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Audience 8.9 - Fantastic! -
Pro Radio Broadcast 9.5 -
Soundboard 9.7 - A deft touch is what it took to make such a pleasant mix. Everything is where it should be, and the overall sound is something you might find on officially released records. Top shelf. -
Pro recording 9.5 - Sizzling hot everything is expertly mixed! -
FM Radio Broadcast 9.2 -
Audience 7.8 and Audience 6.9 - The second gig is for historical reference as the sound is not great. -
Audience 8.6 - A very clear, surprisingly so, open air recording made with what sounds like really decent gear. Every now and then the volume fluctuates but it sounds to me like they are fiddling with the levels, it usually gets back up to proper levels after a second or two and it’s not on every song. -
CD 1 - FM Radio Broadcast 8.8 - A bit of tape hiss is present but this is a great great show! Lovely performance and decent sound. CD 2 - Audience 7.9 - A tape that went from a dismal 7.2 rating to a very decent 7.9 thanks to some painstaking mastering and restoration work. It was unbelievably hissy but that was mostly removed without sacrificing anything. Comparison was made and the results speak for themselves. -
Audience 9.0 and Audience 8.6 - The Fillmore West show is a revelation. This has been floating around mislabeled as Winterland 69, and in horrible quality. This is the actual venue, and comes from the original master and sounds incredible! The Boston show is also real nice sounding, with an immediate sound, with some minor tape artifacts present. A great two-fer here, vintage ’69. Free never sounded so good! -
Audience 9.0 - Rated very high for the excellent mid range punch where the guitar tone is magical. -
Audience 8.5 -
Audience 8.4 - This is a great remaster here, this is a full point and a half better than you’ve heard before. -
BBC Sessions...As expected, excellent pro sound! -
Bracknell - Audience 8.8 - A touch of tape saturation but it’s so clear and loud and energetic you won’t hardly notice. Excellent! ~ Coatham - Audience 8.7 ~ Tampa - Soundboard 8.9 -
FM Radio Broadcast 8.7 - Pretty rocking debut, and even though the audio quality is not perfect (although it is great) I really like the rawness and band interplay of their early gigs. -
Pro Radio 9.7 -
Soundboard 9.4 -
Soundboard 8.8 -
Soundboard 8.8 - Probably radio broadcast, very strong and dynamic if just a tad dated sounding. -
Budokan 1978 - Audience 7.6 - Too much high end, sounds like all the bass was filtered out. Add bass! Mantra Studios 1977 – FM Radio Broadcast 9.0 -
Audience 8.5 - Solid all the way. -
Audience 8.7 - A little on the upper midrange/high side but VERY clean and crisp with very pronounced and clear vocals especially. Really great! -
Foghat 7.4 ~ Robin Trower 7.5 ... Interesting concept, including the opening act and headliner in a 2 disc set - but it makes sense to me and it works spectacularly here. The quality is decent, I rate conservatively, you can really sink your ears (and teeth) into both sets but I give the slight edge to Trower's set as he was headlining and therefore probably got better service from sound guy. -
Audience 8.2 - Very live, with that telltale large hall reverb but smoking hot show and audio is real good and very electric. -
FM Radio 9.5 -
FM Radio 8.9 -
CD 1 - Boston 1974 = Audience 8.7 ~ CD 2 - Seattle 1975 = Audience 8.8 ~ CD 3 - Nashville 1976 = Audience 7.5 ~ CD 4 - Cleveland 1984 = Soundboard 9.4 ..... One heck of a collection here! -
Audience 8.8 - A very atmospheric recording that gives you an amazing sense of space and proximity to the action. The music has room to move around, so it’s a natural sounding recording and the listening experience benefits greatly. Sometimes at full volume when the band is really cooking, the music gets a little bunched up but the tapers were good with levels so it does not offend and I appreciate that. This is a real gem! -
Pro Video Source 8.5 - These sound like they were taken from video tape sources and have the telltale compression characteristics. These are actually several different broadcasts during the year 1976, with the final four tracks coming from UC Santa Barbara, which is also the best sounding of the batch. -
Audience 8.7 - A very low generation tape (very clean) used here, and it is very decent sounding, You will get some big hall atmosphere but it’s manageable. -
Soundboard 8.8 - A little hiss, some compression (not too much), and a rather dry sound (a pure board feed, no crowd noise present). -
Pro FM Broadcast 9.6 - I really like the guitar tone here, a bit more grit, sounds less like a mega-hit stadium band and more like a very talented jam band.