I'm on my third listen right now and will wait to review once it has sunk in and I've listened some more. Some early impressions...
1- The surround mix improves after Dogs Of War. Signs of Life could've been more adventurous, but it is hardly the only song on the album that would've benefitted from more imagination. Learning To Fly just seems like a mess, and the choice was made to separate the guitars from each other, rather than the keys from the guitars. Dogs Of War has TOO MUCH SAX. Good grief it about scared me to death. More on that later.
2- I don't think there is anything wrong with the fidelity. The album sounds largely like it did when I put in my cassette for the first time in 1987. It is a dark sounding album, and the 80s is full of such albums (I was listening to Bark At The Moon on the radio on the way home, and that's a good example of it). Most of it is the tones, but some of it is also the reverb. It likely would've been worse if they had kept the original drum tracks. I don't know if they were able to separate much of the reverb from the original tracks. In some cases you can hear that they did, but I'm not sure about the rest, and even if you have just a tiny bit of room reverb on everything, it will muddy up a mix fast. Regardless, some simple EQing would've brightened this release up considerably and eliminated some of the mud in the source tracks. However, if you do that, are you left with something too far apart from the original release? I don't know. That's Gilmour's call, not mine. The brightest sound in the entire album is that sax in Dogs of War. It sounds so out of place because it is bright and clean, unaffected by verb. I wish other parts of this album felt that same way, especially the keys, which are textured mud for the most part.
3- The sub gets a decent workout in this mix. Not overused, but used when appropriate.
4- Sorrow is a very underrated song.
1- The surround mix improves after Dogs Of War. Signs of Life could've been more adventurous, but it is hardly the only song on the album that would've benefitted from more imagination. Learning To Fly just seems like a mess, and the choice was made to separate the guitars from each other, rather than the keys from the guitars. Dogs Of War has TOO MUCH SAX. Good grief it about scared me to death. More on that later.
2- I don't think there is anything wrong with the fidelity. The album sounds largely like it did when I put in my cassette for the first time in 1987. It is a dark sounding album, and the 80s is full of such albums (I was listening to Bark At The Moon on the radio on the way home, and that's a good example of it). Most of it is the tones, but some of it is also the reverb. It likely would've been worse if they had kept the original drum tracks. I don't know if they were able to separate much of the reverb from the original tracks. In some cases you can hear that they did, but I'm not sure about the rest, and even if you have just a tiny bit of room reverb on everything, it will muddy up a mix fast. Regardless, some simple EQing would've brightened this release up considerably and eliminated some of the mud in the source tracks. However, if you do that, are you left with something too far apart from the original release? I don't know. That's Gilmour's call, not mine. The brightest sound in the entire album is that sax in Dogs of War. It sounds so out of place because it is bright and clean, unaffected by verb. I wish other parts of this album felt that same way, especially the keys, which are textured mud for the most part.
3- The sub gets a decent workout in this mix. Not overused, but used when appropriate.
4- Sorrow is a very underrated song.
truth, that's why I said "wishful thinking"
