I listened to the old Mercury CD, the MFSL CD, remastered tracks from Spirit of the Radio, and the deluxe CD and the DVD-A, both stereo and multi channel today. Having listened to all of them, my preference is for the 5.1 DVD-A tracks they are all that I'll listen to from now on.
So I'm a fan of this. DVD-A But at the same time, I can see that it's not going to everyone's cup of tea. I think that they favored the idea of keeping the sound similar to the original version over taking advantage of the multiple channels. In some places the surround effect is subtle, sounding almost like a Silverline disc, with echo or delay instead of separating the instruments. But what I think is really happening is that they had so many overdubbed guitar tracks to play with that they could put a couple of overdub tracks in the back channels and they still sound a lot like the front channels. With close listening you can tell the difference. There is a big sense of space when playining 5.1 that's just not there in the stereo versions. The drum and bass are more settled in their location than the guitars. The bass is in front, while the guitars are coming from everywhere at once. The surround effect is much better on the drums and organ than for the guitars, more discrete. Often you'll hear cymbals or cowbell or other percussion distinctly coming from behind, which I like. But they move things around a lot as the songs go on, which may bother some people. I'd be listening closely trying to discern some difference between the front and rear, and it would suddenly change. The guitars seem to be a little louder on this version than on the originals, I'm guessing that Alex's influence shows here.
Regarding the CD, I put this on immediately after listening to a couple of tracks from the MFSL version, and I had to quickly turn down the volume. It's quite a bit louder on the disc in this new version. I'm also hearing some lower level detail on the new disc is more obvious than on the older ones, probably the result of more compression. So I wouldn't recommend getting this just for the CD. I don't think that I can tell any difference between the CD and the stereo tracks of the DVD-A.
The video quality of the DVD portion is not good, it looks a lot like VHS tape. Overall, I'll give it an eight.