Has anybody ranked the SACDs? I have DoFP. Would be nice to know the next best, if there's any consensus.
You might have checked already but the QQ poll ranks them:
1. To Our Children’s Children’s Children
2. On the Threshold of a Dream
3. A Question of Balance
4. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
5. Days of Future Passed
6. Seventh Sojourn
Knowing how much you like rock, I'd suggest trying A Question of Balance next. The opening track "Question" is worth the price of admission alone. The rest of the songs are also good...
My two cents on a sound-quality-improvement scale:
1. On the Threshold of a Dream
(
Lovely to See You in quad smokes the stereo. The dynamic range on
Never Comes the Day in quad is terrific. Ditto on
To Share Our Love.
Have You Heard can only come across as intended when heard in quad. The list goes on and on...)
2. To Our Children's Children's Children
(Generally, the quality is miles above the stereo version. Arguably, the biggest sound quality improvement of the lot.)
3. A Question of Balance
(The voices on
Minstrel's Song come across much better in quad than in stereo. The quad version of this tutti-fruity song is a bit different than the stereo...more Gaelic sounding. I hated it in stereo, but love the quad. A couple of songs could use some serious bass boost, but the song
Question in both quad and stereo faked to 7.1 kicks ass.)
4. Seventh Sojourn (They screwed up the balance of certain components of the quad on Pinder's opening track and
I'm Just A Singer. But generally, the highs are much better defined than on the stereo...
You and Me and
For My Lady come to mind. I love to crank
You and Me.)
5. Every Good Boy Deserve Favour (The sound quality of this quad is closest to the stereo version...a bit muddy; but still an improvement given it's surround.)
5. Days of Future Passed (Tie) (Some songs can use some major tweeking of the rears, especially
Nights in White Satin. They probably didn't have a lot to work with when they made this quad, otherwise they would have gone to town with it.)
All six quad albums are very much worth owning and they all smoke the 5.1 of ISOTLC. The stereo SACD of ISOTLC sounds great when the Surround Master has at it, however I prefer Jakko's hi-res stereo remix.