I have to agree here. The recent Maiden album is missing that spark. Final Frontier and AMOMAD were good but not up to the quality of the first two. Just my opinion. It's not a fact guys!
Interesting, I just compared the first album (1998 Remaster with the High Resolution download from 2015) using headphones. I honestly do not hear a difference. It sounds like they used the 1998 Remaster for the High Resolution release.
Well - this definitely ain't the case, it's been stated, prooved and re-assured that they are NOT the same! Maybe your headphones are quite... "forgiving"?
I have the first two album remasters. They sound great to me. Great packaging too. Seem to be a lot of care taken.
I like you Anton888. LOL Could be! But the Iron Maiden remastering project was a big thing. You can even see a video on it. They did go back to the masters. However they compressed them the same as the 1998. The only thing the 2015 remasters don't have is the crazy Eq. The 1998 were NOT AND WERE NEVER remasters. They grabbed whatever digital 3/4 production tapes they could find and work from there. They didn't even go back to crappy analog copies for the 1998 versions. Just digital copies from crappy analog copies.
Is it still possible however unlikely that they can reissue these remasters without what made them sound bad?Audiophile Hi Rez and not Nuked to death?
I love that, "Nuked them to death." Well they just made them in 2015 and that was a bad-ass expensive remastering job. If the Loudness War completely ends and studios start reissuing out albums as they weren't meant to sound then yes, It could happen..But you are looking at 10 years at least. And I am being optimistic here. Advice from 310 pound objectionable man with pneumonia - Seek out the original Capitol IM CDs or The Castle reissues which are the same thing but with the bonus songs. If you can't get those seek out BEST OF THE BEAST. Preferably the 2 CD set. NOW! NOW! GET THEM NOW! The BEST OF THE BEAST are just normalized to - 1 db. .
I am actually happy with my old collection! I still become curious what they intend on,that is okay though,I dig the music!
Well let me explain it another way: Back in 2013 there was a big discovery announced in Classic Doctor Who. Renowned Classic Doctor Who Hunter, Phillip Morris (no relation to me) found all six episodes of the 1967, Enemy Of The World, and 5 out of 6 episodes of The Web Of Fear (1, 2, 4, 5 & 6.) in a shack in the middle of the desert in Nigeria. They had been sitting there for 47 years untouched. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before stupid rumours flew that Morris had found all 6 episodes of The Web Of Web and that Episode 3 had been stolen by some Nigerian airport official and purchased by some private collector. Nonsense. Morris found 5 and not 6. The collector couldn't even play the 16 mm film print copy without serious restoration. If I had Episode 3 I might sell it back to the BBC for $25 000, but i would probably give it up for free. But it gave Who fans hope. False hope but hope. There is a new release very shortly coming out with Episode 3 animated to off air TV recordings. (Don't ask!) Same thing here. They have already done a remaster in 2015. We will get a remasting if the Loudness War ends and assuming the compact disk is still around.
I think what the poster meant is both the 1998 and 2015 versions sound like crap. Yes, equally crappy.
Technically it's possible to re-issue the 2015 remasters in a more dynamic, audiophile friendly package but it's all dependent on a number of factors. The main one is how did the Mastering Engineer (Ade Emsley) and assistant (Tony Newton) convert these tapes over to the digital realm? Did they add any processing/EQ/Compression/Limiting during the conversions or were they flat transfers? If they were transferred flat then we are in business, if not tough luck. All we really have is this video showing snippets of what was done for the Digital Remasters: So even if you have best case scenario and the work was converted properly, the band would still need to pay a boatload of money to have them "Remastered" again as 6 years have passed and this would be considered a new job. I highly doubt Iron Maiden want to pay the money for this effort, especially when Steve Harris is satisfied and signed off on the 2015 campaign. And let's just say that he did approve, you would have to keep Arry locked away from the whole process. You can clearly see from the video that he requested for EQ/processing changes to be made during these remasters and his wonky way of listening is going to kill the final results (may I direct you to a graph showing you how Mr. Harris likes to listen to things): I laugh when I hear the mastering crew talking about Steve warning them how bad the first album sounds and how the guitars aren't loud enough in the mix, and they tell him to listen to the master tape flat asking him "What's wrong? They sound great!" and he agrees LOL. There is really only one way you are going to get satisfactory audiophile results and that would be going back to the original master tapes and have a reputable Mastering Engineer perform the work properly without any influence from Steve Harris. That is never going to happen. You are best off trying to search for the latest vinyl pressings done by an entirely different crew at Abbey Road (Sean Magee & Christian Wright): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjfva--DlzY&t=167s That or you hunt down the original CD's of every album if you prefer digital and hold on to them as this is the best it's going to get.
Someone on YouTube actually likes them (and wrote): "The “Loudness war” doesn't exist! It's just a fabrication of those who call themselves audiophiles. Just terrible misinformation, not knowing anything about audio formats, physics, remixing, technology... I agree, though, everyone has his own tastes and beliefs, so all pre-199x bands could perfectly sell two versions of every album: one for vinyls with a superhardware with that “dynamic range” you all guys keep talking (without knowing what it really means and how it really works), and another for those who want to be able to hear good enough and with the less amount of noise all the nunaces of every instrument (voice included...) in just any decent equipment, digitally..."
So somebody please tell me which is the best sounding Killers CD. Is it the 1995 2xCD from UK? I had an original Capitol CD for decades (along with my Harvest LP) and when that CD was finally lost, I replaced it with a 2015, only to realize that they removed "Twilight Zone" from the track listing. WTF?
They used the European tracklist for the S/T and Killers, so they are missing Sanctuary and Twilight Zone respectively.
Me too, sounds good and having Maiden England is a great bonus! Wish I would have bought all the Castles back when they came out but I only bought the Di'anno albums since they had great bonus content.
I like the obi strip that came with those Castles as well. They really should have worked hand-in-hand with EMI to both deliver the best versions of the albums back in 1995. Castle ‘95 ‘Killers’ has extra ‘Maiden Japan’ tracks, EMI has the hi-hat intro to title track. EMI S/T has the coda added to ‘Phantom Of The Opera’, Castle does not. Castle S/T and ‘Killers’ have ‘Sanctuary’ and ‘Twilight Zone’ added to the track list, EMI does not (but they are at least on the bonus discs). I get that they were duplicating what was originally released in specific territories, but it would’ve been really cool for the fans to have everything available no matter where you were from.
But are the Castles those same EMI masters? Up thread, everyone is saying that the original UK discs sound better than the US... and on discogs, the Castles seem to be US pressings? I definitely do want "Twilight Zone" which is why I thought the 1995 2xCD might be the way to go...
There were mastering differences between the EU and US discs so I’m assuming that was also the case with the ‘95 reissues. The Castles were also released as single discs iirc, so ‘Twilight Zone’ will also be on the single disc Castle ‘Killers’, or you could seek an earlier pressing. It’s only on the newest remasters that the track was missing (in the US at least, it was always missing on the EU single disc pressings).
I like the 2015 CDs, but the only thing I had to compare them to were the 1998s which were pretty bad, especially Somewhere In Time. It took me four tries to get a 2015 Live After Death where "Die With Your Boots On" didn't skip for about 30 seconds in the same place.
