And I'm pretty impressed. For those allergic to goofy surround sound hijinx, the MC mix is very tasteful and restrained, pretty much limited to ambience. Since everyone here that doesn't live in a cave somewhere has already heard Jones and decided whether or not they like her I'll just stick to the sonics.
The album is very quiet in MC, both in the sense of complete blackness beneath the music and, somewhat unfortunately, a pretty low volume level. It's quiet enough to really crank it without getting noise but a bit inconvenient when switching sources as I have to play it 10dB louder than most CDs (
).
The CD is also a hybrid; it plays just fine on my CD player (I checked- not all hybrid discs
do work on my aging CD deck). I haven't compared the CD layer on the SACD to the standard CD, so I'm not sure if it's been goosed at all.
Soundwise, the SACD is better than the CD, but it doesn't cream it like you sometimes see. The original CD was among the best sounding I've ever heard, so the hi rez improvements are subtle yet worthwhile.
