I too hope they eventually release the Mirage and Tango in the Night remastered versions on CD, However, not if they are going to use the same mastering technique used on the other Fleetwood Mac remasters.
With these remasters being done in the early 2000’s they were created right at the time when the Loudness Wars were taking full flight.
Now apparently saner heads are starting to prevail in the mastering world and hopefully we have turned the corner from brick-walling and now back to proper remastering.
Case in point, let’s take a look at
Hold Me, on the
HD Tracks version it has a really nice DR rating of 13, now compared to the
“remastered” version on
The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac, that one is at a DR value of 7! That is terrible! They have compressed it is such a way that we have lost almost half of the Dynamic Range, what the Heck?!
I’m sorry but remastering to me means more than turning up the volume, compressing the heck out of it so people can listen to it on their iPhones over the sound of a bus, and then slapping on a “Remastered” sticker.
It’s like if Peter Jackson made sure Lord of the Rings looked really good on an iPhone, then worried about the theatrical presentation later.
If done properly I think a 2 CD edition of Mirage and Tango would be wonderful, I just have doubts that the powers that be will take the time to do it that way, judging from their re-re-re-re-releasing of only 1 album I don’t think quality is foremost on their minds.
I also just wanted to mention one last thing in regards to High Resolution music,
HD Tracks do not make these downloads,
Qobuz, HDTracks, Pono and
Acoustic Sounds are all supplied the audio and artwork files from Warner, so if you have issues with the quality of either, the fault lies with Warner not the different download sites you choose to buy from. In previous threads on this issue the low quality artwork was perceived to be indicative of HDTracks not being a legitimate site, this is simply not true. They do with what they are given.
Now, that all being said, it would be so nice to be able to buy a CD and know that you are going to get the best sound possible, jumping through all these different hoops over he past few years trying to suss out what is the best sound quality is becoming tiring and prohibitively expensive. Look, if Steve Hoffman can be still mastering beautifully remastered CD’s there is no reason the rest of the industry can’t do it too. Heck, we have seen it done beautifully with the recent
Tom Petty and
Bruce Springsteen remasters, both are wonderful and an incredible improvement over the previous versions.
Here is hoping that corner has been turned and we can get some truly wonderful product for our money.
Rant over
Enjoy your Weekend Everyone!!!