Honestly, it would take three or four normal-sized reviews to go into detail about the improvements in both surround design and relative level balancing, but a few more drastic changes truly stand out, and should be noted. In "I'm In Love With My Car," the original mix buried Taylor's lead vocal with lead guitar parts that were boosted to the point of overkill, which has been greatly improved in the release version, and the harsh bite of May's licks has been tamed appropriately. As a whole, a great deal of shifting has been done – the previous mix often suffered from the discrete placement of elements that should have been combined and overlapped, and are in fact arranged fittingly in the overall soundfield now. But a few of the cuts, most notably "Sweet Lady" and "Love Of My Life," seem to have been entirely assembled from scratch this time around, with absolutely no consideration at all for the previous effort. In the former, vocals are now predominantly front-focused, and the subtle elements of the track that were buried by both the previous 5.1 mix and the original stereo mix now have much more room to breathe. In the latter, the mix focuses heavily on the front three speakers for the bulk of the song, with subtle but effective surround ambience, and then creatively explodes with aggressive rear channel usage just before the final chorus. Even cuts like "You're My Best Friend," which sounded pretty good before, benefit from a much more focused and balanced sound design.

And, of course, there's the star of the show – "Bohemian Rhapsody." The changes to this one actually aren't as drastic as on many of the cuts from the disc, but if anything, this new mix demonstrates the enormous impact of very subtle changes. My main complaint before was the utter separation of the front and rear soundstages, the lack of any sort of significant sidewall imaging, and the noise reduction, which clipped the smooth transitions in the opening vocals. All of these elements have been improved upon, and the song now sounds as bombastic and over-the-top as it should, but still manages to hold onto some semblance of cohesion. My only complaint here is that the bass element of the vocal "Bismillah" line is still too pronounced, covering up the higher-pitched voice that utters the same, which is sure to be distracting anyone that is familiar with the song...I don't understand why that wasn't fixed. 

 As I said, there are any number of drastic changes to the mix, and even more subtle tweaks here and there, so to go into all of them would simply be an exercise in tedium, but overall, the new mix definitely works for the music. The surrounds have been tamed, and now rarely overshadow the front soundstage. There are aspects of the mix that are still slightly distracting at times – one or two places where the elements placed into the surrounds differ noticeably in terms of equalization and fidelity from those in the front soundstage, and a few cases in which the rear channels are still too discrete – but such subjective traits are going to bother some people more than others. The important thing is that – with only a few exceptions – the balance of relative instrumentation and vocal levels is very faithful to the album's original sound design, and although the 5.1 mix is extremely aggressive, and makes very heavy use of the rear channels, the sound is encompassing and fun, rather than the disjointed and cramped sonic attack from all angles that we almost ended up with.

In terms of fidelity, the stereo version of the album, presented here in 96kHz/24-bit PCM, is an improvement over the CD, but initial recording conditions and production values do keep this from being an audiophile's dream. The high end is somewhat brittle at times, and the music sounds very hot, with noticeable peaks and slight distortion on occasion, but this is true of any release of the album. The advanced resolution does add texture, subtlety, and when possible warmth to the recording, especially in comparison to the CD, but the timbre and equalization never really approach realism. Those familiar with the material will certainly be accustomed to such traits, and wouldn't expect it any other way, but A Night at the Opera simply never will be the best demo material it terms of the total advantages of high-resolution music reproduction.

The good news is that this time around, the MLP-encoded 5.1 track matches the stereo version of the album in terms of fidelity, and in fact, due to the more carefully crafted surround mix, often unlocks hidden nuances that even the high-resolution stereo version couldn't. "The Prophet's Song" is a fine example of this – Mercury's vocals on the track contain a slight reverberation in the original recording, which was lost in the previous 5.1 mix for some reason. In the release version, though, the effect is restored, and actually comes out better than in the stereo track, despite being mixed with the same intensity and relative level. The fact that the lead vocal track is mixed discretely across the front three channels creates additional weight and presence that makes the effect all the more obvious, but not at the expense of the effectiveness of the instrumentation. In addition, the aggressive noise reduction (or possibly simply a roll-off of the treble) that plagued the pre-release disc is now gone, allowing the upper frequencies to provide much more definition to the vocals and guitars. Yes, this means that there is some minor hiss at times, but this is highly preferable to a loss of actual audio information.