Elsewhere buried in the Olias of Sunhillow thread, @hi-res_edition mentioned a new album of his in Atmos starting at post #194.
Based on the subsequent comments I was really intrigued about the album & sampling a bit on HD Tracks I knew I had to have it. So DL'ed the 24/96 version. I don't have Atmos, I don't really do music streaming so that was my choice.
Musically it was amazing. You can read a gazzilion reviews on the web about this album but the ones posted here seem the most relevant & to the point. It's rare that I hear something & can't wait to listen to it as soon as possible again. With many of my generations musical heroes getting old & feeble, Jon Anderson's voice rings as clear & strong as forty years ago. I also like that the vocals are quite prominent & not buried in the mix. The compositions on their own sound like vintage Yes at their peak but was recorded yesterday.
Technically it's a bit of a disappointment. I didn't inspect all the songs, just 3, but they all looked just like this:
I don't have those nifty tools to quantify DR in single digits, but the picture pretty much tells the story. Severe brick walling & the three songs were normalized uniformly to -.32dB. Nothing wrong with that by itself but you can see how the life has been squashed out of it. Interestingly it doesn't sound as bad as it looks. However once you notice that light tinkling on a piano is as loud as a lead guitar you can't un-hear it.
And even though I bought a 24/96 down load you can clearly see the sharp cut off jus at 22 kHz:
I know there's been some good discussion about how HD Tracks does stuff like this. For myself I have many albums from them including the entire Doors discography. On any & all songs I've checked they have all had extended response beyond RBCD specs showing they are real 96kHz sample rates. And then there is this Anderson album, the outlier for me. Who knows if the bit depth is native or just bumped up 16 bit?
Playing it through the Surround Master the rear output was so low I had to walk back to speakers just to make sure they were operating. Yes but I had to bump the rears up by 6dB to make it sound balanced. I have a feeling some pre-synthesis that I've talked about before will help a lot in this regard.
Even tho I don't have Atmos I support it and will buy content in that format because I'm very happy with the way it plays back in 5.1. And of course sometimes there's a dedicated 5.1 mix any way. Like others I certainly hope this is released on Atmos physical media. I would certainly purchase it again.
Edit: The album cover doesn't irk me the way it does other people. Kinda just meh. But give him black hair & a mustache & you can call him Freddy.
Based on the subsequent comments I was really intrigued about the album & sampling a bit on HD Tracks I knew I had to have it. So DL'ed the 24/96 version. I don't have Atmos, I don't really do music streaming so that was my choice.
Musically it was amazing. You can read a gazzilion reviews on the web about this album but the ones posted here seem the most relevant & to the point. It's rare that I hear something & can't wait to listen to it as soon as possible again. With many of my generations musical heroes getting old & feeble, Jon Anderson's voice rings as clear & strong as forty years ago. I also like that the vocals are quite prominent & not buried in the mix. The compositions on their own sound like vintage Yes at their peak but was recorded yesterday.
Technically it's a bit of a disappointment. I didn't inspect all the songs, just 3, but they all looked just like this:
I don't have those nifty tools to quantify DR in single digits, but the picture pretty much tells the story. Severe brick walling & the three songs were normalized uniformly to -.32dB. Nothing wrong with that by itself but you can see how the life has been squashed out of it. Interestingly it doesn't sound as bad as it looks. However once you notice that light tinkling on a piano is as loud as a lead guitar you can't un-hear it.
And even though I bought a 24/96 down load you can clearly see the sharp cut off jus at 22 kHz:
I know there's been some good discussion about how HD Tracks does stuff like this. For myself I have many albums from them including the entire Doors discography. On any & all songs I've checked they have all had extended response beyond RBCD specs showing they are real 96kHz sample rates. And then there is this Anderson album, the outlier for me. Who knows if the bit depth is native or just bumped up 16 bit?
Playing it through the Surround Master the rear output was so low I had to walk back to speakers just to make sure they were operating. Yes but I had to bump the rears up by 6dB to make it sound balanced. I have a feeling some pre-synthesis that I've talked about before will help a lot in this regard.
Even tho I don't have Atmos I support it and will buy content in that format because I'm very happy with the way it plays back in 5.1. And of course sometimes there's a dedicated 5.1 mix any way. Like others I certainly hope this is released on Atmos physical media. I would certainly purchase it again.
Edit: The album cover doesn't irk me the way it does other people. Kinda just meh. But give him black hair & a mustache & you can call him Freddy.
