The Mi Casa Magicians
Dear Gary:
I found your interview with the good folks at Mi Casa (“The Mi Casa Magicians: An Interview With The Team Behind 7.1”), Issue 130, April 2008, fascinating. After reading the interview I checked out the Mi Casa Web site and looked over their portfolio of feature-film mixes for DVD. I was surprised to see that they had worked on so many of the titles I have in my own collection.
In the interview, Mr. Thiele specifically mentioned that New Line puts information on their discs letting the consumer know that applying ReEQ for the X-curve is unnecessary because the film has been mastered for home theatre playback. However, I was unable to find this information on any of the New Line titles I own, including The Lord Of The Rings trilogies. If this information is not on the disc, are we to assume ReEQ is still necessary? How is the consumer supposed to know If ReEQ is appropriate for these home theatre DVD mixes? If you ever do a follow-up with Mi Casa, could you bring this up? Could we possibly get a list of their titles that do not require
ReEQ?
Honestly, we need to come up with a standard icon or label on these discs to let us know how they should be played back. Even better would be some kind of code that could be passed with the audio stream via HDMI that would tell the AVR to either engage or disengage the ReEQ automatically. With a little cooperation between manufacturers, it really can’t be that hard to implement.
I know I am preaching to the choir. Thank you for your tireless efforts on behalf of all consumers to standardize and simplify home theatre sound.
Mike Smith
Mi Casa’s Brant Biles Comments:
Thanks for reading the article. I hope it was informative. As far as ReEQ is concerned, ALL titles that Mi Casa has worked on do not need ReEQ. This is not limited to just the New Line titles, of which there are too many to list, but also includes X-Men 3 and From Hell (Fox), the six James Bond films (which I am particularly proud of) for MGM, and the few Artisan/Lionsgate titles we have done in the past. With New Line, the “no ReEQ needed” statement appears on the Audio setup page under the main menu. It would, in my opinion, be nice to see this on the packaging itself. But more importantly, I think with the advent of 7.1-channel mixes for home theatre, a small diagram showing loudspeaker placement when mixing occurred is necessary.
For a list of the titles Mi Casa has mixed please visit www.micasamm.com.
Thanks for caring.
P.S. If you listen to the new release of Live And Let Die, the title track is actually George Martin’s Original Quad mix of the Paul McCartney and Wings recording. Enjoy!
Brant Biles
Editor-In-Chief and Publisher Gary Reber Comments:
This is an issue that is quite confusing for the entire industry, not to mention for consumers. New Line only credits Mi Casa in a buried menu (by selecting the New Line logo in the menu) and only lists the “no ReEQ needed” in the Audio setup menu. Fox provides no credit or guidance whatsoever, nor does MGM or Artisan/Lionsgate on those titles with no ReEQ needed. Other studios are also mixing with “no ReEQ needed,” including Disney and probably others, but who knows. This is a serious failure on the part of the studios to educate consumers to the benefits of these special mixes. They need to fix this on all future releases and re-issues, not to mention the loudspeaker positioning for the 7.1-channel mixes.
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