I remember reading somewhere that the old SACD was basically a flat DSD transfer of the original stereo tapes. It's a hell of a great sounding disc, too. It's nice that there will be a new version available on the market, but it'll be hard to beat the old disc with an extra 20 years of age on the tapes. For those who are interested, I believe that the old SACD transfer is available on QoBuz. (Avoid the 25th anniversary edition, though!)
Bad (and probably Dangerous) were recorded at CD resolution, so you might as well skip the SACD and just make a nice CD remaster instead. HIStory and Invisible might have been recorded at higher resolutions, so those might benefit from the hi-res treatment.
The original mix is drier and more direct sounding - also there's the "oh no" in the right channel at 2' 24'' that's more prominent in the single mix. The "oh no" is heard at 2' 37'' in the left channel of the 12" mix!
It’s nice to immediately be given a release date for these MoFi products instead of being kept in the dark for months.
I wonder if they will do anything with the videos. It would be nice to have the videos remastered, and in particular, the 3D version of Thriller that was produced some time ago.
I may grab the sacd, hopefully someone will get an advance copy and enlighten us with reviews before it drops. As far as the vinyl I just have a hard time believing that my 1A/1C or 1E/1G copies could be bested in the 33rpm format. Shoot, even my 2D/2D copy is no slouch.
Actually, this seems like something that would sell a heck of a lot better than a niche SACD release. A Blu Ray edition of Thriller with 5.1 mixes, a remastered original stereo mix, remastered music videos (and maybe new videos for the tracks that didn't have any) would sell extremely well. Plus, you could upload the videos to Netflix / Youtube / whereever for mass market appeal!
If they are pressing 40000 copies and they are pressing only 1000 copies per one-step stamper, it would appear that they cut at least 40 new sets of lacquers for this one-step. Not counting any that would have been necessary for pressing overages, damage/defects in the production run, or whatever other lacquers would have been needed to cut the supposed 45RPM version. People like to say the majors are hesitant to use original master tapes to cut AAA because they are “soooo fwagile uwu” and will never stand up to such horrible wear and tear resulting from being played on a professional tape machine, god forbid, but in a typical 3-step plating situation the tape is only really required to be run once or twice to cut lacquers. Then on the other hand you have a project like this, where they run the tape 40+ times, all for a one-step process that doesn’t even offer any real benefit to performance/SQ as opposed to traditional 3 step plating. Clearly the truth is somewhere in the middle but this does seem a bit excessive, no?
So I pre-ordered the Vinyl before discovering that a 2-LP 45 rpm is coming at a "later date". Did I just blow $100 (which is actually far more once you account for exchange rate, and duties and all that jazz) UGH
I wouldn't be surprised if they did a dupe with all remastering baked in and plated directly off of that.
A stupid approach if true. Another generation of tape, regardless of however well done the copy is, will result in much more significant generational loss than the supposed generational loss of any 3 step plating process. This would be a grade-A example of MoFi cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Preordered this without reading about the 45 rpm version. Does Mofi let people cancel orders? And is 45 rpm significantly better than 33?
45 rpm can be significantly better (it is better, all else being equal) and it possibly will be better in this case, but right now there’s too much up in the air with strange/conflicting information surrounding this release. We don’t really know if any of the new masterings will even sound better than a standard original US pressing.
I called and placed my preorder with Music Direct this morning.. There was no 45 rpm version for preorder.
While a 45 version would rule, and I certainly understand the excitement for it, so far it has only been hinted at by Michael Fremer. Who also is the only source for any information about it being mastered by Bernie Grundman, or possibly having a digital step. I would not hold my breath for a 45rpm version happening until there is some official mention of it elsewhere.
And this mastering is still available @24/176 for a decent price. This one and my Dutch '82 LP will do it for me for a long time.
