Question about the way that album sounds on your system:

No twirly sensation.... just very hard right followed by very hard left imaging -- no sense of the sound traveling or "panning" across. I think in a competition scenario the twirly bit would count against you. The idea is you should be able to close your eyes and then point to each instrument as it plays, and the judges have diagrams of the instrument placement when the recordings were made.

One thing I do notice on my system (he says, bragging) that is lacking on most stereos I have heard YYZ on, is that the bell sound (probably a triangle?) has definite tonality to it -- it is not a single point source frequency "tink tink tink" but each bell sound actually falls off in frequency as the volume fades "teeuunng teeuung teeunng".

I did indeed know about the Morse code. And YYZ may well be my favorite song out of all the music I have. Funny story here (probably boring to everybody else in the world but me...) One of my sons convinced me that despite my lack of enthusiasm for rock music, I might just like Rush. So I borrowed some Rush CDs and played them, and they were OK, nothing earth shattering.... and then YYZ came on. I can still remember pulling the car over to the side of the road and stopping, and punching the repeat-play button on the CD player, and I let it play over and over for the next several days. That was where I became interested in Rush. Their earlier works and their later works don't inspire me -- but the 1980--1983 stuff I kind of like.

Who would have thought that a 20 year old album would spark this much response on the bbs?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"