I actually don't find the review all that confusing or unclear. He says the quad mix is "moderately" immersive precisely
because things are often distributed "equally" across "all four channels." As he explains in the following paragraph: "Lennon's vocals appear all around you at times"--just as
@sjcorne pointed out. Nevertheless, "at [other] times" there is "more discrete instrumentation from each of the four speakers." For instance: drums "sometimes...emerge from the rear / side of the room." Sure, he uses
discrete almost interchangeably with
immersive, but I get it: on balance, the quad mix is
moderately immersive, moderately discrete--as opposed to the 5.1 mix, which he characterizes as only "gently" immersive (for reasons that are best illustrated by his description of "Oh My Love" and "How," which use the rears sparingly). That, he thinks, will appeal to those who, unlike him,
don't care for aggressively discrete information in the rears.
I also don't hear him prizing surround mixes that sound like a live
concert performance--quite the contrary. What he loves about the "Raw Studio" mixes is that they capture how the music was recorded live
in the studio, just as Rob Stevens explained in
that NPR story I posted about earlier: "Our approach, meaning Yoko and myself, was to make the listening experience as if one had the exceptional privilege of sitting in the middle of the studio with the players...around them...without any of the effects or sweetening (strings, chamber echo, tape slap, etc.) that were subsequently added."
I'm not a big Lennon fan, but I gotta say that this review only
increased my interest in hearing this set!
