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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.
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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!
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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.
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Audience 8.8 - I rate this highly for the excellent atmosphere of the sound, where the vocals seem to just soar. It is not as thick in the mids where you want them, but that is why the vocals soar because they occupy a lot of the midrange and highs. Sometimes you also get a nice vibration of sound from the drums and all in all it adds tremendous intensity and excitement to the tape. Listen to Toccata and tell me I am wrong! This tape has a unique feel to it that I find very enjoyable. Another cool thing is that a lot of the problems with tape cuts have been fixed with crossfades making for a smoother listen…that includes the large section in Toccata which was unlistenable (unfortunately).
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Audience 8.6 - A touch on the thin side maybe, and sounds from somewhere in the middle of the venue so you do get more of the atmosphere. There is a lot of crowd excitement and participation. Guitar sound terrific actually, cutting through everything right to the ears in a good way, adding to the excitement. Dweezil sounds great and absolutely shreds this gig.
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Audience 8.8 - This is a strange recording because at first it may seem as though it is a board tape because there’s virtually no audience noise at all. Closer examination reveals that it is more likely an open mic placed right up on the stage or close to the mains. It is a little hot, meaning the levels are near max, but thankfully it only comes to the bleeding edge and does not fall off the cliff. A pretty darn exciting tape!
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CD 1 & 2 - Audience 8.9 - Very strong presence, taper had great seats and knew how to operate his levels, so, have fun because the band never sounded better! CD 3 & 4 - This show received a nice remastering which helped bring the middle up and cut out a lot of the tape hiss so what you get now is a smoother sound, and good punch in the mids while offering great solid kick drum, vocals, and guitar with keys being placed perfectly in accompaniment. Just get past the first song where taper finds his position and you are good to go.