It will be interesting to see (hear) if they will improve on the horrible original mastering of A Bigger Bang.
Exactly what I was thinking. You can pick up Undercover, Emotional Rescue, even Tattoo You and Some Girls for very little money in the U.K. Think I paid £1 for my pristine Dirty Work. At £370 this works out at nearly £25 an album. No dice for me.
MPO did the Springsteen box (Vol. 1), and they did a nice job on that one. I find that they're pretty good overall but I've gotten a few real duds from them as well. So the issue with these huge box sets, for me at least, is: can any of us trust any pressing plant nowadays to give us 20 pieces of exceptionally pressed vinyl in one box? If not, how do you work out exchanges and returns without sending the whole thing back? Also, it looks Badlands mentioned that the US and Canada are not going to receive the hi-res download voucher. If that's the case, I think a lot of us will be pretty p!$$€d off as nearly every site I've seen mentions it as being included. Anyway, my $0.02...
They should have managed to solve the copyrights issues or whatever with this before putting the box set in the market. We are not talking about a single album 320k download. 15 albums hi-res wavs! Huge. And you don't get lower price (except for the Amazon.com mistake thing). I'm beginning to hate UMe's business practices.
Yeah. My cart says $374.32. Dang thing kept saying I was eligible for the "SAVE20" code, but that did not work. Crazy computers and their binary thinking. My hope with this set is a good copy of Goats Head Soup. Other than the 80s CBS "euro" version of GHS which I've never heard (and is supposedly digital), it's hard to find anyone super pleased with a GHS pressing, be it UK or US.
What evidence is there of the download codes not being included in the US and Canada? I’ve seen nothing about this in any official capacity.
US Official Store: "ALL BOX SETS INCLUDE DOWNLOAD CODES FOR HIGH QUALITY DIGITAL VERSIONS" EU Official Store: "includes a download card for HD digital redemption of the catalogue" Then, online stores like Badlands.co.uk and JPC.de: "The boxset will contain a download card with high-res audio .WAV downloads (Ex. US/CA)" Finally, when Brussels Affair was first released on Google Music, US only got MP3 while in EU we could download FLAC files. I bet no hi-res WAVs will be available in US/CA for this box set. I really hope that the actual release will prove me wrong. Edit: just found this in MusicVaultz. Want a Stones turntable? Studio Albums Vinyl Collection + The Rolling Stones Turntable
The simple solution is that North American editions will include a download card for redemption within that territory, and other editions will have a different card for redemption from outside that territory. Could be wrong... but that would make some sense, at least
We get “high quality”. That means MP3’s. Eh...I don’t care anyway, I’m not getting this for the downloads. I’ve never actually used one of those download cards...except to set a drink on.
I'm sure in a few months after the release Amazon Italy or another site will have a super low price for a few days like with all the other box sets. Seems to happened as a norm in recent years.
Eh. Oh well. I have perfectly serviceable Virgin CDs of the '70s-'90s albums as well as Bigger Bang and Blue & Lonesome. I can live with those.
My copy of the 2016 half-speed mastered Exile didn’t come with any download code. But I believe I read somewhere that copies sold in the EU came with a download.
I know we all love pricing updates here on the forum so here goes: Collectors' Choice has this on preorder for $374.31. With the 20% coupon on offer the total comes to $317.40 (with standard shipping). I bumped it up to expedited shipping for $9.00 more. Not bad for a box I don't really need but knew I'd buy anyway. (It's the Stones...)
While I'm extremely happy with my UK Goats Head Soup (it's a first press, I once had a later UK press and it truly did sound horrible in comparison), I too think this could be one of the more interesting LPs in the new set if they make it nice-sounding. And which version of Star Star will they include?