This posthumous release contains all new material that finds Ray Charles dueting with other famous musicians such as Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, and others. The songs themselves will be familiar, though. Mostly they are re-worked Ray Charles classics or re-worked songs that originally appeared on his duet partner's albums. And then there is a fine rendition of "Fever", a song which we've all probably heard in one form or another, that Ray performs with Natalie Cole. The songs, performances, and recordings/sonics are all top notch. However, I dropped the rating down to three because of some surround mixing choices that I don't agree with. Grievance #1) For some odd reason we usually hear Ray's voice coming from the left front speaker and his duet partner's voice coming from the right front speaker. Or is it vice versa? I forget. Anyway, I don't think this works very well because the two singers are often not singing simultaneously and, thus, it sounds out of balance. Thankfully, the stereo tracks do not do this! Grievance #2) The surround channels are perhaps a little bit too discrete (as opposed to being ambient). That's it for my grievances. So overall this is a decent enough disc, just know that I don't think the surround mix is without faults. It's still worth owning; heck, it's a hybrid disc with a CD layer, afterall!. It's just that if someone could somehow fix the faults I feel exist on "Genius Loves Company" then I'd bet we would have ourselves a "great" disc.
Note: Although this is a SACD, it was originally packaged in the elongated case that typically is used for DVD-Audio releases. Later editions were released in a standard SACD-sized jewel case.
