I'll echo the praise for the album itself, and the placement of each instrument in the surround field is pretty much perfect to my ears - there’s so many cool details, like the chorus vocals in “Rivers Of Mercy” starting off only on the left side and gradually filling the entire listening space, the multi-tracked vocals split into different speakers throughout "Break The Man", or the synths zooming all around the room in “My Demons” - but does anyone else think the low-end response is a bit underwhelming? I listened to this back-to-back with Wilson's The Future Bites (which feels like a fair comparison to me, as it's also mostly digital instrumentation) and the difference is not subtle.
I found there to be an odd lack of ‘punch’ at some key moments, like when the drums kick in about a minute into the title track or when the guitar comes in at around 0:48 in “Rivers Of Mercy”. “My Demons” and “End Of Night” seem just right to me in terms of bass response, whereas all the other songs fall short of that standard by varying degrees. Lack of bass isn't really something I've noticed before with any of Wilson's surround mixes (in fact, his To The Bone and The Future Bites albums are reference discs for me in terms of low-end response), which makes me wonder if the issue was somehow baked into the stems he was provided. So I decided to knock off one point, after all a "9" is nothing to sneeze at.
