Short Take: If you like the songs, why not buy?
The Collection is various artists and styles, and I am seeing lots of discussion about it being an unbalanced listen. This is true enough, but there are two ways I listen to surround.
When I listen myself I tend to put on one disc and listen all the way through. This has been my style of listening to music for most of my adult life - once I realized how much it sucked to flip the 45 after every song.
When I am demoing surround sound for friends and acquaintances however, many of my sessions sound very much like The Collection. True, with me acting as DJ there will likely be a little better flow and continuity. But often it is driven not by my taste but by the taste of the listener. Therefore we may jump around from genre to genre, and also quality to quality as I bring out old quads versus modern 5.1 mixes. This is all to say - skipping around does not bug me that much. It kind of reminds me of rock radio in the 1970s. A little Ted Nugent, a little fusion jazz, some Charlie Daniels Band... they threw it all in there and we were fine. And then Paul Harvey came on at noon (Google it!). So the variety is fine for me.
I understand some have found fault with the quality of "Grazing In The Grass" & "That Lady" (thankfully I have 3+3). That will be my one point off. I did sit with a friend in his high end surround system and compare Black Magic Woman from official DTS, from a quad reel transfer, and from the SACD - none of the three were a sonic marvel and this seems to speak to the raw source material - but we agreed with zero debate that the SACD sounded best on his system.
I liked the song selection - the Miles is particularly welcome - and I actually like having all these in one place. It saves me from switching discs for a few songs during a demo session. Not a problem for those of you with computer-based playback... I need someone to click and drag me into the 21st century.
So I give this a solid 9, and I would gladly receive more like it.
Yes, I would love the entire Bitches Brew. Yes, I would love more themed collections. But beggars cannot be choosers, and in the world of sparse official quad releases on modern formats (relative to the quantity in the quad music archive), we are begging. The only real choice here is to buy or not to buy, and I choose to support this sort of release. And I quite enjoy it.
