I'll be doing a review of this later after I've given it a couple thorough listen-throughs, but my immediate reaction was disappointment sheerly from the muddy mix. Geddy's voice is pushed way back and Alex's guitar is shrill and indistinguishable, but a big pluss is that Geddy's bass is way up front (I've heard him doing things on this recording I never heard in any of the studio versions nor the many bootlegs I have.) I was a little saddened that such a fantastic, energetic performance was marred by such an inadequate, near-bootleg quality recording. I almost prefer the dry "board bootleg" bonus tracks in terms of sound quality (and hey, bonus! "Between Sun & Moon" was recorded at the show I was at here in Phoenix!) But maybe this is the Rush album for those people who always proclaim that they can't stand Rush because of Geddy's voice? (Which I always found laughable - if you can handle Led Zeppelin you should be able to handle Rush, especially latter day Rush where Geddy never sings that high.) Either way, the top-notch performance more than cements this as the best Rush live album yet.

Is there such a thing as Geddy's voice being too far in the background?

Sorry, I am not a fan of Rush. :-)

i don't know all the details but it does sound like the weather the previous day had a lot to do with their ability to get good sound for the Rio show.

...and isn't it cool to have a recording of a show you've been to?

the complete version of 2112 on Different Stages was from a boston area i went to.

I love his son's work with Coheed & Cambria!

Mark: Lucky! We were hoping something from Phoenix would make it to DS, but nothing did. (There is something from Phoenix on A Show Of Hands however - but that was a couple years before I cared about Rush.)

My biggest problem is that the band seems to be competing with the audience for volume - and the audience tends to win. I think this was done purposely, as they wanted everyone to get that great enthusiasm from the crowd, but it seems to have been done to excess here. The audience is just WAY TOO LOUD - it's very, very distracting, and I have to keep turning the volume up to hear the band, but what i get is just more audience. It's frustrating. This is the second piss-poor mixing job they've done in a row (Vapor Trails was mastered way too loud too - to the point where it distorts) and third depending on how you feel about Different Stages (I like the odd hard-panned guitar and bass, but it is kind of odd to hear especially on headphones. Rio on the other hand sounds better on headphones than anywhere else.) What I think is most odd is that Alex's guitars are so muddy, but Geddy's bass is very up-front - and Alex *mixed* this recording! The resulting mix sounds like a really, really good audience-member recorded bootleg.

Vapor Trails suffers from the modern phenomenon of everything being ultra-friggin-compressed. there's just no dynamic range anymore.

to be honest, i've seen Rush eight or so times...and i've never thought they sounded good. everything's just too loud.

but i think that about most bands live anyway. it's like the sound people are deaf or something.

I thought this was aobut Rush getting his drugs re-supplied - but now I see it isn't. Tom Sawyer is on the top of my best of lists. The rest can go jump.

From what I've heard, the audience is usually mic'd so they can add it to the mix on the album. If they didn't, you would hardly be able to tell there's an audience there. (Example: most recorded guitar solos by Frank Zappa.) Put microphone an inch-and-a-half from a Marshall stack a see how much bleed you get from anything else.

I read an interview with Rush ca. 1982 where they talked about lowering their stage volume between the "Permanent Waves" and "Moving Pictures" tours. If you listen to "Exit...Stage Left", recorded on both those tours, you can actually hear the difference between the songs from those two albums - the sound is clearer on the later recordings.

Having said that, I think Alex Lifeson's sound has always been a bit muddy; he does use a lot of signal processing.

I thought Rush sounded pretty good on the "Counterparts" tour, but that was by rock band standards, which aren't very high in my opinion. Haven't heard "Rush In Rio" yet, but "Stages" sounded a bit muddy to me. I wonder if Rush has gone through some sort of mid-life crises and cranked their stage volume again.

This dvd has a very bad sound & sounds nothing like therush we love

Have seen rush many times,when they use too dress in white robes in the old days. In 2003 seen them outdoors under Amppa theater sound wasn't good
took about halfway through the show to get sound corrected. Seen them inside in 2003 sound was flawless. This year
seen them outside and I most say one of thier best shows yet. You must remember these guys take what's done in studio and bring it live. Every note
That is amazing and most bands can't do it and there is 3 of them producing this sound. Live recording is touchy and hard to capture. Take it listening from studio and then go to a structure that they are playing in,as long as the structure reproduces sound well,they will blow your mind. Let's give credit where credit is due.