This release was groundbreaking for many reasons and I'm sure Virgin Records owe their success to this album. There's an innocent charm to the compositions, although excessive exposure spoiled my enjoyment for many years, having used it as a "demo" disc many times over the seventies and early eighties.
I was saddened that the original CD sounded so muffled, as I remember - CD promised so much in the early days and didn't always deliver for various reasons. Those days are thankfully long behind us and THIS release realises, for me, how good the original recording could be in its stereo version.
There's a clarity here that really helps you to delve into the mix and discover elements that were all but inaudible in the original LP and CD versions. The early "Quad" mixes on the boxed set were good too, but sufficiently different that they were almost different pieces of music to me... My CD player is good, but quite conventional - no HDCD or the dreaded sacharin sweet SACD here... and the sound is perfectly good without all the latest commercial "tricks".... It seems one of the original production team did the remastering for this release, so hopefully, what we're hearing now is about as good as the original mix gets.
I must admit I'm getting really confused with the large number of *versions* of this album available as of 2006... I think that it's now time for both Mr Oldfield and the record companies to leave alone and move on - PLEASE!
RECOMMENDED as the definitive mastering of the original mix! If it's not in your collection, at this price you can't go wrong.