BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

RemarkableRadio wrote:I never bought the remastered albums in 1997. I have the original ones and those are fine for me. I will stick with that for now.
If new tracks emerge, I will reconsider. But buying everything because of a different cover or 10 seconds extra music.... not for me.
Thanks though!

The same for me. I have the original venyl records. and the same on CD
I will only buy new material.

Velodynamic wrote:What happens when the label starts massproducing CD's?
Will waveforms stay the same through the whole process to the finished product?

From the moment the final mix has been deliverd for massproduction the waveform shouldn't change. Maybe a few bits get lost in the process that's always something that can happen, but it shouldn't change anything audible to the human ear anyway. It's not like Vinyl where it's depended on so many different factors, on a CD the final mix is what ends up on CD, just in lower quality ofcourse.

Edit: I'll see if I'll consider a re-buy, seeing how in most cases I have the 1997 remastered editions because those were the ones being sold when I bought them (I'm still young so excuse me :p). I know for a fact that I'll be replacing Equinoxe because that one... Oh dear lord :')

Ok, Amazon.de update with some covers of the new remasters - serie 2014

Sony change cover of "Cities in Concert" and "Destination: Docklands". And China(82) is a double pack again...and I saw something different on Equinoxe font...

Oxygene




Equinoxe





Magnetic Fields






Concert in China :





Cities in Concert Houston/Lyon





Destination Docklands





Source:

http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=sr_st_date-d ... =date-desc

Oh my... That cover of Cities in Concert is gorgeous!

shadow wrote:Oh my... That cover of Cities in Concert is gorgeous!

Yes, I agree. That alone is tempting me to buy...!

shadow wrote:Oh my... That cover of Cities in Concert is gorgeous!

Great indeed!

Hopefully the back of Cities in Concert shows Lyon for good measure

The Docklands cover is a nice update, albeit a bit too much "in your face" maybe.

The weight of the typeface on Oxygène is too heavy. The original is a bit thinner and looks nicer. Take a close look at letter "R" for example.

Hopefully the picture for Équinoxe is not the actual cover, because it's seriously messed up... The audience characters are not centered as they are on the original, there is some overlap on the right and letters "NOXE" are bigger than the others...

Let's hope more care is given to the sound than was given to the covers. Why does Sony think we need remasters again anyway?

Cheers,

HD

What a wasted shame they are sticking with remasters instead of adding some extra material for fans. Here again are reasons to not buy in my book. If JMJ has moved over to Sony, I was expecting something bigger than remastered yet the same old re-issues. If they had have put some extra content in, then that would have been a good foundation for future releases.

Gotta agree with that, personally I'd love to have seen the original Equinoxe version on the new release. I quite enjoy the more funky version of Part 5!

Totally agree with Jon, Shadow and Black Bird... There's really no point in those remasters for the fans (except maybe for the completists) as they already have the albums. Trying to sell them the reissues again is disrespectful

What Sony could have done is some kind of retrospective of the studio albums (no need for the "live" albums apart from The Concerts in China). I doubt there are many outtakes, but they could have included a rough mix of the albums for example that shows the work in progress. Also maybe an accompanying booklet that gives some insight and analysis on the albums, placing them in their historic, technical, trend and commercial contexts, etc. A bit like what is done for releases of classical music, where they often have interesting liner notes. Jarre's chronology (no pun intended) is a history of electronic instruments, so there would be plenty to write about.

Since JMJ has been interested in 5.1 they could have made 5.1 mixes of the old albums. I'm not a big fan of such treatment, but at least that would be something a bit different from a remaster that's merely going to be the same as the original, only compressed and with the volume cranked up to 11.

Or they could have made comprehensive compilations of all the remixes and alternate versions that have been released throughout the years and are hard to find on 7", 12", maxi-CD, etc., again with some background info on those. Granted, this stuff is for fans only, but hey.

But all this is more work and research than remasters...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitching about it, everybody's trying to make a buck, right? it's just seems to be a missed opportunity. Oh well...

Cheers,

HD

Blimey, that EQUINOXE cover font does stand out like a sore thumb. Hopefully that will be picked upon and rectified... hopefully.

Danielle Fueillerat stated that Universal were the front runners to acquire the JMJ FDM back catalogue, but had to pull out as they (Universal) bought EMI/Virgin.
Universal do pretty good re-issues as regards content, but screw up occaisonally with sound glitches. What might have been ...

I don't like the changes of covers for one bit. If no changes is done to the track lists they darn well doesn't deserve other album covers then the original ones.

While the one for Cities in Concert actually looks nice, it's actually very easy to make at home (find the correct photo, type the text and add a slight glow effect on it). Dunno what they're after with the one for Docklands and the one for Equinoxe is just horrible.

So these shabby covers + the same guy responsible for Essentials & Rarities in charge of the new remasters = uh oh

But I'm still hoping for them to pleasantly surprise me. Of course, it hasn't really happened in the past 11 years (still no PLD DVD) but, well, one can hope.

Finaero wrote:So these shabby covers + the same guy responsible for Essentials & Rarities in charge of the new remasters = uh oh

This is what worries me the most, I am looking into replacing my Equinoxe and Magentic Fields discs because of the horrendous remastering those went through in '97. But if E&R is anything to go by...

Finaero wrote:But I'm still hoping for them to pleasantly surprise me. Of course, it hasn't really happened in the past 11 years (still no PLD DVD) but, well, one can hope.

All concerts with exception of China are worthless for DVD. They're all recorded on VHS in either PAL or NTSC. The resolution has been set, and while many VHS artifacts can be dealt with it's still VHS in the end. They were recorded on analoge video and it'll really never look anything better than it did when it was first aired. All these concerts were handled shortsighted. VHS was probably the easier format no doubt. Tape full? Just eject and insert a new one, problem solved. But it's by far the worst format they could have gone with for later releases.