shadow wrote:Me to with one very big exception, the audio is pushed to the Max, I never thought Jarre would take part in the Loudness war
Neither did I.
The Essentials part of the package has to be the worst thing Jarre has released in his entire career. He and the guy he's working with, have completely and utterly ruined those tracks.
I was quite disgusted by the whole thing, I couldn't believe it. The tracks sound like they were mastered by a complete amateur with a couple of dodgy plugins. They are horribly squashed in places. Some timbres have changed for the worse. Oh and did I mention: needlessly loud!!!!
The Rareties tracks suffer the same, only perceptually just not as much, simply because their sound hasn't sunk into the wider public consciousness prior to this release.
But at least the newness of the material, makes up for the loudness blunder.
I quite enjoyed the experimentation on offer.
With great music, like Jarre, you're meant to turn it up (that's what the damn volume knob is for), because it's so good. Not turn it down, because your ears are feeling fatigued after half a minute, because it's hazardously loud.
This ain't music for clubin' for Christsakes. Besides, how many people are gonna pick this up and play it in their shops/centeres/malls.... Not to mention that would only cheapen the music.
Without faith nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.
