Customer Reviews

Perception (6CD/6DVD, Boxset)

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The audios are good but videos could of included some rare footage. It seemed like an after thought & they picked videos from previous released videos. This was the reason it didn't get 5 stars.

I had The Doors on vinyl and finally decided to get this box set. Now I'm not familiar w/ the previous box set but this includes all the 6 Doors albums. Yeah, American Prayer came out later but that was post-Jim. So you don't know if he would agree w/ the arrangements on that album. Plus you have the remaining Doors who produced 2 more albums post-Jim. Who would of known if Jim ever came back from Paris would he continue playing w/ them. I've read a number of books of The Doors and many speculations of Jim writing screen plays to moving to New York to working on a solo album. I don't own much rare recordings or bootlegs so the bonus tracks are a treat for me. Too bad the video aspect wasn't thought out. All of the videos except for one I have in my Doors DVD collection. As an audio standpoint this is a good deal and really enjoy it.

This package is the 6 albums The Doors includes 2 disc per album.
You have the CD w/ bonus tracks and a DVD disc.
Each Album/CD is a tri-fold that copies the original artwork front & back cover. Inside includes the art from that album as well as a booklet w/ some cool pics gives in detail the making of that record.
Each DVD includes the entire album in 5.1 Surround Sound.
Photo Gallery w/ some very cool photos and 2 videos of the songs from that album.
Now the videos aren't any rare footage. If you have The Soundstage Performances, Hollywood Bowl, and the Dance On Fire DVDs. The only one I don't recognize is Crawling King Snake that was shot in The Doors rehearsal studio filmed for a 1971 Australian TV. This is rare footage I haven't seen of Jim performing a song from L.A. Woman album. Of course there must be some collectors out there who have this whole show. But it was a treat for me to view.

The Doors
debut album includes some of my favorite tracks The Crystal Ship, Light My Fire and The End. Also 3 bonus tracks. 2 versions of Moonlight Drive. The 2nd version was previously unissued. Matter of fact version 2 of Moonlight Drive reminds me a little of Alabama Song. 3rd previously unissued track is Indian Summer which is on Morrison Hotel CD. This is a sort of acoustic song that shows off Jim vocals.
Videos include Break On Through, which is on Dance On Fire DVD.
The End is from The Soundstage Performances DVD Toronto performance, 1967

Strange Days
one of my favorite Doors albums has my all time favorite track When The Music's Over . The bonus tracks comes w/ People Are Strange false starts & in studio talking. It's John Densmore talking to producer Paul Rothchild. This is only about a minute long so it's no alternative version of the song just the talking before they start.
The other bonus track is Love Me Two Times which is listed as Take 3. I really couldn't hear a difference.
The videos include Love Me Two Times and When The Music's Over both from Europe Concert, 1968. These are on The Soundstage Performances DVD.

Waiting For The Sun
has 5 bonus tracks. Albinoni's Adiago In G Minor an instrumental that was included in American Prayer lp. Not To Touch The Earth has a minute of dialogue w/ Jim. If only a minute long it was interesting hearing Jim goofing around.
Then you have 2 more takes of Not To Touch The Earth. Take 1 time is 4:22 as Take 2 is 3:58.
A 17 minute poem of Celebration of The Lizard which was printed inside the album cover. This is noted as "work in progress" there are some lines that are not in the printed version of the album.
Videos in Spanish Caravan from Live Hollywood Bowl, 1968 from the DVD of the same name.
The Unknown Soldier is the performance from The Soundstage Performances DVD.

The Soft Parade
The Soft Parade is my fav song from this album. The 6 bonus tracks are Who Scared You that is on Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine album. Good song btw. 2 versions of Whiskey, Mystics And Men, a very good tune. Push Push is more of an instrumental reminds me of Vince Guaraldi (Charlie Brown song) w/ the only chorus of the band singing repetitively "Push Push"
They list 2 versions of Touch Me but really version 1 is just 27 seconds of talking in the studio. It's maybe Paul Rothchild producer talking to John Densmore about the positioning of the snare drum mic.
Videos include Soft Parade and Touch Me both from Soundstage Performance DVD.

Morrison Hotel
Is The Doors going back to basics w/ bluesy tunes. One of the biggest hits was Roadhouse Blues. Another good tune I like is Queen of The Highway. Now for bonus tracks I would say this is the best CD that included 10 bonus tracks. 3 versions of Roadhouse Blues which Jim starts off w/ Money Beats Soul poem. There is also a funny line on Peace Frog w/ a false start. It seems the band is dragging before Jim sings. Jim says to the band "Boy you guys sound like a drunken cripple walking up a flight of stairs, man...drunken flight of stairs". A jazzy version of Queen of The Highway which I find interesting for an alternative sound.
2 videos from Dance On Fire DVD are Roudhouse Blues and Wild Child.

L.A. Woman
Final album of The Doors w/ Jim that includes my all time favorite "Riders On The Storm." The bonus tracks are only 2 compared to previous CD this is pretty dismal. You have Orange County Suite a song about Jim's girl Pamela. I know Jim pitched this to The Doors but they passed on it a number of times. To tell the truth it's very good song. This was also on The Doors Boxset. The other track is (You Need Meat) Don't Go No Further which is on Weird Scenes In The Goldmine album.
Videos include The Changeling that was edited from the Soft Parade DVD..The second video is Crawling King Snake which I haven't seen before footage. This is from 1971, The Doors rehearsal space filmed for Australian TV. It was a very cool performance I would like to know more about this TV appearance.

EDIT (Because some stuff has changed in price & release):

Ok, before I get into the pros and cons of the box set, I just want you to know there is "nothing extra" here that can't be found somewhere else, it's just a bunch of stuff compacted in 1 set that is actually worth it for $80 (2008 release), but not as much at $150 (2006 release).

Pros / Benefits when this came out in 2006:

1) Includes every studio album w/ Jim Morrison (meaning it leaves out Other Voices & Full Circle)
2) Includes rare unreleased versions of songs & the Studio version of "Celebration of the Lizard"
3) Includes a 5.1 Surround Sound DVD of each album with videos

MAIN PRO:
4) The 2006 version is $150 list, the 2008 version is now $80 list or currently $65 on amazon. I tried to find out if their are any difference between the 2 releases, and I could not find any. If anyone finds anything definite, please let me know, because otherwise this price drop certainly makes it worth to consider, and is still cheaper then the out of print "Complete Studio Recordings Box Set" see below.

Cons / Things You Might Want to Know (but is not bad at $80):

1) This is not the 1st release of all the doors albums w/ Jim Morrison in it in 1 box, that goes to "The Complete Studio Recordings" Box Set released in 1999, which includes the exact same re-masters, but unfortunately is out of print since this was released.
2) This does not include the "Essential Rarities" bonus disc found in the "Complete Studio Recordings" Box Set, which you can buy separately
3) The 5.1 Surround Sound DVD's lack superior sound quality as one might expect according to other reviewers, which you can also buy separately
4) All the bonus tracks from this box (I'm pretty sure anyway) can be obtained from the 2007 re-released versions of the albums


Ok, now some suggestions:
1) If you are looking for some great footage of the Doors on DVD and have none, get the "Doors Collection" DVD, that shows the best concert footage and films of them
2) If you want more unreleased material, seek the "The Doors Box", which is a 4 cd box set including rare & semi-live versions of songs that I don't believe you can get anywhere else, but look that up yourself
3) Again, because of this huge price drop which I still find quite unusual, this is actually a good deal at $80 and certainly at $65 currently on amazon, but not at the $150 when it was first released. If you want all the re-mastered albums, I think this is the way to go.

Hope this helps.

Quite simply, outstanding!

I'll be the first to admit, at 28, I'm a young Doors fan. I grew up with kids in the late 80's and early 90's who worshipped the Doors, especially Jim, as their messiah, and I never got it. I've known their hits, enjoyed them, and that's kinda where it stopped. I didn't even own a Doors record (The Doors) until I was in college in '99... that's when I started to understand what was so great. However, I never investigated further.

This past year, at the end of '06, the Perceptions box set came out and I made it my mission to save and buy it, 'cause my old copy the The Doors sounded horrible. Well, before I knew it, it was gone, but thank you Warner for atleast re-issuing it ASAP in a slimmed down, frill-less box.

I now own the best box I've ever owned. I've read all the reviews for the LTD version, from people saying it's a waste of money compared to previous Doors boxes (fools!), to the the 5.1 mixes being poor (fools again!), to everything being redundant (yeah, but between 2 formats, not on the same disc or anything). Here's my opinion... this is AWESOME! Seriously. I haven't even touched the CD's yet. The 5.1 high-res audio mixes are blowing my mind, not to mention, for me, the exposure to a whole slew of songs I've never heard before. Sure, The Doors doesn't benefit much from 5.1, but the high-resolution is what makes it better than any other mix you've ever heard previously. Starting at Strange Days you can start to hear clever use 5.1. Never anything to be distracting, but maybe just some good ambience, or background vocals actually being in the back. The real fun starts at Waiting For The Sun and Soft Parade. Those two, in 5.1 high-res are leaving me breathless. I carry on rediculously to my girlfriend about the clarity of the mixes and little nuances to the point where she's just ignoring me!

If you can't tell yet, I'm a huge fan of DVD-A's and high-res sound (SACD as well). I've heard some people complain about 5.1 mixes, from saying that it ruins an original recording (too fancy, sounds swirling around), to there's nothing but abmience and it's nothing special (nothing fancy, no sounds swirling around). I think it's obvious when listenin gto this what the band and engineers intentions were. To place you in the studio, or in the case of some songs, sort of... transport you into the heart of the music. I got sucked in. I heard someone say it wasn't as good as Beatles' Love. Well, Love is all studio trickery my friend, based on original Beatles songs. That is not, in any way, how the Beatles intended for those songs to be heard. These are easily as good as DVD-A's for Eagles' Hotel California and Queen's Night At The Opera.

Anyway... enough rambling. Go to a high-end stereo shop, ask if they have it as a demo to hear it properly. Don't use MP3's as a basis for this. Borrow it from a friend, or better yet, trust a strangers opinion and buy this for an amazing listen. If you're already a Doors fan and you think you've heard this stuff before and this won't be a reason for you to dig out your collection any more often, you're wrong. Sell your old stuff (even your LP's, they're re-releasing those in August '07!) and get this. You'll never be happier.

Remastering and reissuing back catalog in a box set is all the rage now. Queen, Talking Heads, the Beatles, etc. The Queen box sounds pretty good. Talking Heads even better in 5.1 dual disc format. DD will not play reliably in some machines. The stereo redbook sides of some of my TH box skip or will not play but the 5.1 DVD/DVDA sides play fine in my Marantz universal disc players. The Doors Music Company went all out. They did both. You get cd's and dvd/dvda's of each of the 6 studio albums, remasterd stereo cd's and remastered 2ch, 5.1 and 5.1DTS on the DVD's. Listen to the first disc without reading any of the enclosed booklet. Does it sound a little different, funny, better, worse? I won't give it away. You have to listen and then read. I found the vocal 's buried in the mix on the first disc using the dvd dts layer. I punched up the center channel 2 to 4 db and got the vocals even with the front channels. Not much going on in the rears on the first disc for some reason but by the time you get to the 3rd and 4th discs, there is plenty going on in the rear speakers.

Overall the sound, excepting the first disc for some reason and really only on Break on Thru, the first track, is exceptional. The SS mixes are very nicely done again except for the first disc for some reason. I love the remastered box sets. I am a lazy music collector/lover at heart and the record companies are making it so easy for me to buy their back catalog all over again and again, about every ten years and it just keeps getting better. 5 stars overall, 4 for the content (some of this stuff to me is just drivel while the rest is pure genius, the outakes and videos really do nothing for me but some folks will go ga ga over it and buy just for that, cool but there is a reason these things were outakes), 5 stars for sonics. Well done Bruce and Paul.

In your mind what more could you ask for, this a "real" box set, featuring twelve disc, all six Doors studio albums on cd-remastered, all six dvds of the albums are remixed and remastered in 5.1 surround. Each disc is securely placed in a plastic holder of each original album cover, unlike the cardboard "mini albums" that are bound to damage or scratch the disc. Each individual album contains booklets with lyrics, photographs, and history liner notes. The audio is superior, Jim Morrison and the band never sounded better and the set includes twenty four bonus tracks and twelve video performances, some are live, soundstage gigs, and music videos. If you've never heard all The Doors material it's high time to buy this "Perception" set now - just recently bought this, not for the reason of better audio, for the simple reason of wanting to hear all of The Doors studio work and after listening to all the albums, watching all the live shows, the instrumentation of Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, and the singing power of Morrison blew me away, worth every dollar. NOTABLE MENTION:I'd like to see more reviewers be more specific and informative on their reviews. The Perception set is true to the original recordings, the cds are remastered, only the dvd versions are remixed. Stay away from the single 2007 releases, they are remixed, changed, and not true to the originals, some songs actually drown out Morrison's vocals, some of the mixes of the instruments are out of wack and too loud, just a plain butchering - not one review I've read on the Perception set mention this, to make a long story short, this simple information would've saved me a fistful of dollars.

The DVDs do have DVD-Audio (MLP) 24bit 96khz 5.1 tracks for every song.

I couldn't find this info before ordering (Amazon is not very good at properly describing hi-res audio products).

This is a review of the 5.1 Surround versions of the albums.

A couple of other reviewers have made some negative comments about the 5.1 mixes. I have to say, I think they are pretty darn good.

To my non-engineering ears, 5.1 mixes come in two types. There are the kinds of mixes that were done for a lot of the old Quadrophonic mixes (I still have my quad amp). They simply mixed some ambience in the rear speakers. In other words, the rear speakers contained things you would be expected to hear in a concert hall behind you. The main band parts still were in the front speakers, some echo or crowd noise behind you from the rear speakers. I have some 5.1 CD's that kind of do this, minimal participation from the rear 'surround' speakers. BOC's "Agents of Fortune" is an example. Some guitar tracks, maybe a bit of percussion is all that you get from the rear.

There were some quad mixes that put different instruments in each track. A good example is Deep Purple's Machine Head. This is what most 5.1 mixes do, a separate sound track in each channel, with the voice usually from the center channel, and the bass drum and guitar from the subwoofer. This is what the Doors 5.1 mixes do. I really like them. I think most of us will agree, most Doors albums did not feature a huge number of overdubs. So, there is not that much to stick in each channel, it gets kind of stark. But, no matter, I LIKE the feeling of being in the MIDDLE of the band, not in front of it.

Point here is that the 5.1 mixes are, to my ear, just fine, and what I paid my money for. Along with the 5.1 DVD's are great stereo mixes on CD's, so there really is no down side.

It goes like this...if you like the Doors and wish to have an upgraded version of the albums that were released in 1999 as the "Complete Studio Recordings" this is the product to buy. Not to mention that it is assembled way better than that collection. The discs in this box are better protected in digipack cases instead of cardboard cutouts which kind of felt cheap the first time around. Then there's the sound on these records. I don't know what they did, but it has a warmer sound and better use of digital remastering technology. It was just the right touches without too much. This is by far a far more attractive looking item, and the looking glass is way cool. So, yeah I had to own it again!

Being a surround sound audiophile it was with great excitement that I purchased this box set.

I LOVE CLASSIC ROCK ALBUMS RE-MIXED IN 5.1 and have quite a few in my collection in both DVD-A and SACD formats, with the DVD-A version of
"L.A. Woman"(released in 2000 and also remixed by Bruce Botnick)) being one of my favourites. Listening to the title track on this mix, where Morrison keeps repeating "Mr Mojo Rising", is like having him running to each corner of your room each time he sings it.

The 5.1 mix of this set is, in my humble opinion, very disappointing.

I would call it more of a 3.5.1 mix. Whilst the clarity coming from the front speakers is excellent, there is only the occasional "grab" and/or echo coming out of the rear speakers. I did notice that, as I progressed through the albums (I listened to them in release date order) the mix did improve but was still disappointing.

When I compare this mix to, say, the SACD releases of Elton John's early albums, the Elton John albums are far superior. The 5.1 mix of these are very distinct and wide.

I guess it all comes down to the producer's interpretation of a 5.1 mix. Perhaps Bruce Botnick and the remaining Doors felt that the mixes should be more discreit and respecting the original sound.

If so, I don't agree. 5.1 surround mixes are meant to make old classic rock albums sound fresh and new again. You want to hear instruments and sounds that were buried in the original mix(examples, Elton John's SACDs, Deep Purple's "Machine Head" DVD-A, Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" SACD to name just a few).

If you are someone who isn't into 5.1 surround mixes then you will find the sound of this box set excellent.

However, if you are buying it purely for the 5.1 mixes, as Mike S. said in his review, the sound is not as good as you might think.

Some people have wondered what the difference is between the 2006 & 2008 re-issue, and I haven't seen a review that really ironed out the differences. Now that I have a 2006 set in my possession, I can expand on the differences!

The discs are all the same, but the packaging is quite different:

The 2006 is a more robust package that kinda opens up like a book to reveal the discs. It has a working peephole on the front from where you can view pics of the band via a little spinning wheel in the back (think manual slide projector).

The 2008 set is a simple slipcase with none of the above features.