I guess I'll be the first person with the standalone version to comment (not that it really makes a difference...the disc is identical). To quickly sum it up: the surround mix is incredible and the clarity is astonishing.
This is, for all intents and purposes, a modern quad mix and I don't really miss the center channel- like many old quads, the center imaging is spot on. AP's
On Air DTS disc is mixed this way as well. I haven't heard
Tales in 5.1 yet, but I imagine it's also like this.
The surround mix is very discrete, but not to Columbia Q8 levels (if you have the D-V Poco disc, maybe don't play it before listening to this). Backing vocals are always in the rears- particularly effective in "Gemini"- and sometimes even lead parts are fully isolated back there, such as the melody to "Sirius", the intro piano in "Silence & I", or the chorus in "Psychobabble". I heard a lot of things I never heard before, like the exposed vocal harmonies in the chorus of the title track or the subtle strumming during the orchestra buildup in "Silence & I".
What really amazed me is the way the orchestra in the grander tunes is spread out into the expanded soundfield. It's not fully isolated front or rear (like in the Billy Joel
Piano Man quad mix, for example). Instead, some strings/brass are upfront, some are in the rear. It really feels like you're in the middle of the orchestra.
One minor complaint: there is this slight delay effect on the drums, like every time there's a drum hit you hear it echo back to the rears. It's not quite as reverb-y as the the drums in "I'm So Afraid" from the
Fleetwood Mac 5.1 mix, but it's a little annoying to me.
Also: this may just be me, but I think that the "looking at you" backing vocal bit in the title track has a
slightly different texture to it, like the higher harmonies seem to come out more versus the stereo mix. I'm certainly no expert on the APP or this album, but I do know that track pretty well and that aspect seemed ever so slightly different-sounding. Perhaps this is just the surround mix opening things up. Not a complaint at all, just an observation, and I'd take the new 5.1 over the old stereo anyday.
A big "10" from me. We're so lucky the 5.1 of a pretty high-profile album is now available at such a value price.
*and a final side-note: maybe I'm just neurotic, but I swapped the standard blue blu-ray case for one of the clear HFPA ones and I think it looks a lot classier