For one thing, you will NEVER have heard the Quad mix of 461 OB sound so good! This Blu-ray absolutely wipes the floor with any other version of the 461 Quad, including the DTS CD. So, for me, it was worth getting for that alone.
Now I bought the set primarily for the Scheiner mix, so it's all icing on the cake from now on.. ES' 461 mix is everything I expected. it's wonderfully discrete, very sympathetic to the material, there's what I can only describe (as non-poncily as possible) as a real musical awareness of where and how everything should pan out here that was lacking in the old SACD (which I still really enjoyed despite the general apathy towards it).
however I dock ES' mix a couple of points for a lack of immediacy (Motherless Children sounds slightly off, a bit sluggish almost) I'm wondering if this is what Climie/Guzauski were getting at by re-doing the 5.1 back in the day to make it (in their words) "sound more modern", if anything ES' mix is a touch too laid back at times, as if the material needs an injection of energy.
still when ES' mix is good it is very very good indeed.. its fantastic to hear isolated organ/piano's galore rear right and loads of percussion over in rear left, for example.
the only other niggle with ES 461 is EC's voice feels a tad dialled-down in the mix compared to the SACD 5.1 where the centre channel was used very aggressively before for lead vocals, here its ES' usual trademark mix of using centre to fill in for instruments across front L&R rather than vocals and I miss that last little bit of detail and character by not having them hard in the centre but that's a personal thing I'm sure most Quaddies would prefer ES' approach/use of the centre.
the disc is well authored, everything is simply/logically laid out (text is still teeny-tiny as seems to be Universal's wont on these BDA's.. they must think we all have 100"+ screens! certain things are illegible even on a 40-inch TV).
the Quad of TOIEC is superb here on the Blu-ray, though the old DTS CD was fantastic too, so if you have the DTS already you won't be getting much improvement (if any!?) for that album's mix, though its lossless/Hi-Rez now etc. of course, so I guess from that p.o.v. its worthwhile, YMMV and all that.
so far, an out and out excellent set -- and I haven't even played a single CD of the other 5 included in the lovely book (where I'm going to put it, how and which way up.. I've no idea!? it is such an odd size!?) the only thing that would have made this release perfect was Hi-Rez Stereo of both studio and live albums on the Blu-ray plus of course that Quad of EC was here (which probably doesn't even exist and was just a humongous typo!) for what it represents = a stunning upgrade to the fidelity of the 461 OB Quad mix, equally as good if not better sounding Quad of TOIEC and the ES 5.1 of 461 which has its fair share of high spots, one I'll be listening to over and over. I feel a "9", maybe even a "10", coming on!
