Customer Reviews

Days of Future Passed (Deluxe Edition)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If the viciously opposed viewpoints you've read under this product heading have you "on the fence," about whether it's worth 30-odd dollars plunked down, allow me to provide one, carefully considered clarification.

I'm sure you already know this work... probably intimately. I can't imagine you have any want or need for my opinion or analysis of the art, or its creators. But I honestly can't think of a good reason why someone would "invest" in this particular issue of it, IF THEY WEREN'T ABLE TO RETRIEVE THE INFORMATION ENCODED ON THE DISCS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Well ok... they can retrieve disc 2. I listened to it once. I doubt if I ever will again. It's fine, but I have always felt bonus tracks were primarly for completists, which if you ARE, of Moodies material, then it will be of value to you. Most of it sounds decent, but none of it sounds as good the SACD.

Ahhhh... the SACD... let me put it this way:

IT'S F-----G TRANSCENDENTAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's as PERFECT as I can possibly imagine a mass-produced transfer of this album that you can own in your home being! Not only is it worth the $30-odd bucks for the set, IT'S ALSO WORTH ANOTHER $500 TO PURCHASE A COMPLETE SACD-capable SURROUND-SOUND SYSTEM AND SPEND TWO DAYS SETTING IT UP AND TWEAKING IT UNTIL IT'S PERFECT BEFORE TREATING YOUR EARS TO THIS INCREDIBLY SUBLIME BLISS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have I given you a clue? Some people who already wrote reviews without ever HEARING the product, NEED one.

I was not concerned about the "cd layer" of the SACD, and I could never drag myself away from the totally immersing experience of the SACD in order to test it. If you want a "cd" of this title, there are much, MUCH less expensive options on the market, which you probably already own.

A final technical note:
As you know this SACD edition was sourced from a Quadrophonic mix made from the original 4-Track x 2 session masters, by (I think) Hugh Mendl in 1972. They chose to remain somewhat true to that source by NOT creating a fake (digital) center-channel, so the center speaker on a typical home theatre setup remains silent during playback. Had the decision been mine, I would have done the exact same thing. This one's spot - on!!!!!!!

This latest edition of "Days Of Future Passed" has to be the last, as it is nearly perfect. The Moody Blues have never been keen on keeping old unused material, so what is presented here is very, very good and very, very rare. Now on SACD, the sound is faultless and the mixing is astounding. Besides the first seven tracks of the original, the second CD contains outtakes, singles, B-Sides and alternate versions of pre-"Days Of Future Passes" songs and BBC Sessions that are as solid and pure as a studio recording. This is the sound that will keep you mesmerized for years.

The remaining tracks are listed here and it is great to hear the complete album songs without the orchestration:

Tuesday Afternoon (Alternate Mix)
Dawn Is A Feeling (Alternate Version)
Sun Set (Alternate Vocal Mix)
Twilight Time (Alternate Vocal Mix)
Night In White Satin (Mono Single Version)
Fly Me High (Mono Single Version)
I Really Haven't Got The Time (Mono Single Version)
Love & Beauty (Mono Single Version)
Leave This Man Alone (Mono Single Version)
Cities (Mono Single Version)
Long Summer Days (Stereo Version)
Please Think About It (Stereo Version)
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (BBC Saturday Club 5/9/67)
Love & Beauty (BBC Easybeat Session 9/20/67
Leave This Man Alone (BBC Easybeat Session 9/20/67
Peak Hour (BBC Easybeat Session 9/20/67
Nights In White Satin (BBC Dave Symonds Session 1/1/68
Fly Me High (BBC Dave Symonds Session 1/1/68
Twilight Time (Live BBC Dave Symonds Session 1/1/68)

This is the ultimate collection of the Moody Blues first successful album and an important piece in musical history. The box is half plastic and half cardboard which might not last as long as a regular CD package. However, the liner package notes are exhaustive with many new pictures and a complete history.

(Note: Disc 1 is an SACD mix made from the original quadraphonic tapes. Disc 2 is the original remastered quadraphonic tapes - not SACD. This is seen as Disc 1 is gold colored and Disc 2 is silver).

I'm impressed by the lengths that some reviewers have taken to compare waveforms, etc. of the older discs compared to the new release of this album. However (coming from an audio engineer), if you do not have an SACD player, you cannot appreciate the sound that this disc produces. Direct Stream Digital technology, pioneered by Sony/Philips, is the closest a consumer can hear to what the original analog tapes sounded like. As far as I am concerned, the Mobility Sound Lab discs are propaganada that are worth nothing more than expensive toilet paper. Sure, it's great to get to hear someone else's remastered version of a disc. We all enjoy that to an extent. But if you want to hear what this album was designed to sound like in either stereo or quadrophonic format, you must do one of two things: 1)Buy this disc and 2)Make sure that you have an SACD player. This is a hybird (dual format) disc, so be sure that you're listening to the SACD version and not the CD version.

NOTE 1: I don't have an 5.1 channel SACD player, so my comments are about the standard 2-channel CD-Audio layer of Disc 1. This is what most people likely to buy this set will hear anyway.

NOTE 2: The three stars are for the SACD remastering. The album itself is a 5-star classic.

I've been living with this wonderful album since the 1960s, wearing out at least three copies on vinyl. Then I got both the 2-channel Dolby stereo and 4-channel quad open reel tapes. Finally I bought the original CD release, and then the Mobile Fidelity Gold CD release. (Yes, I guess I'm a hardcore fan.) To my ears, the Mobile Fidelity was by far the best-sounding version, although it was not without problems (somewhat hissy, and an audible drop-out near the end).

It was with great excitement that I ordered this new SACD remastering, hoping that the latest technology combined with the supervision of Hayward and Lodge would produce a definitive version. Boy, was I disappointed.

Like so many other remasterings nowadays, this edition of DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED has been agressively compressed to make it sound "louder." This became obvious as soon as the orchestral introduction ended and "Dawn Is A Feeling" began. The dynamic swells that made earlier versions sound majestic and lifelike have been squashed to a hard, glassy sheen. The heavy-handed processing is especially noticeable on "Another Morning" and "The Sunset."

To be absolutely certain about what I was hearing, I ripped the entire SACD Disc 1 into my PC using Sound Forge. Then I ripped the entire Mobile Fidelity CD and put the two waveforms side by side on my screen. The difference is dramatic and obvious. The Mobile Fidelity version preserves the entire dynamic range of the original; the overall gain was adjusted so that only the loudest moments approach peak level. This version lets you hear how some songs are softer or louder than others, and how certain key moments (the end of "Peak Hour," for instance) are loudest of all.

By comparison, the waveform of the SACD version is flatlined at just two-tenths of a decibel below peak over the ENTIRE course of the album! This means that any subtle change in volume between and within songs is completely lost. Everything sounds the same: LOUD. This is the same scrunched sound you get when you hear music on the radio. Even listening with high-quality headphones gave me ear fatique.

FOR ENGINEERS ONLY: The average RMS power level of the Mobile Fidelity CD is -19.1 dB, with a peak level of -1.1 dB. The stereo SACD layer's average RMS power level is only -9.1 dB, with a peak of -0.1 dB. That's a full 10 dB louder, and judging from the peaks, at least 8 dB of dynamic range has been lost. Who did these guys think they were mastering? LL Cool J? Britney?

Despite its CONSTANTLY LOUD presentation, the SACD version is less hissy than the Mobile Fidelity. That's because the SACD mastering employed digital noise reduction, a technique Mobile always avoided because of the audible artifacts such processing can cause. I don't hear any of those artifacts in the SACD version, though. Also, the drop-out near the end of "Nights In White Satin" on the Mobile Fidelity is not heard on the SACD.

Conclusion: The out-of-print Mobile Fidelity CD of DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED is probably the most accurate representation of the original master tapes we will ever have. The new SACD version sounds squashed from start to finish. Although remarkably clean, it unequivocally FAILS to reproduce the entire dynamic range of the classic album.

The bonus tracks on the second disc are of variable interest. The "alternate takes" in tracks 1-4 are worth hearing, though the differences are often small. The mono, non-orchestral "Nights In White Satin" on track 5 is nice to have. The singles in tracks 6-12 were all released previously in the out-of-print PRELUDE collection, except that "Cities" is in mono here instead of true stereo, as on the earlier disc. The BBC sessions on tracks 13-19 are the most interesting, especially the very respectable cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."

If you're a Moodies completionist, or if you can't find a copy of PRELUDE, you'll want to get this set for the bonus tracks. But if you want to hear how great this old warhorse really sounds, track down a copy of the Mobile Fidelity CD on eBay. This SACD mastering is a sad misrepresentation.

This album features the Moodies reinventing their sound and basically creating Art Rock or Prog Rock or whatever else you want to call it. Two of their best known songs are from this album Tuesday Afternoon and Nights And White Satin but really this is an album that needs to be listened to from beginning to end. The sound on this version is amazing and the orchestra has never sounded fuller as well as the band. I've owned all the former cd editions and, to me, I like this one the best. Disc two features some great performances and hearing the Moodies do a cover of an Animals song is great.

Here's the story: Apparently in 1978 there were some problems with the master tapes to DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED. I don't really know what that was about, but at that point the album received a different, and mostly inferior, mix from the one a lot of us grew up with. This is true not only of the later LP & cassette copies but ALL CD copies.

When I saw something about this new edition having the "original" mix I was intrigued. It sounded too good to be true, and it was. This is still basically the same inferior mix as all the other CD copies. Three of the seven tracks are still altered in subtle but undesirable ways. Mostly it just affects backing vocals, but it's surprising how much difference those can make. If you didn't grow up with the original mix like I did, or if you're not such a purist, all this shouldn't bother you. But at least be aware of what you're getting with this.

The SACD Hybrid release of Days of Future Passed will best be appreciated by those who can at least play it on a multichannel 5.1 surround system (even if you're lacking the necessary SACD player to hear it in true surround) as opposed to a 2-channel standard stereo. The sound is excellent and likely superior than any prior release (although an argument can be made for the older OOP DTS version). The bonus tracks, while not in SACD, are excellent and great additions to this release (the Moodie's version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood is alone worth the price of the album). This is such an amazing, profoundly powerful achievement in musical art and the CD's sound is finally up to par with the band's concept and execution (although as stated before it's much better realized in multi-channel playback).

The music and sound quality deserve 5 stars in my book, however...

Overall, while the packaging is very good, there is a big problem that at least 3 of the SACD releases share, and DOFP in particular suffers for it. The album cover is printed way too light. Whoever did the covers on the SACD versions screwed up royally and published washed-out images lacking in detail and the intensity of color extant in the originals (and properly reproduced in the prior CD versions). As if that wasn't bad enough, the beautiful DOFP painting has been heavily cropped at the bottom removing quite a large part of the overall picture! Perhaps with another band, this would not be such a big deal, but with the Moodies, the whole package is part of the overall story and great pains were taken with the selection of artwork gracing their early covers. There is NO excuse on these supposed definitive remasters for such errors to have taken place! Where is the quality control?! Clearly what the person in charge of this mess did was blow up the image to make it appear more immediate to the viewer (to compensate for the smaller size of CDs) but in doing so washed the image out and cropped out a large part of the bottom image! Compare the cover with prior ones and you'll see how badly this is! Disappointing to say the least!

I purchased this item based on a review from the All Music Guide in which the reviewer stated that they had finally used the original mix. I assumed this meant the 1967 mix, not the later 1978 remix by Hugh Mendl, but the reviewer was wrong.

If you're familiar with this album, but haven't heard the original stereo or mono mix, I highly recommend you seek both of them out on vinyl. The songs "Evening Time To Get Away", "Twilight Time", and "Nights In White Satin" all suffer from missing overdubs which either Hugh overlooked or couldn't access. The 5.1 version (ahem...remixed Quadrophonic) suffers from the same fate, only worse (a couple more overdubs lost), but it's at least understandable when you're talking about re-mixing a 4 track recording for this medium.

The bonus tracks make up for some of this because the original mono single of "Nights" and an alternate mix of "Twilight" are here, though not in SACD like the album.

I have also read the reviewer who suggested that the mixers applied way too much compression to these remixes. In this case, I can see the point, but I'll let you decide whether it's worth buying the out-of-print (and costly) Mobile Fidelity versions.

Altogether, this was a worthwhile buy if you're interested in hearing the Moodies bonus tracks, which I was anyway (and they're great!), but if you're looking for the original stereo mix of the album, it ain't here.

I can understand how if you grew up with a favorite vinyl record, that any re-mix or CD release will probably fall short. However, I think it's impossible for someone my age (27) to know the original. All I have to relate is the "Original Broadway Cast Recording" of Hair. I grew up with the CD. Years later, my aunt gave me a very worn fair quality LP (actually from 1968). Although the record was in poor condition, the mix was definitely clearer/ wider (i.e. "Walking in Space") and I could make out the lyrics better. Listening to the bonus disc of Days of Future Passed, I can see how the original may have been perceptibly clearer/ finer with better levels. However, I assume those records have become quite rare and any copy I might find would probably be a worthless later edition. Therefore, this SACD is simply the closest my generation will ever hear to the original holy grail. The SACD 5.1 mix is a stunning quad mix, but requires discreet surround sound from the player. The SACD stereo option is just downmixed from the quad, but is still perceptibly better than the normal CD layer if you have SACD capability but only two speakers. If you don't have the right player, all you will be able to access is the CD layer. In that case, this "Deluxe" package is not worth the money and you might as well buy the regular CD version.

I am perplexed that someone would rip this album after first admitting that he did not have a SACD player, but was reviewing the standard stereo CD mix.

The only good reason to buy this album is the 5.1 surround SACD track. (Even if you want to maintain the 2 channel listening experience, at least use the SACD track)The 5.1 SACD track is glorious, and far better than any optical pressing to date. Not since vinyl has it been so warm. I never heard the quad vinyl, so I can't comment on that.