Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		0.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 4, 2024

Rhino's longstanding devotion to high resolution audio Blu-rays resulted in one of my all time favorite releases from several years ago, Chicago: Quadio. Fans who want a somewhat "redacted" version of what is available on that release (which looks like it's going for a mere six hundred bucks on Amazon as of the writing of this review) may want to check out this Greatest Hits compilation, which has the added allure of an Atmos track in addition to Quadraphonic and Stereo mixes. All of that said, as I'll discuss in some detail below, I actually found both the Atmos and Quad mixes on this album to have potential issues which some audiophiles may want to be aware of.

This album's track list can be seen in the screenshots of the disc menu I've uploaded to accompany this review.

Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74 is presented on audio Blu-ray courtesy of Rhino Music, and while there is an AVC encoded 1:78:1 "image", this is another Rhino release that features a static menu. As with several of Rhino's simultaneously released Atmos / Quad offerings, colors on the track list change depending on how you're toggling through them. In this particular case, the track playing highlights in a kind of purplish red, and if you use your arrow buttons to move through the track, the titles turn yellow as you move down the list (until one is chosen, at which point it changes to purplish red), but otherwise there are no "moving parts". In the good news department, changing audio codecs does not start the song (or even album) over, as with some other Rhino releases.

Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74 features Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options. This is something of an outlier in my listening experiences with all of the generally excellent Rhino Atmos / Quad releases of late, as I had passing qualms about both the Atmos and especially Quad mixes on this album. The Atmos track is nicely spacious and certainly offers what I consider to be the best overall sound on this disc, but it still has some curious mixing choices. Listen, for example, to "25 or 6 to 4" and you might think there's some kind of channelization error, since everything other than ambient hall reverberation is front and center for quite some time, at least until the backups kick in on "sitting cross legged on the floor", when suddenly the rear channels are engaged, almost overwhelmingly so. Throughout the Atmos mix, I kept feeling like things were simply too far forward a lot of the time, leading to a kind of front heavy imbalance. That said, vocals are much more present in both the Atmos and Stereo options than they are in the really curious sounding Quad mix, which in some ways struck my ears as noticeably different from Rhino's older Quad release. Vocals are absolutely buried throughout this album in the Quad mix. I had mentioned in the older Quad review how they weren't always mixed as far forward as I would have liked, but I'd argue that situation is only exacerbated here. Kind of weirdly, other elements, like the almost subliminal spoken material in "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" sounds louder and definitely less subliminal in both the Quad and Atmos renderings here. While some other listeners may have these same passing issues, one way or the other, this is a rather fascinating example of how different various mixes can be in terms of all sorts of things like solo brass moments and the like, and as such, there's maybe some "compare and contrast" interest here even in spite of any qualms.

Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no on disc supplements. The keepcase features an insert with an inner print and the four page leaflet like insert booklet reproduces the original album art and credits.

Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A lot of people tend to write off Chicago as hopelessly passé, but I unabashedly love a lot of their music. This Greatest Hits overview is a nice summation of at least some of their relatively early work. I'll be interested to hear from other fans who pick this up what they think of the Atmos and Quad mixes, but as mentioned above, while I found the Atmos track on this disc to be the most satisfying overall, there are still some occasionally curious channelization choices. The vocals on the Quad mix are often pretty much buried. With caveats noted, Recommended.