![]() ![]() I also find the bass to be muddy and indistinct most of the time. I think if they were going to go with a conservative surround mix they should have done it in the 'big stereo' style that Tom Petty uses and not have these occasional discrete flourishes in the rear speakers. The occasional discrete elements in the rear speakers are sto o few and far between that they're actually distracting - they almost end up like 'hey look at me!' party tricks that cruelly remind you of how much better the mix could have been. What's the point? Why are all the instruments fighting for space in the front? He doesn't even use the center speaker discretely either, most of the time it sounds like a mono sum of the front left and front right speakers and as such, it ruins the phantom imaging of the front speakers. The only discrete element in the mix is during the chorus, when Geddy sings 'Fly by night, away from here.' the two guitar 'pling plings' fly toward the back of the room. I listened to the 5.1 mix on headphones, with the 3 front speakers mixed to one ear, and the two rears in the other ear so I could get a sense of surround placement, and you literally have the whole band thundering away in the front speakers, and only cavernous reverb in the rears. It's just made worse by the copious use of reverb in the rear speakers. The same goes with vocals, and drums, so you end up with everything coming out of every speaker in a big mush. Case in point, on the song 'Fly By Night' he has a single acoustic guitar coming from all three front speakers, and then reverbs of the same guitar from the rear speakers. The most frustrating thing about the mix (aside from how front heavy they are) is Rich Chycki's tendency to put instruments in to far too many speakers, so you can't pinpoint anything - everything ends up sounding like a mono wall of sound (or noise, delete as appropriate). So while I'm speaking about this album specifically, the same goes for all the Rush 5.1 mixes as they were all mixed in exactly the same style. I'm not even sure what to say really, but what a missed opportunity.they really sound like they're mixed by someone who doesn't understand how to use surround to it's maximum potential at all. I've had these Rush DVD-A's for ages but finally got around to ripping and properly listening to them recently. ![]() The real winning track: "By-Tor & The Snow Dog" - Exemplary. However, all complaints aside, this is an extremely listenable, if not entirely successful, surround mix. This is not a huge disadvantage since, at this stage, the band was primarily a three piece ensemble playing fairly stripped-down rock (with a twist). Here, the guitars seem to overwhelm the other elements. I complained that the Signals disc suffered from a full-frontal assault of the vocals at the expense of everything else. Geddy's bass lines, arguably the driving force for many compositions, seem buried and there is little cohesion amongst the various layers. The primary problem is in the unity of the band in the new mix. The 5.1 mix is not quite as "aggressive" as the original stereo mix, it does not "drive" quite as hard - compare the two MLP versions of "Beneath, Between and Behind." Chycki chose to heavily highlight the guitars in the rear surrounds and, in his mix, they power the album. The album is well presented and the use of surrounds is not skimped on.
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