses to night as the concert ends.

Black details are a bit greyish. Eric however wears a black leather jacket and this is finely detailed.There is some border trouble on hard black-on-white boundaries. There is also some consistent aliasing on diagonals, especially fret necks and guitar curves. Distance crowd shots are fine. Aside from these very minor issues, this is a very fine looking transfer.

There are three tracks; linear PCM at 1,536k/s - Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448k/s and a DTS 5.1 track at 1,536k/s. I'm guessing that most of the DVD.net readership has DTS equipment so I've chosen this as the default track and have referred to the other tracks as comparison points in certain songs.

The DTS track is everything one can hope for - in fact everything an audiophile could hope for. Dynamic with exquisitely accurate sounding instruments. Vocals are excellent with benchmark clarity. Clapton is in fine voice, his backing singers are well chosen and wonderfully utilised. You can hear every nuance and layer of the backing singers - let alone Eric's voice. Instruments are finely focussed; those of you with premium equipment will even find instruments seeming to come from inside your walls; there is excellent use of distance in the recording with a fine sense of space especially behind you. The rears are never intrusive.

The Dolby track sounds like a paler imitation - instruments are smeared; vocals, main instruments sound less 'big' and there's a poorer impression of the stage. The attack, decay and timbre on instruments suffers. The backing singers are perhaps the biggest problem and are clagged into one voice instead of distinct vocals as portrayed by the DTS track. There also seems to be slightly ragged sibilance on the Dolby track as well, or perhaps less well controlled sibilance because it's there on the DTS track as well, it's just more offensive on the Dolby track.

The PCM track is a bit flat sounding after those two. Both Dolby and PCM tracks are slightly lower in volume.

There are no extras except for an ability to toggle on lyrics (subtitles). This is useful if you wish to sing along and tune that air guitar method.

This is an excellent concert, the songs are well chosen and delivered with a special flair. The image is excellent, the sound is every better - close to reference on the DTS track. Every fan should buy this now. It has singalong lyrics like I've always wanted. On DTS equipment there is no better demonstration of sheer musicality and intelligent use of surrounds. You will stop listening to CDs after this one. This DVD was a pleasure to review.