Thanks Adam, looking forward to your review of the Tiesto disc.
Gave the Tiesto BD-A a very quick skip through last night, didn't have time to listen all the way through every track (and also only in 5.1) but have a pretty good idea already.
My initial impressions are:
- there's surprisingly heavy use of the centre channel (for the style of music I mean, not a surprise for Ronald Prent, from other mixes of his I've heard he likes the centre speaker).. on more than one occasion the core "doof doof doof" beat of the track starts off solo in the centre and then spreads out across the front three so if your centre speaker can't handle much low end you have to be sure you've crossed over your sub properly or I suspect things would sound rather bass-shy,
- it's largely not a 'set and forget' approach to the mix, one or two are mapped pretty similarly but there is variety.. however a few tracks are unadventurous mixwise, disappointing even.. others though are jaw-droppingly active (track 10 in particular is a real mind meld! Completely over the top mix!) and in a good few instances we have RP's trademark front to rear/back and forth quick pan which is a lot of fun,
- sounds a bit compressed (especially Front L&R relative to the other 3 channels) but you can raise the volume higher than I was expecting.. still it doesn't seem inappropriate for this style of music,
- mastering EQ veers on the bright side of things.. bass on certain tracks is huge,
I will post back here with more listening impressions when I get a chance to play it properly over the weekend.
