JTI
Group: Members
Posts: 7
Joined: Oct. 2015 |
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Posted: Feb. 13 2016, 16:46 |
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AwayWeGo - thanks for the post. This is good to know. I feel less bad in not buying the 2013 remaster now after hearing what you found.
Like you, I am in the US, and discovered back in Sept 2013, when Universal released this for downloading and streaming worldwide, they chose not to do so in the US and CA. Oddly enough, same day (or that same week) they had released Crises for download/streaming everywhere, including the US and CA, which I'm glad they did because that was great to have, but not FMO. Unfortunately this policy has continued into this year, I see that they have done the same thing with 2016 Discovery and Killing Field remasters.
I really don't understand why Universal is not making these available in the US and CA for downloading and streaming. They control the rights world-wide. Can't be costing them more to include these two countries and it would have given them (and Mike) the extra revenue from people buying them here. I think there are a lot of people here in North America who enjoy Mike's music and would have liked to have bought these.
I had waited 6 months in case Universal discovered their mistake but to no avail, so I wound up buying the 2000 remaster, which I did not already have and which fortunately is still available for downloading and streaming from iTunes, Amazon and 7Digital.
After experiencing this, when Discovery and Killing Fields came out a few weeks ago, I only bothered to wait a couple of weeks to see if they would come out here. When they didn't, I said screw and then just went out and bought the 2000 remasters (which like FMO I did not already have). 7Digital in particular is a good source for these three 2000 remasters; within the last year or so they have made them available in 16-bit/44.1KHz FLAC files. They can be reached in the US at us.7digital.com. Their home site is in the UK - www.7digital.com. (WARNING - from what I can see, the 2000 remasters appear to only be available in countries where the post-2009 remasters have not been released.)
It is too bad that whoever made the final call chose to use Hard Limiting on this record - the only saving grace is that the hard limiting could have been worse. Looks like they only cropped off at pretty close to the tippity-top of the loudest parts of the wave. I've seen worse where they chopped off well below the top (5-6dB or more from the top of the wave). They also appeared to have done this on Man on the Rocks, but again from looking at the wave, it doesn't seem to be quite as bad as other victims of the Loudness Wars.
Not quite sure what the benefit of this is other than making it louder and distorting the original sound in the process. On most of the ones I've seen this done on, It has added a disproportionate amount of bass beyond the original recording. I love bass, don't get me wrong, but it needs to be in its proper proportion to everything else. I would rather be able to use my EQ to add the extra bass than to have it imposed from without. Hard Limiting does have its place and can be useful on recordings that are totally out of control volume-wise to reduce some of the variances, but needs to be used VERY, VERY SELECTIVELY and VERY, VERY CAREFULLY.........
One more thing I will say about FMO - and I have a feeling I might be alone on this - "Ireland's Eye" section at the end of Orabidoo, a beautiful piece, with just Mike on his guitar and Maggie singing, is a bit too low volume-wise in my opinion. Not sure if this has been changed in the 2013 version, but in the 2000 and I suspect earlier ones, it is very far down in the mud. I suspect Mike's intent was that this would be like a lullaby, much like "Molly" on QE2, another beautiful piece that too is very low volume-wise. I wound up using a sound editing tool and boosted these just a few decibels (but don't worry, NOT to Loudness War levels)......  
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