ABBA-Why no audiophile release?????

why is that?

 

Abba on CD is a very informative website also, I learned all about release/label differences from there

 

I actually expected Universal to release a High Fidelity Pure Audio disc (i.e., Blu-ray Audio) of their upcoming 40th anniversary "ABBA Gold." It would seem a natural, and the company does appear to be issuing more BR-A discs concurrent with the CD releases. Alas, no such luck this time

 

The ABBA material is unsuitable for audiophile treatment. Decent redbook should suffice.

 

Heh. Since when has that stopped a company from trying to make a few bucks?

 

I agree, just like Spector and Motown, Benny, Bjorn and Michael Tretow wanted a loud compressed sound that would be heard clearly even on a poor quality mastering and pressing, especially those from third world countries.

Still I think the later albums would greatly benefit from a audiophile remastering with NO added compression and eq.

 

If you don't mind them being brickwalled...

 

they are not as bad as you think they are ! go read a few of the posts about some of the deluxe cds you might be surprised !

 

Or Steven Wilson
But I doubt he's an Abba fan

 

I have Greatest Hits, v. 2 on German Polydor LP, can hear plenty of cause to issue higher quality CDs. But, as pointed out before, the market is currently saturated.

 

We

Been a fan forever....have to agree with you. Tough to make that kind of music audiophile quality. A lot going on with those recordings....more complicated than I think a lot of people realize, which is one reason why I think their music is so good. Their stuff got better towards the end, and I agree albums like Arrival really leave a lot to be desired. I believe that was a 16 track recording. I bet a lot of bouncing was utilized, and that sure degrades things. On the other hand, they could be much worse too. Always wanted to get my hands on the Arrival audiophile edition, just to see what they did. Bt the way, I think that was done by Superdisk, not MFSL. Not impressed with most Superdisk recordings, and I really doubt Arrival sounds much better, if not worse. Fleetwood Mac Rumours on Superdisc is quite awful imo! I have the last ABBA vinyl box set and I can't really imagine it getting better than that. If you want the best, try and track that set down. Still would love to see someone like Steve try...no doubt I would buy the catelog again for the 20th time!

 

If you are referring to CDs...I have never heard any cds I liked! The best I have heard is the fairly recent vinyl box set...they did an amazing job on that but I think that set is long gone now.

 

Agreed...from Super Trouper on their recordings were of much better quality. I suspect their studio was significantly upgraded. The Album is pretty good too.

 

I disagree.

ABBA would benefit just as much for "audiophile treatment", and SACD resolution, as Steely Dan or The Who.

 

I never said that aluminum CDs can't be audiophile releases. Look at the Audio Wave XRCDs. Of course I realize that gold is bulls#it. However, I looked at the market as it has existed for the past 25 years. Most gold CDs are associated with audiophile masters, while most aluminum CDs are associated with masters of varying quality from the major labels, where sound quality is not of paramount importance. It's a matter of looking at a gold CD and an aluminum CD and what you expect, not simply what is possible.

 

But it probably wouldn't be very good.

 

There is audiophile Abba out there, Atlantic and Polydor LP discs.

 

Agreed. It's a mixed bag, but the deluxe releases are as good, if not better, than some of their predecessors, though one or two are awful.

 

The LP box set is gone indeed but the LPs were re-released (of course) individually in 2011 on Universal's BackToBlack series and believe they're still available (save for the Tracks disc which had all the stuff that wasn't part of the original albums) I'm surprised they've never redone the Gold collection on vinyl given the plethora of reissues there's been of this one.

 

Available at great prices also, actually they did a pretty good job on them, in my opinion

 

Those Pure Audio Blu-ray discs have the same mastering as their cd counterparts or what can be found at sites as Qobuz and HDTracks. These are not audiophile at all.

Some are real high-res, but for e.g. Amy Winehouse they upconverted the squashed cd (44.1kHz-16bit) to 96kHz-24bit. Typical major label businnes.

 

Exactly right, Kent.

 

No 5.1?

Darryl

 

This is actually not true. The verse that was taken out was the very first one.

The drop out (or whatever you would call it) was there from the very beginning (the 7" single) in 1976 and up until an attempt was made to fix it in 1997 where Jon Astley took the "queeeeeeeeeeeeen" part from the last part of the song. However, the tone used is slightly different and the length is also different, so it just sounds like a bad edit and somewhat out of key. Then in 2001 (or perhaps already in 1999 with the re-release of ABBA Gold - I don't bother to check) another attempt was made to fix it. Still it's glaringly obvious that there's an edit, and I actually prefer the original drop out to either of the fixed versions. On http://abbarestorationproject.over-blog.de there is actually a guide to fix this dropout and one could hope that this guy either sends the fixed version to Polar/Universal or that they read how they can fix it.

 

The faulty one of course. They have no clue that it's faulty. They have the perfect copy from the UK CBS archives but they never use it ...