I've had both the redbook CD and the single-layer Super Audio CD versions of this album for quite some time now. The ten or so tracks on this hard-rocking hits collection are too few to fully cover all of the band's best stuff. For instance, you get the original studio versions of songs that are filled with distorted grunge-filled guitar; but I would have prefered to seem some of the band's more mellow "Unplugged" acoustic performances included, as well. Knowing this, I thought I'd probably give this album only 3 Kazaamies. I mean, really, could the original hit songs---complete with distorted guitars--- truly benefit from either the high-resolution or from a surround mix? Turns out that it must help, at least somewhat. For an experiment, I recently went back and tried to do some comparisons between the SACD copy (with a dedicated surround mix) and the redbook CD copy (running through Dolby Pro-Logic II music mode for simulated surround sound). I was a little surprised with the overall improvement in sound, even if only slightly, that the multi-channel SACD provided over regular CD. So I decided to bump my rating up to 3-1/2 Kazaamies. Why only 3-1/2? Hey, it's better than I thought, but it's still nowhere near the quality of the best SACD albums. Besides, I'd still much rather listen to (and watch) the Unplugged DVD-Video over this thing.
