America: The Story of Us - Audio Issues

[NorCo_1806]

Hey...has anyone else viewed this A&E Home Video release? It's something I'd really like to own, having watched most of it on the History channel. But the review on this site has me worried. Here is some info from that review:

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 9, 2010

America: The Story of Us Blu-ray, Audio Quality 3 out of 5

There are big problems to report with the two lossless soundmixes included. Jeff wasn't sure if he possibly received defective discs for his review, or if there's an authoring error, or if this is just a case of overly aggressive LFE .

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is unlistenable on some systems. There is a completely odd, and overpowering, low frequency hum which drowns out narration, on screen commentary and sound effects. He spot checked almost all of the episodes over the three discs and it was present on all of them. He tried playing the discs on different players and got the same result. Another odd thing: when toggling between the two tracks, for a brief moment the 5.1 track shows a negative bitstream.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix is marginally better. It at least does not have the omnipresent low hum, but it is a very annoyingly noisy track (by which he means sound effects, not hiss or the like). This track is hampered by some poor mixing. When the sound effects do gear up, they often overpower Schreiber's voicework. While it's understandable to pump up battle scenes with appropriate sound effects, this is one exhausting soundtrack to listen to for any length of time.

Sometimes less is more.

Again, has anyone experienced these same issues? Or even better, have you viewed this title and NOT had these issues? In which case, maybe he did get a bad copy???

I'm hoping at least a few forum members have some positive comments for us. As I said, I really want this in my collection, but not if it sounds terrible.

Thanks