I suspect it was damaged at the mastering stage by a different hand than who mixed it. The mix work, again, is top notch through and through. The attention to detail and sonic framing of EVERY detail is right on point. Soundstage, use of surround, etc. Then we have an obvious treble slam here along with about 3 or 4db peak limiting and boosting. And the limit and boost are inconsistent between the different channels. This is NOT the work of the same person that mixed this! It just flat out can't be.
There's the fidelity of the original stereo mix as a guide for one thing. One might speculate that all their multitracks are damaged to explain this? That doesn't line up either. The sound is mostly still in the mix, actually. It's been limited but not "volume war" limited. The treble boost is unfortunate and gives the whole thing a tinny delivery. But it's more around a 6db boost than the typical 18db blast that CD editions get when this happens. I was able to bring the balance back on my personal copies of all these and preserve the mix work. I kind of obsessed over these a bit because I thought the mix work was so good and revealing. The tinny presentation puts them at lower fidelity than the original stereo mixes out of the box. Nothing in 1973 to blame for this!
The revisionist history with pulling the electric guitar out of the mixes is blasphemy to this fan. That's actually worse than the trebly move and makes for the most frustrating listen I've ever had with these remixes. That took some tinkering to bring those parts back up. I feel like the engineer left a trail of breadcrumbs for some of that though. What I hear here sounds like the guitar was in his mix originally but that was followed by a studio session with Tony where he was instructed to unceremoniously turn all kinds of parts down. You can find some of them isolated in the C channel or pull them out of one of the front channels with MS tricks.
At the end of my re-re-mastering, I have the overall fidelity of the original stereo mix back and the whole thing has the increased detail and fidelity of the new mix elements preserved. Steve Hackett is back in the mix well enough that I've stopped standing up and yelling WHAT?! every few minutes.
Yeah, same review as the DVDV or SACD because this is a carbon copy.
Same review as all these remixes on the mastering damage and Steve Hackett removal.
We knew this would be the same revisionist mix. There was hope that the BR edition might be free of the hyped mastering. Nope! Very same mix and master and everything.
PS. I listen to my systems strictly calibrated flat. I always want to hear the music as intentionally delivered. No sub boosts, no anything boosts. If I decide I want to tinker with someone else's work with remastering, I go into a DAW app and have at it. So it's all or nothing. I never 'hype' the system with tone controls or altering channel balances in surround. I'm more inclined to leave imperfect stuff alone, comment, and work on my own projects but like I said, I was a little obsessed with these. I guess I was impressed by some of the mix work and moved to try preserving it as more than an aside bonus track to never listen to again.