Audience/Soundboard 8.6-9.0 - The majority of the set is very good, audience quality tapes that have a decent enough sound where you can take it easy and not strain yourself trying to hear George rip his leads. I would say the lone exception though might be the Amsterdam tape which is less clear, but even here it's not a trainwreck at all. The board tape from France is good to have, obviously Dokken is clearly the top of the heap when it comes to the 80's "hair" metal bands although I hate to classify them there because they were class musicians first.
Audience 8.5 - -This is a somewhat distant recording, my guess is from somewhere in the middle of the venue. It lacks punch in the middle, definition, and volume in general. In my estimation this one won't get much play except by someone who is not getting enough 1996 tour ROIO's in the o'l collection. Pass if you are a casual fan, collector's who need more 1996 (of which, strangely enough, there's not a preponderence of), you can get this to round out the collection.
Audience 9.0 - A big sound here, and I mean it can be asbig as you want because there's just enough headroom here to add volume without fear of too much of any one thing to take away from other frequencies. It's an even sounding mix, with maybe just a little more emphasis on the massive bass/guitar attack. But even then, you still get all the vocals and drums you need...its a well rounded recording giving you sense of venue as one more benefit that comes with audience recordings.
Audience 9.0/9.2 - Two very good captures that convey a lot of information, most notably the popularity of the band at such an early stage of their careers, and that the Japanese used very high quality taping gear and knew instinctively how to stealth record a rock show. This is good for historical purposes in that these recordings always eventually take on much more significance with the passage of time. This is my argument for why artists should relax their stances against "bootlegging" because while your moment may be on the surface a commercial venture, in the long run it is a milestone not just for the artist in their career but in the overall culture and therefore should be, if possible, preserved. End of rant.
SDBRD 9.2/Audience 8.8 - Two sources comprise this offering, with the first (and thankfully the bulk of the recording) being very good quality, I would say excellent more precisely. Being a soundboard it does come off a little on the dry side, and by contrast the audience taped portion (the last 1/3 of the show) is very good, and lively, which wakes up certain instruments giving them more accuracy as far as what they actually sounded like coming through the at the show. The guitar in particular has a different attack and dynamic from the audience tape, in a good way. This is almost the perfect example of what kind of differences there are, both positive and negative, between a board and an audience tape source.
