Quote:
Originally Posted by mylittledemon
My beef with these releases is this... what is the source material they are using? The commercially available CDs? Because if so the 96/24 and 88/24 flac statement doesn't mean much. You can still get AIF (CD quality sound files) from the original CD releases. They are using the 96/24 tag to say that you're getting DVD quality audio (or HD audio)... but have they altered or remastered the CDs they took the files from?  Prolly not. Just for a test, I replayed "Book of Love" from their Mirage page repeatedly and then played my aif file (on some THX Logitech Z2300s) and heard no difference. |
I don't know the source for the files that WB supplied to them, but I bought Tusk and Mirage and can definitely say that they weren't sourced from the CDs. For one, these files contain the original LP mixes of "I Know I'm Not Wrong" and "Straight Back", not the alternate mixes that appeared on the CDs. Some other differences/observations:
- The Tusk remastered CD has noticeable dynamic range compression (commonly used in newer masterings or reissues to make the volume much louder); the HDTracks version has no dynamic range limiting whatsoever
- The eq on both HDTracks versions is much less bright than the original Tusk or Mirage CDs
- Tape hiss and minor anomalies are audible in the spaces between tracks
- There is minimal to no audio information above 22 khz in these files; that could indicate that the original recordings were 16/44, or that these files were sourced from a 16/44 transfer then upsampled...only WB or HDTracks would be able to answer that.
Given that these sound like straight, untampered with transfers, I do wonder if these are the transfers that were done in preparation for aborted DVD-A or remaster releases. I will say that some may like the sound of these, but others may not. They don't sound "punchy" in the least, since it doesn't sound like any eq or compression has been applied...they sound virtually "unmastered". I don't mind this approach, particularly for Tusk, although I do prefer the slightly brighter eq of the old Mirage CD. Nonetheless, it's nice to have these, particularly to get the original "I Know I'm Not Wrong" and "Straight Back" from a tape source.