do you want the truth or something beautiful...!
long and the short of it is (I had to go out before I got through them all, I've played the Hugo M., the Mancini, the Percy Faith and one of the Ray C.'s, I still have the Ray Conniff Alone Again/Godfather disc to try out) set aside for a moment if these are not one's usual cup of tea (if 41 year old me were to go back in time and tell 21 year old me I'd be enraptured by the likes of Hugo Montenegro or Percy Faith I'd have told the old/new me to piss off and get back to Nirvana or something..) anyway, enough of the flashbacks, with regards to sound quality and surroundy-ness these are for the most part simply
STUNNING.
ok, so to get the small gripes out of the way, after the absolutely pristine sound of the Rocket Man Quad, the sound quality on Mammy Blue is, to my ears, maybe not as good (the mix is more active and outrageous, love that!) and fidelity maybe dips in a few spots, I think, there may be some distortion or tape degradation, I would need to check it out again a few times, maybe on another system to be sure before I say anything too much about it either way so don't hang on my word in that regard, Ralph.
what else? well, not a lot else, other than a massive amount of joy at hearing these discrete and pristine! the Henry Mancini is absolutely gorgeous sound and both active immersive surround mixes, with Symphonic Soul being more my thing musically than the Pink Panther but as with the Montenegro disc I found myself being just as impressed by the surround on the album I didn't know (Pink Panther) as the familiar one from farting around with old CD-4s/Q8s.. the Percy Faith stuff, while totally kicking the assets of my SQ LPs of the same albums, maybe doesn't sound
quite as impressive as the Conniff Clowns/SWAT or the Mancini 2-fer or Rocket Man but that is some stiff competition, the others all sound incredible by any benchmark (Mammy Blue in places aside as prev mentioned).. I need to play them all a good few more times before I comment further but at this point, wow wow wow, how DV are going to top this I don't know.. in 2017 we've had a great number of fine Quad releases across many genres from these guys, pretty much something for everyone; jazz/fusion, Classical, country/rock, easy light & latin and beyond from DV this year.. maybe some R&B or Rock gems may be coming down our way in the months ahead and 2018 could be another good year for us with more goodies to come from these fine fellows! the standard is high already, I'm excited to find out where they go from here aren't you! :bounce
