Hi brucewayne,
No, in fact the HD version of Tusk is what is know as a flat transfer, meaning it is a direct transfer from the studio masters so it is as close to what they heard in the studio while making it and in my opinion if vastly superior to the Remastered CD's that came out in the early 2000 as well as the current new Tusk box set. The new box set version I find is better the the 2000 remasters but the HD tracks still edges it out.
The HD versions just seem to have more depth and space in the recordings.
Now you mentioned that you will be listening primarily on your Computer or by burning to CD.
If you are listening on your computer you should have no problem if you have a good sound card in decoding the HD versions however you will not be able to transfer the HD versions directly to CD without down converting them to CD format.
The HD versions are at such a higher bit rate (24 bit as compared to CD 16bit) and a greater kHz (192 or 96 kHz depending on the HD album compare to a CD that is at I believe 44.1kHz)
Note that when you down convert you will be losing a lot of the benefit of having a HD track but the mastering is still in my opinion to any other currently available version, especially in the case of say Mirage.
To down convert all you need is a piece of software such as
dBpoweramp. It even has pre-sets for CD conversion, simply load your HD Tracks and choose CD as you output, it will convert them to a file format that your regular CD burning software will understand.
However at the end of the day all this is really subjective and up to the individual listener. Personally I love the HD Tracks versions as I find it gets them back to how they originally sounded before all the poor remastering and brickwalling was applied.
That being said a lot of people do like a louder more "in your face" version that the current remastered version seem to do the trick, they are just not for me.
Hope this helps.
have a great day!
