Customer Reviews

The Nightfly Trilogy (3-MVI DVD + 4-CD Box Set)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Good-We get surround sound mixes in the MVI format for all three of Donald Fagan's solo albums plus bonus tracks for all three albums (various b-sides, soundtrack songs, live cuts, etc.)and music videos for the first two albums "The Nightfly" and "Kamakiriad". The surround mix on the MVI discs sounds terrific with a nice mix by long time collaborator Elliot Scheiner and mastering by Bob Ludwig.

The Bad-All the discs have the ORIGINAL CD mastering. That wouldn't be a bad thing but "The Nightfly" despite having nice dynamics could use an update. The other two discs sound fine the way they are. "The Nightfly" on CD never had the warmth or depth of the original vinyl. It still doesn't.

The album liner notes and lyrics are ALL on the MVI discs. I'm all for including them but I do like to have hardcopy of them as well. There's something to be said for holding a booklet and reading it as you listen (particularly if you're not near a 5.1 system and/or your computer and want to listen to the CD). It wouldn't have put out Rhino all that much to include the ORIGINAL booklets with the lyrics and credits. All we get here is a one sheet insert with info on MVI on the back.

The Ugly-Honestly there isn't anything ugly about this set at all except that if you got these albums in previous DVD-A and have the original CDs you've basically got everything here except the bonus disc (and bonus tracks) all of which (except two live tracks)have been released before. It'll be a double dip for except for the bonus CD that has all the 5.1 bonus tracks in stereo on a single disc and new liner notes.

Also, when I took out "The Nightfly" MVI disc it kept PLAYING and wouldn't let me play "Morph". I'm not surprised because it does upload files of the MVI to your computer in the form of mp3's I did, however, not expect it to do so without prompting. Eventually I just had to close the program so I could play "Morph" and had to start all over again. I got the error message "There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disck into drive.." or "Please insert 'The Nightfly'" disk" which I thought a bit odd. You can skip registering (the info goes to the company that makes MVIs)and it does promise bonus content but to be honest it didn't pop up immediately instead just taking me to Donald's site.

It would have been nice to include Donald's performance from the "Rock 'n' Soul Revue" album of the Steely Dan tracks as well but they were originally Steely Dan tracks so that's probably why they weren't included.

Conclusion: This is a terrific set for Fagan/Steely Dan fans. The box is sturdy with a nice design and the MVI DVDs (which will play on DVD players or computer DVD drives)and CDs are in the same case. We also get an extra CD that has all the bonus tracks in stereo complimenting the CDs (which are the original mastered versions without any bonus tracks on them).

The CDs sound fine but "The Nightfly" (which has a terrific dynamic range and sounds good on this CD)probably could have benefited from a remaster (not a loud compressed one which is probably what we would get so maybe this is a good thing). The other three discs sound fine (the CD with bonus tracks clearly has been remastered for this set or, at the very least, the volume has been adjusted for each so that they sound like they belong on the same disc and not like some haphazard compilation).

A booklet would have been nice as well for those of us Luddites that actually like to hold booklets in our hands and read them.

These are minor complaints overall about a terrific set. The glitches in the MVIs are pretty minor overall. If you have the DVD-A releases of these albums and the CDs the only reason to get this is for the bonus track disc and new liner notes.

First of all, let me say how much it pains me to give this anything less than 5 stars. I consider "The Nightfly" to be my favorite album of all time, period. And the two subsequent Fagen solo discs would probably make my Top 10 list as well. And releasing them in this cool MVI format makes perfect sense for an artist who has always been forward-thinking as both a songwriter and musician.

But let me get this out of the way: The CD's (NOT the MVI DVD's, mind you) of Nightfly and Kamikiriad do NOT appear to be remastered. If you play them back-to-back with the original CD pressings, there does not appear to be any difference. For a more jarring confirmation of this theory (and it is, ultimately, just a theory I guess), put all 3 albums in a CD changer and notice the sonic difference between Morph the Cat and the other two. Even the impressive "10 Extras" disc sounds better by comparison. The MVI discs are fabulous--I'll get to those in a second--but for the money, and considering how much time has elapsed between the original CD releases and now, it seems odd to me that this set seems to include nothing more than the original discs with new label on them.

Now, if you're a fan of Donald Fagen at all, there's no question that the MVI discs are gonna rock your world. As others have pointed out, you simply haven't heard these albums until you play them in 5.1 surround sound on a home system. Words do not do this thing justice, you literally have to hear it for yourself. And considering that you NEVER see Fagen's handful of music video clips anywhere, it's quite a treasure to have them here. "Snowbound" could be the strangest video I've ever seen. And I mean that in a good way.

All of the bonus tracks, save for the 2 live ones, have been previously available. But having them all on one disc is great. Unlike most artists' "b-side" material, this stuff is every bit as good as his commericially-released tracks.

The other complaint I have is that none of the albums' original liner notes have been reproduced. I've always felt that, in the case of Donald Fagen, the notes always greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the songs. All 3 of the original discs are "concept" albums, and Fagen's personal notes help flesh out the pictures his words and music create.

Bottom line: Despite the disappointments detailed above, this is still a must-have for Fagen fans.

After a multitude of different format releases (especially for Nightfly), this box seems to put the final word on providing the best audio versions available of Fagen's complete catalog.

Tip 1: If you want to prevent the MVI from auto-launching, hold your Shift key down, then close the optical drive drawer, and keep the key depressed for 30 seconds or so (you can do this for any optical media content that you don't want auto-launched).

Tip 2: If you're looking to rip the best-sounding Fagen audio to MP3, you're in luck: Unlike the previous DVD-Audio releases, these discs are DVD-Video, so with the proper SW tools, you can extract the high-end audio from them and convert them to MP3 format.

For the Fagen-completist, this also includes the ability of extracting the audio off the video versions, which all vary from the album tracks.

All of it makes for the most fabulous-sounding Fagen MP3's ever, and eliminates the horrendous dynamic range differentiation between the first two albums and Morph.

Tip 3: The liner notes for each album are on the MVI discs.

Other notes:

The mix on Kamkiriad is quite different from that on the standard CD.

The audio on the Extras CD is virtually identical to the audio of all the duplicate MVI-tracks.

The Morph standard CD sounds virtually identical to the MVI disc.

So, all in all, quite worth the money, although, albeit slightly annoying for the number of times the catalog has been re-released in different formats.

This was a good deal for me as I did not own any of these albums already. No surprise that the music is great. Not sure why it took me so long to check out these albums. If you liked later Steely Dan stuff, you will like this too. 4 albums @ $15 each is all right. I am disappointed in the "extra" content. Not sure what the big deal is about video, which I will watch one time & forget about it. I registered the product which enables download of "extra content", but I have not noticed anything extra.

This is an absolutely outstanding package. Just the 3 surround 5.1 DVDs are worth the price, the extras included in the MVI package and the extra songs on the CD are just icing on the cake!

Listening to the 5.1 versions of the songs is like experiencing the albums in a brand new way. Fagen's obsession with sonic detail has really paid off big time in the surround mixes.

Tons of great music and great content on the MVIs for many hours of enjoyment for many years to come.

A minor caveat is that none of the disks will play on a DVD-Audio player (unlike the last DVD-Audio version of Morph the Cat and other Steely Dan recent albums), so I can't play the disks in the multi-changer in the car, I have to use the DVD-Video single disk interface. But I wonder these days if DVD-Audio is dead anyway, as both Alan Parsons and Donald Fagen have gone to DVD-Video recently...

...I can't imagine how anyone really could please a hardcore SD fan, listening since Reeling In The Years came over the airwaves in early '72...Since then Becker and Fagen have consistently rocked the world for people who listen to McCoy Tyner, opera, and Weather Report. I can still go through their playlist on my iTunes and scarcely skip over a song.

But that's Becker and Fagen. Most of these songwriting duos reveal rather quickly their liabilities when they finally go solo. If you haven't heard much of these three albums, grit your teeth at the sticker shock, and wonder how this can possibly swim in the same waters as Aja, Royal Scam or Two Against Nature, you are in for one big surprise after another. It will take about a weekend to really listen to the whole thing, and it really is what amounts to a large body of work, something like "All Things Must Pass" or "Tommy". And these are not only fine masterings of excellent music. Here you get an MVI disc of each original album that appends several music videos and bonus tracks, a CD of the original album, and a fourth CD of the bonus tracks by themselves, all in your choice of glorious Dolby 5.1, Dolby Surround, PCM bitstream analog, cool graphics, liner notes, lyrics, and it's all slightly bent around the incredible concepts and obsessions of Donald Fagen, which include nostalgia, science fiction, retro-futurism, a glory in crackpot, conspiracy, fringe lunatic thinking, film and broadcast radio.

I refer you to other reviewers' listings of the songs, merely to say that I am in love with many of the songs, but especially IGY, Brite Nightgown, Morph The Cat, Snowbound, Tomorrow's Girls (the incredible video as well)... There are more. If my loving them leaves a vagary, then I'll say I love them for the same reasons I love Haitian Divorce, Home At Last, Peg, Josie, and Everything Must Go, except these all sound even better, audio-wise.

One musical note: surround sound like this should be played on good stuff, I suggest checking out Cambridge Audio, NAD or Marantz, which make some really decent players and decoders for less than you would expect. Also, check out the incredible separation of several percussion tracks, which occurs on nearly each song, and many times accompanied with a plucked, highly accented, muffled-string technique on the guitar, similar to ska or reggae beats. All crystal clear, as well.

Like I said, a tall order pleasing the Dan fan who has everything. This delivers the goods.

First of all, it was no accident that Morph The Cat won a Grammy for best surround sound production. You have literally not heard this album until you've heard it in surround sound - same with the other two. I'm hearing instruments and harmonies I never knew existed in these albums. Sound quality on my home theater (and through good headphones from my computer) is like nothing I've heard before. If these albums aren't already considered reference quality, they should be!

I haven't quite made it through all the extras yet, although I was a little annoyed that the interactive computer program hijacks your computer's volume control - I got an email while it was playing and the you've got mail ding about blew me out of my chair! :(

If you are one of the many Acura TL owners like me who are collecting DVD-Audio disks to use with you ELS Sound system, be advised that these DVDs WILL NOT PLAY. The display gives "FORMAT ERROR" and ejects the disk. Which is a damn shame since Trans Island Skyway from Kamakiriad is on the Acura Demo Disk and sounds great. What a shame. Tested in my 2006 Acura TL with Nav.

The disks sound great in my home theater, great surround, but I don't want them because that's not what I bought them for.

This is an absolutely stunning box set, covering all of Donald Fagen's solo material after Steely Dan, including tracks such as True Companion, and Century's end, that were done by him for soundtracks, as well as some takes on classic jazz tunes such as Blue Lou, and Hank's pad; as well as other songs like Viva Rock and Roll, and Big Noise New York. All excellent songs, done by an amazing performer. Every song from his original three albums, including the bonus CD are well worth it, let alone the DVD audio quality for a solid surround sound system. Also a nice bonus, the music videos for Tomorrow's Girls and Snowbound. Both in Steely Dan and on his own, Donald Fagen's quest for technical perfection in the music's output, as well as by itself, are just some of the reasons he is one of the best musicians and lyricists of his time. Any fan of Steely Dan or Donald Fagen should consider this a must.

the short of it:

1) its all brilliantly written and played. amazingly wonderful. every cut. no news there.

2) the extra cuts make an incredible "4th" Donald Fagen solo album. fantastic to have them sequenced by Fagen on a single disc!

3) morph the cat sounds as great as ever sonically, and now nightfly and kamakiriad are also sounding great on plain vanilla 16 bit cds. a vast improvement in mix and mastering (re: the mix - it could be I'm just hearing more because of the mastering, but it's sounding very different to me).

i have not a/b'd it with my vinyl copies but since i still can't get my turntable to work properly when i'm going mobile, having these albums sound this good on cd makes it worth every penny - even if you don't ever plan on owning a dvd player. however...

3) i think the dvds' audio format is making my computer sound better then it has. [for those that care: i'm using a toshiba qosmio g45 laptop's headphone out thru a ray samuels 'raptor' tube amp with old telefunkins driving a pair of grado labs ps-1 headphones].

HOW good does the dvds' audio sound? it's hard to say. i have to listen a lot more and compare directly with the sound of the 16 bit layers on the same rig before i make any proclamations - but chopped liver it ain't.

4) i did not try the mvi "interactive" content yet.