I'm not sure what the relevance of lossy DVD-V 5.1 to the discussion of XTC and Black Sea. All of the XTC 5.1 mixes to date (and Black Sea, I assume) have been available in lossless 24/96 LPCM on the Blu-ray sets. If one chooses to purchase the DVD with lossy 5.1 to save a few bucks, that's on them. Virtually all 5.1 mixes are natively lossless - and the vast majority 5.1 mixes are done these days at no less than 24/48 pcm. However, for whatever reason(s), some record companies choose to only release lossy Dolby Digital/DTS versions of those lossless 5.1 mixes on DVD for certain titles. Is that what you're refering to?
To my knowledge, most of Steven Wilson's 5.1 mixes have been released in lossless fashion. Going from memory, his 5.1 mixes for his own releases, XTC, Yes, King Crimson, Tears For Fears, Gentle Giant have all been available as hi-rez lossless LPCM. The original Aqualung Deluxe also, however IIRC the re-issue of Aqualung and the other Tull 5.1 mixes were only released in lossy form.
Not all 5.1 mixes from Steven Wilson are lossless as a few are on DVD. But most are on DVD-A or Blu-ray. In my post I never said lossless just 5.1 mixes. I did not quote you or single out any of your posts regarding SW's 5.1 mixes. My post was in general as I've seen a number of posts in different threads discussing SW's remixes where some are critical that 5.1 mixes are included. That is what I find to be strange. If one is not into multichannel music that's cool. But to be critical of including 5.1 mixes when nothing else is excluded in a set due to the inclusion of the 5.1 mix makes no sense to me. I have numerous SW remixes and rarely ever listen to them in stereo. But I'm not posting that including the stereo mixes is a waste of disc space just because I don't listen to them.
Let's have a complete sentence, please. What is "Pearl"? I take it "Cuba Dub" aka "Spy in Space" is unreleased?
Wow. I'm learning something unrelated to XTC in this thread, apparently...5.1 mixes on non-DVD-A DVDS are lossy? Is that due to space limitations, or DVD-compliance? I know; look to the Google! Heh. I've always favored the Blu-ray discs when it comes to such things anyhow.
DVD-V does not provide for lossless 5.1, it will either be Dolby Digital or DTS. DVD-As will include a lossy 5.1 version as well as MLP 5.1. I am not aware of a single music only release mixed by Steven Wilson that isn't available lossless, either DVD-A or Blu-ray but maybe somebody else knows of one. Certainly there are DVD-Video releases with video and lossy 5.1 from Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree, etc. but music only DVD-V, nothing comes to mind for me and I have a bunch of Steven Wilson releases going way back.
I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt we'll see all those live tracks (some of which were a year or two old by the time they were released - that version of 'This Is Pop' had previously been a 'Making Plans for Nigel' b-side in Japan in 1979). I also expect the edits won't be included, though the revised 'Respectable Street' should be. Actually I can't recall if there were any edited A-sides associated with the albums previously released in this series that were omitted. 'Grass', I suppose?
Period of recording. 'Over Rusty Water' was included with Drums & Wires even though it was first released as the b-side to 'No Thugs'.
The Steven Wilson remixes of Jethro Tull (except the Aqualung 40th Anniversary box set with Blu-ray) are all DVD-Vs. The DVD-Vs do have video content but I've never watched any of it. I consider all of the book style sets as audio only even though there is some video content. Bought all of them for the excellent 5.1 mixes. Not lossless but they all sound excellent in "lowly" DTS .
I'm happy a strange consistency is holding up with Black Sea being the next release. They released Nonsuch, Oranges & Lemons, and Skylarking in reverse chronological order. Black Sea is one chronological step forward from Drums & Wires. In a perfect world, the next release after Black Sea would be either English Settlement or The Big Express. Also of note, the first two Surround Sound Series releases (Nonsuch and Drums & Wires) were the third-to-last and third albums in the XTC discography, which adds a little symmetry to the otherwise random order the first two releases were prepared (based on which tapes could be found).
As I said, I believe some of the Jethro Tull 5.1 mixes are only available in lossy compression. I think there are some others too, but they aren't the bigger name artists. Edit: Sorry, I didn't see Bill Mac's response until after I wrote this...
"Black Sea" might be my favorite XTC record. It's a great, slammin' rock record with stunning songs and guitar work and a drums sound to die for. It's not my first choice for a remix - the existing one is great. This is mostly the sound of a loud, live band with some extra decoration here and there, and I don't hear a lot of need for surround effects. "English Settlement" might benefit from a remix (the original is kind of murky) and "Big Express" might be good to tone down the harshness a bit. As a fan I'll still be buying it. It's always fun to hear familiar music from a slightly different angle, but I don't anticipate it will add much to my (already great) appreciation of the album. This is how I feel about the "Skylarking" and "Oranges and Lemons" remix editions I have. They're nice, they sound good in their own way, but they slightly miss the mark in one way or another. A good "second opinion", but not "the new way". Some of the other Wilson remix projects have clearly replaced the originals for me, but not the XTC ones.
I don't have any of the Jethro Tull releases yet. My surround collection does include a number of lossy 5.1 discs, most are 96kHz/24-bit DTS, Depeche Mode, Bjork, Genesis, and Donald Fagen come to mind.
Understood and I didn’t mean to make facts from rumours. The May 26 tweets do only appear to say that Colin won’t be providing liner notes but I do read Andy’s tweets and going back to the skylarking release, he did mention arguing with Colin and including his skylarking demo’s on the release apparently against Colin’s wishes. So there is a bit of friction there, not just related to $ I’m not on twitter so don’t know if there is an easy way to search old tweets.
