Originally released in 1976, this album was a classic of its time. We can assume that the original mix was performed for quad, with four speakers equidistant from the listener. Jim Gains did the mixing, while the A/D transfer was by Kevin Reeves at Capitol and mastering was performed by Peter Mew at Abbey Road - a formidable combination. There are potential challenges when an album was mixed for quad and is played back in 5.1. For a start, there is no center front channel. This sounds like a problem, but it's really fine: quite a number of engineers mixing surround today feel that music should not have a CF channel, and as the standard HDS liner notes point out, it's an artistic decision. The other problem is that you may well be closer to the surrounds than you would have been in a quad set-up. In the case of this album, it's ...