============ this review was written in February 2004 ==================

See
http://perso.club-internet.fr/pfellows/webpages/dsc.html
for the homepage of the Digital Soundtrack Collection (DSC)

The version I have is the first edition from October 2002, so I have 
not yet heard the "new" disks and disk 13.

The covers are very nicely done, see the homepage for details. On my
printer they came out quite pale, so I increased the contrast by 
30% for my own use.

These discs try to caputure every second of music in the films covered, 
so some tracks are e.g. just a long dialogue with a little hum in the 
background. But all tracks are nicely faded in and out.

As for the sound quality, I must say that I'm disappointed, and this 
is in no way the DSC producer's fault. You will find tracks taken 
faithfully from DVDs or Laserdisks, and the sound is crap - just as 
the original media sound. My guess is that many DVD/LD mastering jobs 
only consisted of scanning the film for the new media and then splicing 
it with the soundtrack from a videotape. Some other tracks are ok, but 
I have found nothing in my sample that went above 14kHz, so don't expect
any miracles. You can expect FM quality from the best tracks, but nothing
close to an official CD.

No effort has been made to normalize the tracks, so on some CDs there are
big jumps in volume between tracks.

So, to summarize, DSC is a nice replacement for the soundtrack tapes many 
of us have in their collections. But nothing near full CD or DVD quality.
Together with it's ASC companion (which I havent heard yet) it makes a 
complete Hollywood soundtrack collection in the best possible quality.

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