you know i sometimes wonder with some of these mixes where there's clearly been an effort to discretely separate elements out into the Surround soundfield and so we know the engineer is not averse to panning stuff back there but the Rears just sound too low on too many QQ'ers domestic setups at home, if there's maybe an issue whereby the Surround speaker setup the engineer is using has been calibrated with some professional equivalent form of Dynamic EQ adjustment and so the system they are mixing/monitoring on has their Rears set too loud because when i engage Audyssey MultEQ with Dynamic EQ 'On' these types of mixes suddenly come alive around/across the Rears..
..and then i put on a discrete-o-matic old CBS Quad on a DV SACD or a Rhino Quadio BD, or a 5.1/Atmos mix by the likes of S. Wilson, E. Scheiner, S.W. Tayler, B. Soord, B. Clearmountain et al.. and the Rears are suddenly too loud until/unless i shut Dynamic EQ 'Off' again..!
as for these new BJ Atmos mixes, without coming across like i'm damning them with faint praise, i could quite happily live with "Turnstiles" and "52nd Street" if they were the only Surround mixes we have (fortunately they are not
) as they are quite enjoyable in their own right with some nice mix highlights but i guess something may have gone terribly awry with "The Stranger" because not only does it sound miserably lifeless and cludgey to me, like the balls have been ripped out of it but there's barely much panned around the Back when there's ample opportunity to do so, musically not just for fits and giggles. ugh. terrific album though, i'd forgotten just how good it is because i don't consume so much BJ as i did in my younger days