This is a hard one, that required a lot of thinking.
We can argue that quad transfers are in someway historical musical documents, and should not be messed up with. But then the number of versions on this album cast doubt. And well I have mixed feeling about this, according to source. But here I would have like a little extra work.
I have many reservation that led to that 8.
First are incoherent odd choices of mixing. In Highway star, the bass is rear leaft into the guitar and barely audible. in some cases it is front center. But always undermixed comparison made with the original album.
So sometimes it works well and sometimes less.
Smoke on the water was a test for me.
It is the perfect example of what I think of Deep Purple which is : the core of Deep Purple is Jon Lord and Ian Paice.
The force of Purple is how it sounds massive when all three guitar/organ/bass are competing in the same range, all with distortion applied.
I was wondering how it would translate when that melted 3 are exploded in a quad mix.
You get the same feeling, of a weak guitar intro (over compressed with audible pumping), and suddenly when the organ kicks in, the riff really kicks in too, (my idea of the core two) and the main drive is there.
Without organ, the song would loose all energy.
Also on the bass guitar side, the verse is actually held by Paice and Glover. Glover ensures riffing as well as harmonic underlying monophonic lines. Both Blackmore and Lord are 'decorating' in the verse.
How it translates into a that quad with an undermixed quad mix ? Well partly well but not so much. And Glover gets buried as soon as we go the chorus, which I find frustrating.
To conclude, I am happy I could find that SACD I've been searching for a while. I'm glad I have it, I'm glad to listen to it. I would have liked and extra effort on the bass guitar mix. I understand weird choices were the quad of that time and should be respected (even if my OCD makes me cringe when Lord left hand is on the right and his right hand is on the left
).
