More channels.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Then and Now. Remastered from Lyve From Steel Town (tracks 1, 5, 7, 9, and 10, recorded in 1997) with additional material remastered from the studio release Edge of Forever (tracks 2, 3, 4, and 6, recorded in 1999), and Twenty (track 8, recorded in 1997). Multichannel remix by Ken Caillat. Silverline 288076.

As usual, for those who do not have a DVD-A player this DVD-A release also includes Dolby digital tracks at 448 kbps. There are no DTS alternate tracks, however.

Silverline has made a practice of issuing 5.1 (or more usually, borderline 4.1) remixes of original two-channel recordings. In some cases, the results have been no better than so-so, and in other cases the results have been none too good. Usually, this is because the original tapes were not all that technically good to begin with, at least in terms of today's best. At other times, the remastering people have gotten carried away and made a mess of things as they tried to upgrade the sound of a sub-par recording to attention-getting quality.

This time, things went decently, partially because the original material was pretty good (meaning fairly new) to begin with. The sound is spacious and both the DVD-A and DD tracks (at 448 kbps) are good enough to be called modern hi-fi.

Overall the presentation is comfortably spacious, and in this case the DD tracks tended to sound a bit richer and fuller than the DVD-A tracks. However, no doubt the reason for this was the lack of bass ...