Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Super-Audio CD

Mastered from the original master tapes, and possessing a richness befitting the album's stellar reputation, Mobile Fidelity's numbered limited-edition Hybrid SACD of Brothers in Arms breathes with transparent highs, atmospheric heft, and lifelike tonalities. The sense of realism this edition delivers will leave slack-jawed even the most hard-to-please audiophiles. As the recipient of the Grammy for Best-Engineered Recording, the album has always been a go-to sonic standard, but never has it sounded so reach-out-and-touch-it realistic as it does here. Although it's easy to speculate that the colossal success of Brothers in Arms relates to it's timing - it's release during an era obsessed with catchy singles, flashy MTV videos, and whistle-friendly melodies - reasons for the album's chart-busting success primarily owe to the expertly crafted songs and memorable playing turned in by a group hitting it's creative peak. Not to mention the spatial dimensions that cause instruments and vocals to naturally float in a fixed area. Anchored by "Money for Nothing," a caustically themed smash immediately identifiable via Mark Knopfler's resonant finger-picked guitar riff and Sting's "I want my MTV" vocal refrain, Dire Straits' fifth album is stuffed with bluesy signatures, jazz-rock motifs, clever lyrics, and organic accents. Diversity and consistency also extend to the songs' moods. Singing with his trademark light-to-the-touch timbre, Knopfler conjures feelings of poignancy, peacefulness, and mellowness, channeling wistfulness on the Top 10 single "So Far Away" and somber assurance on "Why Worry."

1. So Far Away 2. Money for Nothing (Mark Knopfler, Sting) 3. Walk of Life 4. Your Latest Trick 5. Why Worry 6. Ride Across the River 7. The Man's Too Strong 8. One World 9. Brothers in Arms