www.wowhd.co.uk
most people don't really care about audiophile releases (not me, i do)
Bro shows up to the discussion that ended 2 months ago talking bout "Nobody is interested"
Most of the people who still own a CD player can't play those, they don't work. They don't work with a PC/laptop drive either, which many newer computers don't have anyway. They also don't work on a DVD player, but a regular CD does. The players that are compatible, never caught on with the general public. Just like laserdisc didn't in the VHS tape days. I don't own a SACD player, and never wanted one. There were very few albums that came out on that format.
That's the part that makes me sad. Michael, Quincy and Bruce tried really hard to make the albums sound as good as possible. Thriller, Bad and Dangerous all literally won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album. It's a big kick in the teeth for all that hard work when people say they don't give a shit about sound quality. People need to have some respect for MJs art.
It's a SACD. It works on SACD players. Mission accomplished. Of course it won't work on a MiniDisc player or if you put it in your toaster.
Which makes it even more special that MJ has been chosen for a SACD release.
Yes, it's confirmed. Thriller and OTW are both Hybrid SACDs, which means they have a red-book CD layer and therefore they work on all CD players. I guess DD didn't read beyond the headline.
The point is that you are expecting people to be interested in a release that most people do not have the player for. I doubt most of the mainstream audience even knows this format exists. So it doesn't matter if it has a normal CD layer or not. When CDs were still popular, the general public bought them at stores like Walmart, Target, K-Mart, Sam Goody, & Best Buy which did not sell SACDs. Also, most albums were not released on that format. As far as I know, there were no singles on SACD either. So why would somebody buy a SACD player that there wasn't much of a selection for? Back in the day the average person had a cheap component stereo from K-Mart or Radio Shack. Others had a boombox, a Walkman cassette player, a transistor radio, or a 8-track player.
Also MoFi has always been more a a niche thing. If people had a cheap stereo with low quality speakers, the MoFi mix isn't going to make much of a difference. The average person couldn't afford audiophile stereo euipment that costs thousands of dollars.
That's the part that makes me sad. Michael, Quincy and Bruce tried really hard to make the albums sound as good as possible. Thriller, Bad and Dangerous all literally won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album. It's a big kick in the teeth for all that hard work when people say they don't give a shit about sound quality. People need to have some respect for MJs art.
Kanye West & Jay-Z have won more Grammys than Michael Jackson. Do you respect their music?
Beyoncé has won more than anybody else including Quincy Jones. She's probably going to get some more in the upcoming Grammy Awards too. A lot of the younger generation grew up with MP3s, IPODs, digital downloads, brickwalling, streaming, & 240 quality videos on Youtube/Dailymotion. As Randy said on The Jacksons Live! album, they don't care about what you're talking about.
Yes, and there was immense interest in 1080P video files, and now there's immense interest in 4K TVs with HDR, and videogames that run at 120Hz. And people are looking forward to 8K, and buying bigger and bigger screens.
And that's the part that makes me sad.
Those would be just two of the reasons why I'm not interested, lol. From the world of classical music, some people think the SACD version is better quality and other people strongly disagree. It's not universally loved, it does have its detractors.
I'm sure Quincy and Bruce knew very well that the majority of record buyers didn't know or care about the highest level of sound quality. That's just reality. When people slag off Quincy or dismiss his contribution to Michael's work I defend him bc I think he was a brilliant musician/producer who was the perfect person for Michael to work with at that stage in his career. But I think it's a real stretch to characterise a lack of interest in audiophile stuff as a 'kick in the teeth' for the work that Quincy and Bruce did. Bruce, at least, is practically regarded as a god by many of Michael's fans.
And many people do respect Michael's art, imo. But that doesn't have to include becoming an audiophile. The new MoFi vinyl of OTW comes out next year and I seriously considered buying it. And then decided not to bother. It's too expensive. I don't have anything to play it on so it would just sit there, being an artefact that doesn't get used. I have no desire to build a new vinyl collection so there is no point in buying new equipment. I'm very glad MoFi are doing OTW but my interest in it has dissipated.
Huh? A high-resolution disc is objectively an improvement. I think you'd struggle to find anybody who would say an SACD sounded worse. Like, you might get a rare example of an album with has worse mastering, but we know that's not the case here.
In the booklets, Michael even used to tell us which brand of cables were used in the studio. He was proud of it. He didn't just sit in front of an iPad for a couple of days to create each album. Sound quality was his focus. He always was against streaming, and always used to go on about being able to feel the bass in your chest.
I don't know whether this is subconscious or not, but several people have started to use this label "audiophile", as if it's a convenient way to set up an "us and them" situation and to dismiss an entire group.
You're right. If I'm honest, £40 for an album is a disgrace. If you're not careful about shipping and taxes, it could easily run to £80, which is unacceptable. Back in the 90s you could walk into a normal record store and buy a MoFi gold CD for a normal price - I don't know what happened to change it into a rare ultra-premium ripoff product. Especially when it's not even in 5.1.
I'm actually using these releases as a way to fall in love with the albums all over again.
Agreed.
And yet those people are out there. Some are people I know, some are convos I've seen online (classical music, not pop). I don't think it's so much that they think the SACD sounds worse, just not that great given all the fuss that's made about them and the expense. This isn't my opinion bc I don't listen to SACD, I'm only reporting what I've heard or observed.
And I'm up for all of this, especially the bass thing.
I don't have a neat and tidy definition of 'audiophile'. To me it's someone who is way more bothered about sound quality than I am. They most likely are happy to spend lots of money on expensive equipment which I am not. It's not about disrespecting Michael's art, that's just not true. Most people are happy with bog standard equipment. As long as I have decent sound for the bass guitar I'm happy. I don't need top-of-the-range.
I love music but my love for decent sound quality only goes so far. I'm not an audiophile. It's not that big a deal, imo. And I'm sure most musicians understand that.
I've watched some of those and they are good and one of them even got me into the demo of SOOML which I always previously had no time for. So, yeah, it works. But not one of those videos has made me want to watch loads of them or change my equipment set-up or whatever. I like to dip in occasionally but not often. And the videos I have watched, I never revisit them. Not so far, anyway.
I don't know whether these products are so expensive bc it's a collectors' market and they are sort of a captive audience who will pay premium prices - bc they are audiophiles, lol. Or is there some technical reason why the products have to be so pricey? I don't know anything about stuff like that.
Back in the 1960s, Berry Gordy said they mixed their music so that it would sound good on a transistor radio or car speakers. Car stereo in the 1960s was not the same as in the 1980s. Most cars then only had AM radio which was and still is mono. Transistor radios were also mono. FM radio stations (stereo) didn't really pick up until the 1970s. Even in the early 1970s, some 45s still had mono mixes.
This.
Always with these Wikipedia tier posts.
My world, lol.
In the 1970's (UK) most of us still had mono record players, almost everyone still had mono radios. It was just normal. But it's true certain songs sounded better than others on the radio. Berry Gordy's method really did work.
This all really just sounds like a HiFi bootlicker wanting to hype himself up. Lol
An unwritten rule.. almost everything leaked and MJ related has problems with audio quality somehwere.. it keeps the value high for future trading.
For me, any improvement is an improvement. Especially when it's MJ, because (1) I love the songs for much, and (2) we know how much effort he put in to making it sound great.
Yeah, things have definitely changed over the last 20 years. Used to be people cared about the sound of their music, they cared about the sound in their cars, and they cared about the sound from their TV.
It doesn't really have to be expensive. It just has to be good. Actually, buying good source material improves the sound even on low-end equipment.
True. But it's not as if having an album that sounds good actually does any harm to those with low-end equipment.
It's basically just to take advantage of people. No other reason.
Nope. You can buy a brand new SACD for $15 or £10. No reason anything has to be $50. I've bought several MoFi gold CD releases before, going back many years, and until recently they've barely been any more expensive than a normal release.
