Yep, correct. Fantastic 1983, Make It Big 1984.
Wham! - Fantastic & Make It Big Atmos Blu-Ray Audios w/bonus tracks (SDE Surround Series #19 & #20) March 22, 2024 (Delayed until April 26)
- Thread starter haikubass
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Well, duh... Right you are! Wham! is a band that was on my radar back in the day and I clearly did not do my homework before posting. It makes much more sense that Fantastic came first, not to mention the sequential numbering on the spines. The songwriting on Make It Big is so much more polished and accomplished. In any event, I humbly stand by my assessment of the sonics and the mixes. Color me embarrassed...
I'm with you 100% on the sonics and the mixes . . . and the songwriting! Ha! Spine numbers is all we needed! Stay Surrounded, Comrade!Well, duh... Right you are! Wham! is a band that was on my radar back in the day and I clearly did not do my homework before posting. It makes much more sense that Fantastic came first, not to mention the sequential numbering on the spines. The songwriting on Make It Big is so much more polished and accomplished. In any event, I humbly stand by my assessment of the sonics and the mixes. Color me embarrassed...
J. PUPSTER
💿🐕 Senior Disc Chaser 🎸
Very much appreciated, that the slip overs were pre-fitted to the cases. Is this something that may be done to all of them going forward I'm wondering?
Thanks!
Definitely not happy with this. Water damage on the slipcase.
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If anyone knows the best way to approach getting a replacement slipcase, I'd definitely like one.
JediJoker
Audio Engineer/Enthusiast
Email SDE Shop customer service. If it's a possibility, Anne can help you out.
Ok, that's what I did.
I can't believe how much fun these albums are, especially in surround!
You can add these releases to MusicBrainz yourself if you want. I’ve added a few over the years, it’s not difficult. Just create a free account and enter the release details.
You’ll need to use MMH 8 to receive support once it’s officially released soon. (Microsoft support for .NET 7 ends on 16 May with no further security updates or other fixes).
Oh hell. How do you know it's water damage? Was the package sitting out in the rain?
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I wrote another tune for this album, which is a Tremendisimo Diez!
"I'll never hear bongos the same way again, especially the way they topsmmersively emerge from the ceiling.
Tonight, the music fully immerses me. This album and I are so good together that we never want to separate."
"I'll never hear bongos the same way again, especially the way they topsmmersively emerge from the ceiling.
Tonight, the music fully immerses me. This album and I are so good together that we never want to separate."
This is a perfect example of multichannel enlightenment: when I buy an album I never paid any attention to until it was available in multichannel. All I can say is, “Holy smokes!!! Did you hear the bass lines in Wake Me Up Before You Go Go?!?!?!?!”
Mark_C_London
New member
Whereas I used to think this K2HD disc was the best version of "The Final", that is no longer true!Am currently spinning SONY's exceptional HD K2 remaster of WHAM THE FINAL ...feel like a teenybopper all over again! Am looking forward to these two BD~A ATMOS reissues
The great thing about the remastered bonus tracks on the Fantastic and Make It Big Blu-rays is that it's easy to reconstruct the compilation album "The Final" in high resolution Stereo 24bit-48kHz (3 of the tracks are 24-96) BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY as a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Atmos version (as a single .mka file which plays with JRiver)
Additionally, both Stereo and Atmos are in the more "correct" versions than on any of "The Final" CD's. "The Final" CD's all have a runtime limited at 75 minutes exactly, even though there is room to have squeezed another 4 minutes or so on.
Not only were the CD versions limited by including truncated versions of three songs but all CD releases of The Final (including K2HD) failed to match the Vinyl and Cassette version of the album by never including the excellent track "Blue (Armed With Love)" as well as the long versions of Bad Boys, Careless Whisper and I'm Your Man.
The studio recording of Blue (Armed With Love), and the relevant definitive mixes on the LP/Cassette are present on these two discs in remastered stereo and Atmos versions.
By ripping the discs, my music server now has the original High-Rez stereo albums "Fantastic" and "Make It Big", each with their added bonus tracks (but not remixes).
I also have "The Final" in high-rez stereo with the newly remastered versions from the original The Final LP rather than the truncated ones laid out for the CD. A Different Corner is inserted as the 16/44.1 K2HD version as, being a solo George Michael recording, it is not on these Blu-rays even though it was included on The Final
I also have The Final in Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Atmos in the original format with three exceptions:
- A Different Corner is missing as it is not available in TrueHD 7.1 Atmos
- Bad Boys is the regular Fantastic/The Final CD version rather than the 12" mix which is only present in stereo on these Blu-rays
- I'm Your Man is the single version rather than the 12" Extended Stimulation mix which, again, is only in stereo on the Blu-rays
I received the '80s package--Wham's two albums and Paul Young's No Parlez. I've only listened to No Parlez and Make It Big so far, but the sound quality on both albums is excellent. Especially the bass guitar on both albums sounds terrific. Pino Palladino and the late Deon Estus were both such terrific players, and they both come through very well.
(This is from the days when bubblegum pop still required good musicianship. If you doubt this, just listen to the bass part of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. Just great, inventive playing.)
If I had a criticism, it would be the lack of 5.1 on the Wham! albums. Downscaled Atmos sounds fine, but a dedicated 5.1 track just sounds better on a 5.1 system (I felt the same about Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret).
(This is from the days when bubblegum pop still required good musicianship. If you doubt this, just listen to the bass part of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. Just great, inventive playing.)
If I had a criticism, it would be the lack of 5.1 on the Wham! albums. Downscaled Atmos sounds fine, but a dedicated 5.1 track just sounds better on a 5.1 system (I felt the same about Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret).
Mark_C_London
New member
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret doesn't have a 5.1 mix that you could have compared to Atmos though?!
Nonetheless, whether a 5.1 stream sounds better (or even different) than a downmixed (7.1 with or without Atmos) is dependant on several things:
1) Whether a completely separate mixing was done with 5.1 in mind or whether a Master 7.1 Atmos render was created and then the Dolby Atmos Render used to simultaneously render to 5.1 (the latter is far, far more likely, simply due to time constraint and uniformity and confirmed as the case for No Parlez)
2) Whether the surround engineer used custom trims within the Dolby Atmos Renderer to specify that the overhead and / or surround channels are to be folded differently (both level and also front/back) than the default settings when played back in a 2.0 or 5.1 or 7.1 vs the full Atmos presentation.
3) Whether the 5.1 presentation is in the same carrier (Dolby or DTS) as the other (Although the data in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and DTS-HD MA 5.1 are both lossless and can be digitally identical, this need not necessarily be so, depending on how the engineer uses the encoders to generate the stream)
With regards to 3), above, upon encoding to either format, a workstation has variable controls over trims, low-pass and high pass filters to LFE and mains etc and so the same raw 5.1 mix fed through both encoders does not necessarily produce identical audio.
Then, within the decoding environment, what the different decoders do in any given system with dialnorm etc may not be transparent.
I did find it curious that Paul Young's No Parlez Blu-ray has the TrueHD 7.1 Atmos track (which in theory should fold down perfectly to 5.1 by standard Dolby Surround processing anyway, with no loss of any of the audio) yet has a DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix on the same disc.
Paul Sinclair has stated that the 5.1 mix was derived from the 7.1 Atmos mix, which means it was definitely output from the renderer as Dolby True HD.
Why then was it decoded from Dolby and then passed through the DTS encoder to give DTS-HD MA?
This means that the 5.1 mix on the Blu-ray has been variably (using whatever trim and pan settings the engineer chose if not the default) folded down from the full Atmos presentation by the Dolby Renderer into 5.0 or 5.1 and then variably encoded (with whatever settings were used in the DTS encoder) to DTS-HD MA 5.1.
I think I'd prefer to just leave my Dolby Surround decoder in my processor to fold down the 7.1, and take out the two DTS steps.
Nonetheless, whether a 5.1 stream sounds better (or even different) than a downmixed (7.1 with or without Atmos) is dependant on several things:
1) Whether a completely separate mixing was done with 5.1 in mind or whether a Master 7.1 Atmos render was created and then the Dolby Atmos Render used to simultaneously render to 5.1 (the latter is far, far more likely, simply due to time constraint and uniformity and confirmed as the case for No Parlez)
2) Whether the surround engineer used custom trims within the Dolby Atmos Renderer to specify that the overhead and / or surround channels are to be folded differently (both level and also front/back) than the default settings when played back in a 2.0 or 5.1 or 7.1 vs the full Atmos presentation.
3) Whether the 5.1 presentation is in the same carrier (Dolby or DTS) as the other (Although the data in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and DTS-HD MA 5.1 are both lossless and can be digitally identical, this need not necessarily be so, depending on how the engineer uses the encoders to generate the stream)
With regards to 3), above, upon encoding to either format, a workstation has variable controls over trims, low-pass and high pass filters to LFE and mains etc and so the same raw 5.1 mix fed through both encoders does not necessarily produce identical audio.
Then, within the decoding environment, what the different decoders do in any given system with dialnorm etc may not be transparent.
I did find it curious that Paul Young's No Parlez Blu-ray has the TrueHD 7.1 Atmos track (which in theory should fold down perfectly to 5.1 by standard Dolby Surround processing anyway, with no loss of any of the audio) yet has a DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix on the same disc.
Paul Sinclair has stated that the 5.1 mix was derived from the 7.1 Atmos mix, which means it was definitely output from the renderer as Dolby True HD.
Why then was it decoded from Dolby and then passed through the DTS encoder to give DTS-HD MA?
This means that the 5.1 mix on the Blu-ray has been variably (using whatever trim and pan settings the engineer chose if not the default) folded down from the full Atmos presentation by the Dolby Renderer into 5.0 or 5.1 and then variably encoded (with whatever settings were used in the DTS encoder) to DTS-HD MA 5.1.
I think I'd prefer to just leave my Dolby Surround decoder in my processor to fold down the 7.1, and take out the two DTS steps.
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