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Well renown for their high fidelity album recordings, Pink Floyd took a couple steps back in sonic quality for their 1977 eccentric classic album, "Animals".
Recorded and mixed by Brian Humphries at their then new personal UK recording studio, Britannia Row, Animals always sounded somewhat boxed in and low fi to an extent. A little hollow and certainly flat sounding.
Well finally the album gets a new life injected into it, courtesy of a remix done in 2018 by longtime Floyd super recording engineer James Guthrie. It sounds 'modern'. This blu ray disc edition features the new remix in stereo and 5.1 surround sound, in hi res 24 bit 192kHz and 24 bit 96kHz respectively. (Also available is the original 1976 mix remastered in 24bit 192kHz- for purists.)
All 3 mixes are available in both DTS Master Audio and uncompressed versions. (The uncompressed being an exact copy of the studio files in LPCM [Linear Pulse Code Modulation] full uncompressed data WAV format.) The uncompressed versions are superior (the 5.1 thru-put is a steady, fixed 13.8 megabytes per second) to the much lower bitrate DTS 5.1 version, which has a peak thru-put data rate of 9.1mbps. (The stereo/2 left/right channel mixes' thru-put peaks at 3.5mbps). It is mentioned in the calibration portion of the disc that the DTS-MA encoded versions are available also for the reason that if the listener is using a TOS Link connection from their blu ray player to their receiver/hi fi unit (TOS, also known as Light Pipe or better known as an Optical cable connection) that it will handle the 1.5mbps requirement/thru-put limit to get a sufficient amount of data that will specifically yield a hi res informatiom including multiple surround channel data (however, the signal, volume and sonic detail resolution is lessened and flattened somewhat.).
The best versions to listen to are the uncompressed LPCM ones- the full master file replicated clone copy is much "warmer" (and not harsh, cold common early digital era sounding flat) sounding The new stereo mix is by far more modern, bigger, thus massively improved upon. There is a beautiful blend of the lower fi sounds of the original mix with a lot of boomy bass and sweet high end/hi fi frequencies carefully re-equalized by Guthrie within the hi res 24 bit resolution realm (this means that the original multitrack tapes were recorded well, which prior to was often thought of being an inferior lacklustre recording due to the low res/mid-rangey sound quality of the 1976 mix). In fact, there i a lot lower end in the drum toms, bass and at times in the keyboards. (The keyboards are more louder in the 2018 mix, yielding a lot of fine minuate details and textures otherwise buried in the original 70s mix). The low end frequencies somewhat at times kind of resemble the rumbling yet smooth thunder bass frequencies given by an 808 drum machine.
The surround mix is rather dynamic with volume levels, and not too aurally compressed. There are no distracting surprise sounds popping out of nowhere in the surround speakers that will make the listener's head turn. The 5.1 is a beautiful well listening environment balanced heady blend of dramatic instrument and effects [like reverb] steering that is enveloping and truly immersive. It's also a little conservative and traditionally mixed so as not to overwhelm the listener. Like I said, the keyboards are more prominent, as well as the drums. The vocals are at times very dry (sans effects like reverb, echo and vocoder placed upfront) and clear. At other times there are effects on the vocals that perfectly mimic the way the vox were mixed for the original 1977 version.
Sometimes it's so accurate (for instance Roger Waters' vocal treatments on Pigs and Sheep) that it makes me think these effects were "printed to tape" on the multitrack tape, meaning the vox were recorded with effects signals to tape). Dogs is a very savvy intellectual mix. Pigs is deep and upfront with well defined textures coming from how the instruments were played- specifically, a detailed recording of the unique tones coming from the hands of the band's musicians. Besides the short bookend tracks Pigs On The Wing 1 and 2 being mixed upfront and dry, the next least dramatically heavily pounding hi fi remixed song (in comparison) is Sheep. But that's a very lyric/vocal oriented number so the focus is on the balancing of the centre channel to emit that aspect. All in all, this blu ray (or the more deluxe boxed version containing the blu ray) is well worth getting if you're a Pink Floyd fanatic and purist.
Massive New Life is breathed into this classic 42 minute epic record that is conceptually poetic and seriously politically charged content-wise. A really interesting period for the band (these songs were developed over 3 years or so...working/early versions with different titles were played on their 1975 Wish You Were Here album concert tour shows). This concept album is quite left of center stylistically, avoidibg the radio single length numbers of their previous two hit commercial sounding records.
After this album the band would splinter personnel-wise and a more theatrical , commercial Roger Waters smeared sound and song structure (see "The Wall") and eventually lead to a dull empty style would emerge (see the iltra lyrical/vocal concept album "The Final Cut" and arguably the "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason" record.) By the way, the text in the calibration 'system set up' section of the disc also mentions how listening to this hi res audio content disc through a very good blu ray player with a good+ DAC (digital audio converter chip) and/or hooking it up to the receiver/amp unit via analog outs on the player ( most players lack these ports) is the best way to listen to this remastered remixed re-release, that is the "closest way to the studio experience". (Whereas having the blu ray hooked up to your receiver/amp via HDMI connection will yield "the purest 'closest to the original master' choice is still yhe uncompressed files.'"
This remixed album is also a good learning tool for a recording and mix sound engineer to study methodologies of surround sound placement and for the 'still faithful to the original version' ethically concerned mixers out there.
It's fun to listen to the uncompressed WAVs of the remastered original Humphries 1977 mix to the 2018 Guthrie remix...it is a great improvement and is certainly "different" yet it still is respectful of the original vibe and mood and sound somewhat of the original release. I just noticed that there is an SACD ('super audio cd') version of the remixes available.
I wonder if the DSD ('direct stream digital' 1 bit) version on it is even more sonically better and detail and frequency defined than these uncompressed WAV LPCM files...
P.S. the online-offered-to-purchase FLAC format downloadable version is somewhat close to the WAV version sound quality aspect...FLAC is apparently lossless no matter the encoded data thru-put rate, but I kind of think it has a little less wide soundstage that the remixes' masters on the blu ray have inherently. 10 out 10 must-have.
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Incredible Sonic temix of an eccentric politically charged semi experimental 70's classic.
Well renown for their high fidelity album recordings, Pink Floyd took a couple steps back in sonic quality for their 1977 eccentric classic album, "Animals". Recorded and mixed by Brian Humphries at their then new personal UK recording studio, Britannia Row, Animals always sounded somewhat boxed in and low fi to an extent. A little hollow and certainly flat sounding. Well finally the album gets a new life injected into it, courtesy of a remix done in 2018 by longtime Floyd super recording engineer James Guthrie. It sounds 'modern'. This blu ray disc edition features the new remix in stereo and 5.1 surround sound, in hi res 24 bit 192kHz and 24 bit 96kHz respectively. (Also available is the original 1976 mix remastered in 24bit 192kHz- for purists.) All 3 mixes are available in both DTS Master Audio and uncompressed versions. (The uncompressed being an exact copy of the studio files in LPCM [Linear Pulse Code Modulation] full uncompressed data WAV format.) The uncompressed versions are superior (the 5.1 thru-put is a steady, fixed 13.8 megabytes per second) to the much lower bitrate DTS 5.1 version, which has a peak thru-put data rate of 9.1mbps. (The stereo/2 left/right channel mixes' thru-put peaks at 3.5mbps). It is mentioned in the calibration portion of the disc that the DTS-MA encoded versions are available also for the reason that if the listener is using a TOS Link connection from their blu ray player to their receiver/hi fi unit (TOS, also known as Light Pipe or better known as an Optical cable connection) that it will handle the 1.5mbps requirement/thru-put limit to get a sufficient amount of data that will specifically yield a hi res informatiom including multiple surround channel data (however, the signal, volume and sonic detail resolution is lessened and flattened somewhat.). The best versions to listen to are the uncompressed LPCM ones- the full master file replicated clone copy is much "warmer" (and not harsh, cold common early digital era sounding flat) sounding The new stereo mix is by far more modern, bigger, thus massively improved upon. There is a beautiful blend of the lower fi sounds of the original mix with a lot of boomy bass and sweet high end/hi fi frequencies carefully re-equalized by Guthrie within the hi res 24 bit resolution realm (this means that the original multitrack tapes were recorded well, which prior to was often thought of being an inferior lacklustre recording due to the low res/mid-rangey sound quality of the 1976 mix). In fact, there i a lot lower end in the drum toms, bass and at times in the keyboards. (The keyboards are more louder in the 2018 mix, yielding a lot of fine minuate details and textures otherwise buried in the original 70s mix). The low end frequencies somewhat at times kind of resemble the rumbling yet smooth thunder bass frequencies given by an 808 drum machine. The surround mix is rather dynamic with volume levels, and not too aurally compressed. There are no distracting surprise sounds popping out of nowhere in the surround speakers that will make the listener's head turn. The 5.1 is a beautiful well listening environment balanced heady blend of dramatic instrument and effects [like reverb] steering that is enveloping and truly immersive. It's also a little conservative and traditionally mixed so as not to overwhelm the listener. Like I said, the keyboards are more prominent, as well as the drums. The vocals are at times very dry (sans effects like reverb, echo and vocoder placed upfront) and clear. At other times there are effects on the vocals that perfectly mimic the way the vox were mixed for the original 1977 version. Sometimes it's so accurate (for instance Roger Waters' vocal treatments on Pigs and Sheep) that it makes me think these effects were "printed to tape" on the multitrack tape, meaning the vox were recorded with effects signals to tape). Dogs is a very savvy intellectual mix. Pigs is deep and upfront with well defined textures coming from how the instruments were played- specifically, a detailed recording of the unique tones coming from the hands of the band's musicians. Besides the short bookend tracks Pigs On The Wing 1 and 2 being mixed upfront and dry, the next least dramatically heavily pounding hi fi remixed song (in comparison) is Sheep. But that's a very lyric/vocal oriented number so the focus is on the balancing of the centre channel to emit that aspect. All in all, this blu ray (or the more deluxe boxed version containing the blu ray) is well worth getting if you're a Pink Floyd fanatic and purist. Massive New Life is breathed into this classic 42 minute epic record that is conceptually poetic and seriously politically charged content-wise. A really interesting period for the band (these songs were developed over 3 years or so...working/early versions with different titles were played on their 1975 Wish You Were Here album concert tour shows). This concept album is quite left of center stylistically, avoidibg the radio single length numbers of their previous two hit commercial sounding records. After this album the band would splinter personnel-wise and a more theatrical , commercial Roger Waters smeared sound and song structure (see "The Wall") and eventually lead to a dull empty style would emerge (see the iltra lyrical/vocal concept album "The Final Cut" and arguably the "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason" record.) By the way, the text in the calibration 'system set up' section of the disc also mentions how listening to this hi res audio content disc through a very good blu ray player with a good+ DAC (digital audio converter chip) and/or hooking it up to the receiver/amp unit via analog outs on the player ( most players lack these ports) is the best way to listen to this remastered remixed re-release, that is the "closest way to the studio experience". (Whereas having the blu ray hooked up to your receiver/amp via HDMI connection will yield "the purest 'closest to the original master' choice is still yhe uncompressed files.'" This remixed album is also a good learning tool for a recording and mix sound engineer to study methodologies of surround sound placement and for the 'still faithful to the original version' ethically concerned mixers out there. It's fun to listen to the uncompressed WAVs of the remastered original Humphries 1977 mix to the 2018 Guthrie remix...it is a great improvement and is certainly "different" yet it still is respectful of the original vibe and mood and sound somewhat of the original release. I just noticed that there is an SACD ('super audio cd') version of the remixes available. I wonder if the DSD ('direct stream digital' 1 bit) version on it is even more sonically better and detail and frequency defined than these uncompressed WAV LPCM files...P.S. the online-offered-to-purchase FLAC format downloadable version is somewhat close to the WAV version sound quality aspect...FLAC is apparently lossless no matter the encoded data thru-put rate, but I kind of think it has a little less wide soundstage that the remixes' masters on the blu ray have inherently. 10 out 10 must-have.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2022
Recorded and mixed by Brian Humphries at their then new personal UK recording studio, Britannia Row, Animals always sounded somewhat boxed in and low fi to an extent. A little hollow and certainly flat sounding.
Well finally the album gets a new life injected into it, courtesy of a remix done in 2018 by longtime Floyd super recording engineer James Guthrie. It sounds 'modern'. This blu ray disc edition features the new remix in stereo and 5.1 surround sound, in hi res 24 bit 192kHz and 24 bit 96kHz respectively. (Also available is the original 1976 mix remastered in 24bit 192kHz- for purists.)
All 3 mixes are available in both DTS Master Audio and uncompressed versions. (The uncompressed being an exact copy of the studio files in LPCM [Linear Pulse Code Modulation] full uncompressed data WAV format.) The uncompressed versions are superior (the 5.1 thru-put is a steady, fixed 13.8 megabytes per second) to the much lower bitrate DTS 5.1 version, which has a peak thru-put data rate of 9.1mbps. (The stereo/2 left/right channel mixes' thru-put peaks at 3.5mbps). It is mentioned in the calibration portion of the disc that the DTS-MA encoded versions are available also for the reason that if the listener is using a TOS Link connection from their blu ray player to their receiver/hi fi unit (TOS, also known as Light Pipe or better known as an Optical cable connection) that it will handle the 1.5mbps requirement/thru-put limit to get a sufficient amount of data that will specifically yield a hi res informatiom including multiple surround channel data (however, the signal, volume and sonic detail resolution is lessened and flattened somewhat.).
The best versions to listen to are the uncompressed LPCM ones- the full master file replicated clone copy is much "warmer" (and not harsh, cold common early digital era sounding flat) sounding The new stereo mix is by far more modern, bigger, thus massively improved upon. There is a beautiful blend of the lower fi sounds of the original mix with a lot of boomy bass and sweet high end/hi fi frequencies carefully re-equalized by Guthrie within the hi res 24 bit resolution realm (this means that the original multitrack tapes were recorded well, which prior to was often thought of being an inferior lacklustre recording due to the low res/mid-rangey sound quality of the 1976 mix). In fact, there i a lot lower end in the drum toms, bass and at times in the keyboards. (The keyboards are more louder in the 2018 mix, yielding a lot of fine minuate details and textures otherwise buried in the original 70s mix). The low end frequencies somewhat at times kind of resemble the rumbling yet smooth thunder bass frequencies given by an 808 drum machine.
The surround mix is rather dynamic with volume levels, and not too aurally compressed. There are no distracting surprise sounds popping out of nowhere in the surround speakers that will make the listener's head turn. The 5.1 is a beautiful well listening environment balanced heady blend of dramatic instrument and effects [like reverb] steering that is enveloping and truly immersive. It's also a little conservative and traditionally mixed so as not to overwhelm the listener. Like I said, the keyboards are more prominent, as well as the drums. The vocals are at times very dry (sans effects like reverb, echo and vocoder placed upfront) and clear. At other times there are effects on the vocals that perfectly mimic the way the vox were mixed for the original 1977 version.
Sometimes it's so accurate (for instance Roger Waters' vocal treatments on Pigs and Sheep) that it makes me think these effects were "printed to tape" on the multitrack tape, meaning the vox were recorded with effects signals to tape). Dogs is a very savvy intellectual mix. Pigs is deep and upfront with well defined textures coming from how the instruments were played- specifically, a detailed recording of the unique tones coming from the hands of the band's musicians. Besides the short bookend tracks Pigs On The Wing 1 and 2 being mixed upfront and dry, the next least dramatically heavily pounding hi fi remixed song (in comparison) is Sheep. But that's a very lyric/vocal oriented number so the focus is on the balancing of the centre channel to emit that aspect. All in all, this blu ray (or the more deluxe boxed version containing the blu ray) is well worth getting if you're a Pink Floyd fanatic and purist.
Massive New Life is breathed into this classic 42 minute epic record that is conceptually poetic and seriously politically charged content-wise. A really interesting period for the band (these songs were developed over 3 years or so...working/early versions with different titles were played on their 1975 Wish You Were Here album concert tour shows). This concept album is quite left of center stylistically, avoidibg the radio single length numbers of their previous two hit commercial sounding records.
After this album the band would splinter personnel-wise and a more theatrical , commercial Roger Waters smeared sound and song structure (see "The Wall") and eventually lead to a dull empty style would emerge (see the iltra lyrical/vocal concept album "The Final Cut" and arguably the "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason" record.) By the way, the text in the calibration 'system set up' section of the disc also mentions how listening to this hi res audio content disc through a very good blu ray player with a good+ DAC (digital audio converter chip) and/or hooking it up to the receiver/amp unit via analog outs on the player ( most players lack these ports) is the best way to listen to this remastered remixed re-release, that is the "closest way to the studio experience". (Whereas having the blu ray hooked up to your receiver/amp via HDMI connection will yield "the purest 'closest to the original master' choice is still yhe uncompressed files.'"
This remixed album is also a good learning tool for a recording and mix sound engineer to study methodologies of surround sound placement and for the 'still faithful to the original version' ethically concerned mixers out there.
It's fun to listen to the uncompressed WAVs of the remastered original Humphries 1977 mix to the 2018 Guthrie remix...it is a great improvement and is certainly "different" yet it still is respectful of the original vibe and mood and sound somewhat of the original release. I just noticed that there is an SACD ('super audio cd') version of the remixes available.
I wonder if the DSD ('direct stream digital' 1 bit) version on it is even more sonically better and detail and frequency defined than these uncompressed WAV LPCM files...
P.S. the online-offered-to-purchase FLAC format downloadable version is somewhat close to the WAV version sound quality aspect...FLAC is apparently lossless no matter the encoded data thru-put rate, but I kind of think it has a little less wide soundstage that the remixes' masters on the blu ray have inherently. 10 out 10 must-have.
Incredible Sonic temix of an eccentric politically charged semi experimental 70's classic.
Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2022
Well renown for their high fidelity album recordings, Pink Floyd took a couple steps back in sonic quality for their 1977 eccentric classic album, "Animals".Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2022
Recorded and mixed by Brian Humphries at their then new personal UK recording studio, Britannia Row, Animals always sounded somewhat boxed in and low fi to an extent. A little hollow and certainly flat sounding.
Well finally the album gets a new life injected into it, courtesy of a remix done in 2018 by longtime Floyd super recording engineer James Guthrie. It sounds 'modern'. This blu ray disc edition features the new remix in stereo and 5.1 surround sound, in hi res 24 bit 192kHz and 24 bit 96kHz respectively. (Also available is the original 1976 mix remastered in 24bit 192kHz- for purists.)
All 3 mixes are available in both DTS Master Audio and uncompressed versions. (The uncompressed being an exact copy of the studio files in LPCM [Linear Pulse Code Modulation] full uncompressed data WAV format.) The uncompressed versions are superior (the 5.1 thru-put is a steady, fixed 13.8 megabytes per second) to the much lower bitrate DTS 5.1 version, which has a peak thru-put data rate of 9.1mbps. (The stereo/2 left/right channel mixes' thru-put peaks at 3.5mbps). It is mentioned in the calibration portion of the disc that the DTS-MA encoded versions are available also for the reason that if the listener is using a TOS Link connection from their blu ray player to their receiver/hi fi unit (TOS, also known as Light Pipe or better known as an Optical cable connection) that it will handle the 1.5mbps requirement/thru-put limit to get a sufficient amount of data that will specifically yield a hi res informatiom including multiple surround channel data (however, the signal, volume and sonic detail resolution is lessened and flattened somewhat.).
The best versions to listen to are the uncompressed LPCM ones- the full master file replicated clone copy is much "warmer" (and not harsh, cold common early digital era sounding flat) sounding The new stereo mix is by far more modern, bigger, thus massively improved upon. There is a beautiful blend of the lower fi sounds of the original mix with a lot of boomy bass and sweet high end/hi fi frequencies carefully re-equalized by Guthrie within the hi res 24 bit resolution realm (this means that the original multitrack tapes were recorded well, which prior to was often thought of being an inferior lacklustre recording due to the low res/mid-rangey sound quality of the 1976 mix). In fact, there i a lot lower end in the drum toms, bass and at times in the keyboards. (The keyboards are more louder in the 2018 mix, yielding a lot of fine minuate details and textures otherwise buried in the original 70s mix). The low end frequencies somewhat at times kind of resemble the rumbling yet smooth thunder bass frequencies given by an 808 drum machine.
The surround mix is rather dynamic with volume levels, and not too aurally compressed. There are no distracting surprise sounds popping out of nowhere in the surround speakers that will make the listener's head turn. The 5.1 is a beautiful well listening environment balanced heady blend of dramatic instrument and effects [like reverb] steering that is enveloping and truly immersive. It's also a little conservative and traditionally mixed so as not to overwhelm the listener. Like I said, the keyboards are more prominent, as well as the drums. The vocals are at times very dry (sans effects like reverb, echo and vocoder placed upfront) and clear. At other times there are effects on the vocals that perfectly mimic the way the vox were mixed for the original 1977 version.
Sometimes it's so accurate (for instance Roger Waters' vocal treatments on Pigs and Sheep) that it makes me think these effects were "printed to tape" on the multitrack tape, meaning the vox were recorded with effects signals to tape). Dogs is a very savvy intellectual mix. Pigs is deep and upfront with well defined textures coming from how the instruments were played- specifically, a detailed recording of the unique tones coming from the hands of the band's musicians. Besides the short bookend tracks Pigs On The Wing 1 and 2 being mixed upfront and dry, the next least dramatically heavily pounding hi fi remixed song (in comparison) is Sheep. But that's a very lyric/vocal oriented number so the focus is on the balancing of the centre channel to emit that aspect. All in all, this blu ray (or the more deluxe boxed version containing the blu ray) is well worth getting if you're a Pink Floyd fanatic and purist.
Massive New Life is breathed into this classic 42 minute epic record that is conceptually poetic and seriously politically charged content-wise. A really interesting period for the band (these songs were developed over 3 years or so...working/early versions with different titles were played on their 1975 Wish You Were Here album concert tour shows). This concept album is quite left of center stylistically, avoidibg the radio single length numbers of their previous two hit commercial sounding records.
After this album the band would splinter personnel-wise and a more theatrical , commercial Roger Waters smeared sound and song structure (see "The Wall") and eventually lead to a dull empty style would emerge (see the iltra lyrical/vocal concept album "The Final Cut" and arguably the "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason" record.) By the way, the text in the calibration 'system set up' section of the disc also mentions how listening to this hi res audio content disc through a very good blu ray player with a good+ DAC (digital audio converter chip) and/or hooking it up to the receiver/amp unit via analog outs on the player ( most players lack these ports) is the best way to listen to this remastered remixed re-release, that is the "closest way to the studio experience". (Whereas having the blu ray hooked up to your receiver/amp via HDMI connection will yield "the purest 'closest to the original master' choice is still yhe uncompressed files.'"
This remixed album is also a good learning tool for a recording and mix sound engineer to study methodologies of surround sound placement and for the 'still faithful to the original version' ethically concerned mixers out there.
It's fun to listen to the uncompressed WAVs of the remastered original Humphries 1977 mix to the 2018 Guthrie remix...it is a great improvement and is certainly "different" yet it still is respectful of the original vibe and mood and sound somewhat of the original release. I just noticed that there is an SACD ('super audio cd') version of the remixes available.
I wonder if the DSD ('direct stream digital' 1 bit) version on it is even more sonically better and detail and frequency defined than these uncompressed WAV LPCM files...
P.S. the online-offered-to-purchase FLAC format downloadable version is somewhat close to the WAV version sound quality aspect...FLAC is apparently lossless no matter the encoded data thru-put rate, but I kind of think it has a little less wide soundstage that the remixes' masters on the blu ray have inherently. 10 out 10 must-have.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2024
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2024
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Hal9001
Will this 2018 Animals Deluxe set be "dragged down by the stone"?
Reviewed in Canada on October 17, 2022
Hal9001
Reviewed in Canada on October 17, 2022
The deluxe version is presented in an LP sized hardcover gatefold book. On the inside the CD, Bluray and DVD sit inset on the right side, while the vinyl (in a black paper jacket) and 32 page booklet are located in a slip case from the top of the left side. The package is nicely put together, and recalls the original gatefold LP sleeve with updated graphics. The interior of the set along with the soft book include imagery from the original photoshoots at Battersea along with studio and live shots from the era including the press/publicity for the album and some fun shots of the inflatables made for the Animals Tour (aka the In The Flesh Tour). I love the deconstruction of the original Battersea Power Station image on the cover re-do, and the whole package is nice, but nothing unexpected really.
The vinyl contains just the 2018 stereo remix, as does the CD... the Bluray and DVD, however, contain the 2018 remix in both 5.1 and stereo, as well as the original 1977 mix. These versions are all in uncompressed high res quality on the discs. In general the whole album now sounds huge, drums, bass, keys, guitar and vocals all pop and it all sounds much more present. The original 1977 mix, while perfectly fine in it's own right, suffered from a slight lack of dynamics and it seemed a bit quiet compared to other Floyd albums, many people considered it a little muddy. All of this has been addressed, so much so that you can hear a bunch of stuff you kind of knew was there before, but now is totally obvious... as well as little moments you probably haven't heard before.
On a set of stereo headphones the album sounds great, almost like the album was made this year, it just sounds good! In 5.1 you're kind of transported to the studio and at times it sounds like you're sitting there listening to the band, it's pretty wild. James Guthrie didn't go too crazy on the 3D surround stuff, mostly tasteful placement of fx and sounds with a fun surprise or two which I won't spoil... he mostly keeps it all grounded in the pure Rock album it is and lets you enjoy the ride. There are also some slight changes from the original '77 mix, reverb has been removed from Waters intro and outro vocal for Pigs on the Wing 1&2, the "lords prayer" in sheep it pulled way up front so you can actually hear it now, which was always a struggle on the '77 mix and the vocal harmonies have been pulled up in a few cases... there are a few other things but after a bunch of listens I quite like these "updates". As a side note, my turntable is currently broken so I haven't listened to the vinyl yet, but a close friend has it and says it sounds great on his system.
Only downside I can see is this is definitely a bass and drum heavy mix, some people may not like that, doesn't bug me. Then there may be audio purists who prefer to stick with the original mix and that's perfectly fine! I like to think of this 2018 remix as less of a replacement for the 1977 mix, and more as an alternative for those who always wished this album was a bit more dynamic sounding.
Overall at the end of the day this is one of my favorite albums of all time, so I'm happy to finally have a enhanced stereo version of it, as well as a surround sound version, nice to finally cross that off my list! This remix took FAR too long to get here, but I'm glad it finally happened :)
Giving the Deluxe version a 4/5 for it's presentation and package quality, it's nice but I mean it could have been a little more interesting I think for the $$. The remix in all of its incarnations is a 5/5 for me.
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