Problems:

The first cause for alarm is that the only English audio mix provided on this disc is the Disney Enhanced for Home Theater (D.E.H.T.) mix. The original, great-sounding mix heard both on the previous laserdisc and DVD is nowhere in sight. I can’t believe that given the dearth of bonus material on Disc 1 that Disney couldn’t have found the bandwidth to include it. And perhaps the omission of the original mix wouldn’t have been such a bad thing had the new DEHT mix not been so troublesome.

The problems with the new mix are two-fold to my ears. One problem is directional… the placement choices of the sound. While most non-musical sequences seem fine in terms of what comes out of what speaker, the musical sequences, which are the heart and soul of the film, have been less tastefully served. Firstly, the lead vocal tracks to each song are duplicated in the front three channels… spreading Ariel’s (or Sabastien’s) voice across the front sound state in a strange, phase-shifting sort of way that I can only imagine was supposed to “enhance” the experience.

During the first song, Ariel’s voice sounds oddly detached and lacks the solid soundstaging and presence of the original mix. The decision to spread her voice over all three front channels dissolves any sense that you’re hearing a point-source of sound… ie: a person singing. Adding to that some overly aggressive placement of instrumentation in the rear channels and the sensation is more like putting a boom-box on your shoulder in a 1980’s MTV video than listening to a soulful aria as the song was intended to portray.

Now, I guess I should be thankful that The Little Mermaid’s DEHT mix didn’t suffer the same fate as that of Aladdin where the clueless mixing engineer decided to place the lead vocalist tracks in the rear surround channels as well. But that’s small consolation given that, unlike Aladdin, the original mix is not presented here as an option.

But now we get to the real problem I have with this new mix. It sounds artificial. And the musical vocal tracks have a dry, flat, electronic signature that’s entirely destroys the lush, vivid, liquid sound quality of the vocal tracks in the original mixes on the laserdisc and DVD. Just how obvious is this problem? Well, it was so obvious to my ears that when first sitting down and skipping to my favorite “Part of Your World” sequence expecting to be showered with musical bliss (picture that old Maxell advertisement) as I have been accustomed to experiencing with the previous DVD and laserdisc, instead I found myself grimacing with disgust and running from the room to dig out my old laserdisc to do some serious A/B comparisons. I had to see if my memory was so in error or if the Disney tech team really are complete and total morons.

Discovered fact: They are morons folks. Allow me to state boldly the plain and simple truth. The techs who cooked up this DEHT mix are nothing but tone-deaf, MP3-listening junkies who wouldn’t know a holographic soundstage if it bit them in the ass. I’ll continue.

So after blowing the dust off of my laserdisc player, I strategically ran cables both directly from the LPCM output and from the RF-output via my AC3 RF modulator so I could easily toggle back and forth between the 2.0 16/44.1 stereo (ProLogic) track on the LD, the 5.1 AC-3 (Dolby Digital) track on the LD, and the new 5.1 Dolby Digital DEHT mix on the new DVD. To make things even more fun, I hooked up my old DVD player so that I could also seamlessly toggle to the 5.1 Dolby Digital mix on the old DVD. Wow. What a deal:

2.0 16/44.1 LPCM (laserdisc)

5.1 DD/AC-3 original mix (laserdisc)

5.1 DD original mix (old DVD)

5.1 DD DEHT mix (new DVD)

After a while I became quite skilled at quickly syncing the various discs up to within a few seconds of each other to enable quick and effective toggling during play. It helped that the laserdisc and original DVD shared the same chapter stops.

So what did I learn in my 2+ hours of source switching?

Firstly, the recording level of both the LPCM and AC3 on the laser is noticeably lower than either of the Dolby tracks on the two DVDs. I found this interesting as one might have assumed that the laser and early DVD shared the same core Dolby Digital compressed soundtrack. They clearly do not. Yes, I adjusted levels to compensate accordingly during my listening session.

The second thing I noticed was that while the “mix” of the 5.1 AC3 on the LD and older DVD sound like they are derived from the same LPCM master, the sound quality of the Dolby Digital on the (original) DVD was much better than the LD's AC3… much more open, natural, and with a richer sense of musical textures and micro-detail like musical decays and ambient “hall”. In fact, the Dolby Digital on the older DVD sounded very close to the fidelity of the 2.0 LPCM laserdisc track in terms of musical naturalness. I was quite impressed (though voices still sounded most natural of all on the laserdisc’s LPCM). The LPCM did present a more believable sense of space and nuance versus the older DVD’s DD track, but the improvement was subtle. Given this only slight improvement in fidelity on the LPCM, I felt that the gains in soundstaging with the discrete 5.1 encoding on the older DVD were a reasonable trade off and out of all the audio mixes the 5.1 DD on the previous DVD emerged as my preferred choice.

The important conclusion was that all three “original” audio presentations did a superb job of faithfully reproducing believable vocals that were lush, natural, and liquidly smooth. The sharp contrast with the dry, flat, almost brassy nature of the vocals on the new DEHT mix in comparison was undeniable. The vocals on the new DVD’s DEHT mix sounded “electronic” in a way that pulled me out of the film during what should have been the most encompassing moments of the story.

My memory had not betrayed me. This new mix really was the problem after all.

Because firstly Disney insists on putting a bastardized mix on this disc that disregards the integrity of the original recording's natural tonal quality and fidelity, and secondly because in doing so they also elected not to provide the original mix as an alternative, I cannot view this DVD presentation of The Little Mermaid as quality effort.

Sound Quality: 2.5 / 5