I have had this for a while, but I just voted. I couldn't give it a 10, but I really, really like Love.
The mashup concept is what it is. This was developed for a theatrical presentation, and (I haven't made it to Vegas to see the show) and the creative aspects of this probably fit the production perfectly. IMO they also stand on their own as home music. Given that some original participants blessed this or participated in its production, we should let that lie.
The DVD-A should have been authored to give us easy access to the various tracks available - hirez 2.0, DD, DTS, etc. Simply a mis-judgement, and poor execution.
Video/onscreen? Unless they went whole-hog and did a visual presentation unique to the DVD distribution that equalled the live production, we shouldn't care.
The Center Channel issue is a non-issue. Think of it this way: there are two extremes when using the center channel in a 5.1 mix. One would be to exclude the use of the C entirely (Alan Parsons). 5.1, and in-particular LCR stereo, is a significant leap from 2.0 largely because of the existence of C, and its use to expand the sweet spot and cement the image. It's folly for an engineer to mis-understand this concept and reject it, simply because phantom C is they way he or she has always done it. The other extreme is to always use C for dry vocals, much like film mixers use it for dialog. This is generally counter productive for home presentations, and doesn't take advantage of what LCR can offer. The Martins, Bruce Botnick on the Door set, and many other engineers understand this and have used it appropriately in my opinion.
The worst thing about the Love 5.1 mix? The use of the LFE channel. The Martins have used the LFE channel to double certain elements and instruments from time to time.
It might not be apparent, but the fundamental misunderstanding of this feature by the Martins has doomed this mix to sound different on the vast majority of systems compared to their reference system. Bloated or thin bass, phasey imaging, and many other problems people report about this mix on various systems can all be attributed to this. The five main channels contain three more channels of headroom for the bass than two in a 2.0 stereo mix - if five channels isn't enough to deliver bass, another limited-range channel won't be enough to fix this! Film mixers use the LFE channel for Low Frequency Effects, nothing is ever duplicated in the mains and the LFE subwoofer (although even the largest theater systems don't have low frequency response as low as most home theater systems do in their main channels, it may come as a surprise). Why music mixers have mis-understood and mis-used this, trying to re-invent the wheel, is beyond me. This doubling of parts is guaranteed to make the mix sound worse on some of the best home systems than on some of the cheapest. Engineers must get the word that bass management can't be done at the mix level - it has to be left for the hardware speaker-management (as is the case in 90% of home systems anyway, and if the subwoofer is not integrated with the mains using bass management, this LFE content will not be reproduced correctly, if at-all).
This doesn't stop me from enjoying Love, but this aspect annoys me every time I do listen to it.
