On this 2003 release, Bowie again teams up with his 1970s producer, Tony Visconti, and continues his musical resurgence that began with 2002's "Heathen". The surround mix on this hybrid SACD is somewhat experimental, but not over-the-top. It creates a very nice sense of space and has an excellent mixture of both delayed ambience and direct radiating sounds. Vocals, which sound fairly decent, are spread primarily across the front three channels---without sounding too wide, or worse, too narrow. In fact, it appears the center channel contains absolutely no instrumentation and that it only functions to solidify Bowie's vocals. Sonically, the recording is a bit loud, yet it still sounds quite listenable---even on large home systems.
Note: "Reality" has also been released on a DualDisc, which will give you access to the same 5.1 multichannel mix in Dolby Digital. However, the DualDisc doesn't contain any high-resolution DVD-Audio tracks since Sony DualDiscs currently don't offer DVD-Audio tracks and, sadly, probably never will.
