10. No question. An easy all-time top-ten album for me, and the mix fulfills all of my hopes.
For those who are curious: the rears are used for horns on the couple of tunes that have āem. Otherwise, the rears are devoted to Robbie Robertsonās guitar and whatever keyboard(s) Garth Hudson is playing on any given song. Bass, drums, and Richard Manuelās piano are up front.
The vocals (both lead and background) are up front, and the leads are clear and prominent, which wiped out my concerns I expressed in the other thread. The one exception to the upfront vocals is on āRockinā Chairā, where the backgrounds are mixed to the rears, which creates this wonderful effect of sitting in the middle of a campfire (so to speak) and listening to Levon, Rick, and Richard harmonize.
Minor nitpicks: I wish Bob Clearmountain had gone ahead and done 5.1 instrumentals for all of the songs, and not just āUp On Cripple Creekā and āLook Out Clevelandā. And the booklet is underwhelming: I was hoping because of the prestige of this album, thereād be a book similar to the ones in the Beatles sets, doing a deep dive into everything track by track. Instead, thereās just a pretty generic three page essay by Anthony DeCurtis (a page of which is devoted to their Woodstock appearance), a reprint of a Ralph Gleason essay, and various pictures by Elliott Landy. I donāt know if they felt like the Classic Albums documentary thatās on the Blu-ray negated the need for a big book, but itās still disappointing. (Iām inclined to just keep the Blu-ray and sell the rest of the set on eBay.)
Iām a year into my adventures with surround sound, and itās easy to become frustrated about all of the albums that have never surfaced on surround and that Iām afraid never will ā yāknow, thinking about will I die without having never heard Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson or Prince in surround? But then, within two months of each other, we get 10-level mixes of Abbey Road and The Band... and I think, this hobby is pretty damned cool.