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Post by starlight on Mar 26, 2016 10:29:13 GMT
Hi, has anyone else bought the Hi Res albums from www.ponomusic.com?They are sold at 192khz/24 bit editions....normal cds are set to 44khz/16 bit settings They are AMAZING and the quality of reproduction is stunning, its as though a layer of dust has been removed. I'm usually quite skeptical about these things but having heard them, I will be pulling my CDRs off the shelf from now on rather than the typical cds Only complaint is that they cover the original albums up to BOP and don't include b sides or bonus tracks they've just dropped the price from $23 to $18
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Post by poorbob on Mar 26, 2016 11:25:14 GMT
I have all the Jet era releases now, and I have to agree they are stunning starlight! Got Balance Of Power yesterday but I'm stuck on Secret Messages, the title track is awesome, the guitars are so much heavier/powerful. On the other releases I'm hearing guitars, ride cymbals that I never heard/noticed before. Only disappointment is that Eldorado & Time sound a little soft (shame as two of my all time fave albums).
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Post by ShardEnder on Mar 26, 2016 19:48:34 GMT
What you're hearing at HDtracks are the high resolution sources for the 2001-7 remastering campaign, transferred from whatever tapes could be found back in 2000. As a result, Time is copied from a heavily compressed stereo mixdown tape, while Secret Messages still has all the same glitches as the most recent CD versions. These particular files only came out (to coincide with Alone In The Universe's release) because Sony didn't have any other titles in the vault they could issue, though Rob Caiger has suggested we can expect a full upgrade of the ELO catalogue using all-analogue transfers of the best possible tapes very soon. Whether this means the original multitracks for Out Of The Blue have finally been located remains to be seen, but I'm more interested to find out whether Secret Messages will be expanded. Jeff actually gave his blessing to a proposed 2CD Legacy Deluxe Edition of this particular album, only to then reject a planned 30th anniversary release because this would have drawn attention from his own plans - at the time, he was still under contract with Frontiers, who were putting out new titles. With everyone back on the same page now, I'm hoping for something really special, supposedly due later this year to keep momentum going between the upcoming tour finishing and Jeff handing in yet another new ELO project. Based on the recently-announced reissue of The Move's Looking On, it seems as if Jeff is signing off to let more outtakes escape the vault than ever, which is great for those who thought the last ELO remasters were short on bonus content. I never thought he'd allow Falling Forever to officially see the light of day, and yet now it's about to happen. Could a full Secret Messages be next, complete with Beatles Forever? At the very least, I hope Out Of The Blue is cured of its various sonic deficiencies, while Secret Messages simply needs to be released in a form that doesn't carry over the glitches of before. Finally, wouldn't it be great if On The Third Day and Face The Music have the correct segues between songs, or if Time receives a more dynamic treatment, preferably remixed from the multitracks? Considering the present state of the music industry, I doubt there will be another chance to get things right again, so I can imagine a lot of pressure on whoever is give the task of preparing these releases to ensure the right sources are used. Since fans also need greater incentive to buy the same albums yet again, Jeff must also feel a need to throw open the doors of his vault to provide additional material... or should that be the box of tapes under his bed?
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Post by jackpunch on Mar 26, 2016 20:45:56 GMT
I'm thinking that for the first time in a really long time, Jeff is on the front foot with ELO. We could get anything!
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Post by ShardEnder on Mar 26, 2016 21:35:49 GMT
I would like to add a few corrections to my last post...
Although the HDtracks releases are indeed sourced from the same transfers as the 2001-7 remastering campaign, Out Of The Blue has been fixed slightly to remove the dropout that previously affected Night In The City (though you can hear the engineer responsible not quite catching all of this, achieved by adjusting the EQ to apply a treble boost in the left channel).
As for Secret Messages, the tape glitches on Stranger and Train Of Gold are no longer present, but frustratingly a new digital artifact is now present in the latter just after where the most prominent flaw had once been, suggesting that a "clean" piece was edited in, since the earliest versions of this album had no such problem.
My apologies for any confusion I may have caused - that'll teach me for trying to comment on something without referring to my research notes in advance!
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Post by IvanDSM on Mar 26, 2016 22:46:41 GMT
Haven't heard the Pono ELO releases. They probably are as awful as other Pono releases, or the HDTracks ELO releases. I know that the HDTracks releases have horrible compression and most Pono releases (apart from Neil Young stuff) are just as compressed as normal CDs.
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Post by ShardEnder on Mar 27, 2016 0:37:54 GMT
I would have thought the various high resolution providers would all receive the same digital files as provided by Sony, but then Apple does offer its own proprietary "Made For iTunes" standard when it comes to mastering audio, so there may be differences between downloads based on the sources used...
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Post by janne on Mar 28, 2016 15:17:25 GMT
Can I buy files from Ponomusic in Europe and will the quality diminish if I upload them to Itunes? I tried looking for answers to these simple questions on Ponomusic's own web site, but I think they deliberately try to put off everyone from using Pono. They hate their own product, that's my conclusion.
So if anyone knows... otherwise I can't be arsed.
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Post by ShardEnder on Apr 9, 2016 19:02:22 GMT
I've been reliably informed that in addition to several ELO titles suddenly vanishing from streaming services in preparation for the all-analogue catalogue overhaul recently promised by Rob Caiger, the first batch of new remasters will be released as a boxed set to coincide with Jeff's upcoming "legends" appearance at Glastonbury: www.amazon.co.uk/Studio-Albums-1973-1977-Electric-Orchestra/dp/B01DW9O100?ie=UTF8&ref_=cm_sw_r_awd_glNbxbPXQ14WXUnfortunately, there don't appear to be any bonus tracks, so that rules out a long overdue expanded treatment for Secret Messages. I'm guessing a follow-up collection will include everything from Discovery through to Balance Of Power (or perhaps Zoom), with the first two EMI-licensed albums being issued completely. Only time will tell...
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Post by Southernman on Apr 10, 2016 14:37:12 GMT
Not full details so far, but this set would need to have one heck of a book included to justify that price for just 5 albums, remastered or not.
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Post by Southernman on Apr 14, 2016 18:00:55 GMT
Hm, from £37.05 to £19.99, slightly more attractive...
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Post by ShardEnder on Apr 14, 2016 19:11:09 GMT
I never really noticed this until I loaded up the HDtracks version of Secret Messages into my sound editing software, but several of the songs on this album have brief dropouts at the start, almost like the kind you'd expect from MP3s that don't crossfade right. I'm not suggesting these are copies of high resolution MP3 files, though it is annoying once you hear the "gaps" because they suddenly become even more obvious... or at least they do to this particular audiophile's ears!
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