I always liked a couple of very specific things about the Dead. One, they developed songs live, in front of a live audience, warts and all, from mid-song diddies, to long jams, through to full songs. Always a real treat to hear a new song during that time-- a little thingy added here and there each time, just knowing that, since the boys were making albums, again, these would be beautiful when laid down in studio. This show brought nearly their full new batch of songs on stage together. It was SO easy to imagine that new album... sigh.

Another thing I appreciated were those shows where they slowed it all down, let the songs breathe, and gave themselves time to play with the music, and the vocals (or to remember lyrics!). This is one of those shows, and damb, it sounds SOLID. They sound like a band of professionals who've been doing this for three decades, and are here to tell ya.

Vince always brought a certain feel to every show he played, and I always felt really comfortable and easy on those nights. I think this is a perfect example of a Vince Show. Even though this was a February show, I can picture myself laying out on the grass at Alpine, or Pine Knob on a warm Summer night, and grinning like a kid at every thing....

Well, for a 1995 show, this one is pretty dambed fine, and I'd either need a better set of headphones, an ear transplant, or be a better Audiophiliac Snob to hear much difference between this SBD recording and Charlie's recording. The few "differences" I do hear are head/basic processing aspects proprietary to different deck Brands. They were both part of the same output snake. "Quality" isn't a real factor between the two, just which makes your ears feel better. To each, ymmv.

As far as recording quality goes, this is top-notch for even SBD recordings, despite the couple, odd static hits in "Foolish Heart," and elsewhere. The separation, and dB range is beautiful, and oh, so clean and bright for stream audio. Every effect just swirls, and is allowed to drift up or drop down as high or low as it needs to.

As a (mostly) raw recording, this is gorgeous. It made #DeadOnThisDate for it's recording quality, those incredible Drums (headphones!), and so many "new" songs in one show, and also too: SLC... (Competition was pretty tough, if you search '02-21' in the Archive!) Unless the poster is hiding a LOT more work than just some noise reduction, this is one of the best SBDs I've heard. As a basic fan, and as a curator of a Dead Music project.

I've listened to every single show on the Archive, as played "On This Date," since mid-Sept. 2016, as part of my #DeadOnThisDate project on twitter. Thirty years of shows played on this date, and every recording of each show posted. Read a LOT of reviews. A lot of SBD recordings lack that certain expansive venue headiness heard in the better AUD recordings. True, you hear the band clearly, but too often, we got the PRE-Fade, and not the post fade out of the board, so we miss the effects the crowd was hearing. It comes off as "flat." Studio engineers understand American, German and British "flat." When the SBD output is limited to pre-fade only, the recordings are clean, but literally FLAT, no effects heard at all. So, that really means something in the audio experience.

Read enough of the reviews of shows, here, and whadaya hear? SBDs are always "flat," and AUDs "always sound like they were recorded using a tube of paper, a safety pin, bubble gum, and a sheet of tin foil," as too many would (erroneously) summarize, and why the demand for MATRIX recordings, IMHO.

Admittedly, most of the time *I* prefer a MATRIX. But, I'm so old, I remember being lucky to have *any* recordings of shows, so there is that.

This appears to be a post-fade board recording, and has that live heady fullness to it that exceeds expectations. Just enough audience bleeding through the mics to really fill out a live experience when I close my eyes with the phones on.

Well, heck, I didn't expect to write all this, but for the TL;DR crowd, This is a really nice 1995 show on every level. It's mellow, but a lot of new songs still in development, and beautifully performed makes the night.

this one is not any better than the other 2- get the Charlie Miller version.

Peace

ErikW

This actually has a cassette gen in it.