I just spun this CD tonight for the first time since I've built my new system and I noticed what sounds like a major mixing or mastering defect and was wondering if anyone knows about this or could check out their copy.
It sounds fine until cut 6 - My Little Town. I expected it would sound different since it was a reunion effort for Simon and Garfunkel and had been recorded and mixed elsewhere. But this was just wrong. Almost everything was in the left channel only, with some reverb and maybe a little bit of something in the right. The same song appears on Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years" and that mix was more forward and balanced.
I went back to "Breakaway" and the next cut "I Only Have Eyes For You" had a similar problem. Most of the mix was in the left channel. Not as bad as the previous cut, I could hear some instruments coming from the right, but the whole orchestra was in the left channel only and the vocals were mostly in the left. It didn't sound like an artistic choice to me.
On the next cut "Lookin' For The Right One", the vocals came back towards the center, but again, it sounded lopsided, not right.
The last two cuts sounded fine.
Can a defective CD do this? I doubt it's the actual CD, because what little sound that was coming out of the right channel was clean. I know there's a quadraphonic version of the album floating around and it almost sounds as if the right channel had rear channel information instead of front. But I can't believe that would go unnoticed, though I've seen stranger things happen.
