I got mine this morning at Best Buy ($99.00). They had to go and "find" one, there were none out at around 11am. I have a feeling these will be hard to find, as the BB dude said that they only got about 5 copies in, and 2 were reserved for folks. However, at $99, I don't think they'll be flying off the shelves to "normal" buyers!
It's a very impressive package, the size of a 12x12 LP box set. I just ran the 5.1 trough my PC, and the audio quality is quite spectacular, clear and sharp on every track I sampled. However, the 5.1 is strictly an "audience" mix, which is fine for live recordings I suppose. This one is no "surround spectacular", as far as being a "wide, on stage mix". However, as you can see by the wav files below, it's a nice audience mix that's not faked.
The TP vocals are spread across all 3 front speakers. He's not isolated in the center, and along with his vocals, there's the rest of the audio track in the center as well. I did notice there are some discrete locations of instruments at certain points, but it's really a stage mix as far as audio presentation is concerned. Just like at a concert, you can see a guitar solo in front of you, but the audio comes from no particular speaker. It's just there.
As you can also see from the wav file below, there is an active LFE track. Many times, this is not the case.
It's ironic that this Blu-Ray disc is really a "SUPER DVD-AUDIO" in that it has a menu, you select the HiRez stereo or HiRez DTS-HD, then there are 5 chapters that correspond to the tracklists on the 5 included CDs. When you select a chapter from the on-screen menu, you are presented with the song selections and the CD cover for that CD disc number. Select a song, the "album cover" is again displayed, along with info about the track. As the song begins, the info screen fades to a screen saver of the album cover floating around the screen.
If you like this artist and these songs, this purchase should be a no brainer. Since it's all live stuff, you won't be missing anything if you're not a big fan. Still, it's nice to see another 5.1 release at this point in time. At least that's how I feel about it.
The below wav starts with a bit of "Something In The Air", then the beginning of "Learning to Fly", followed by the complete "Running Down a Dream", going into a short portion of "Oh Well". It's just a visual sample to see how the 5.1 mix looks to those who like this sort of thing!
NOTE: The channels below are, in decending order, FL, FR, RL, RR, C, LFE
