An image of the repress edition has been released by the producer of the vinyl record of the soundtrack.
(still no sign of a CD or digital release, so it continues to be a sadistic tease for most of us who can't play these)
An image of the repress edition has been released by the producer of the vinyl record of the soundtrack.
(still no sign of a CD or digital release, so it continues to be a sadistic tease for most of us who can't play these)
Why they aren't releasing a CD is beyond me. I have a mate with a turntable who said I could borrow it to 'rip' the album, but it's away in storage and I don't have a timeline as to when I'll actually be able to borrow it.
That's not a reason to not make CDs, even a limited number. While audiophiles may like vinyl, it's very much a niche product. Hasbro could be missing out on reaching a wider audience because far more people have CD players than turntables.
La La Land records have done limited pressings of CD scores - only a few thousand units in some cases. Surely they'd be down with a limited release of this score.
Optimum shmoptimum. I go for convenience. Whilst it may be cool to own on vinyl, makes no sense to not release through other mediums
Depends on how they're approaching this. It could very well be that the intention is to produce the highest fidelity production of this as something which is targeted to audiophiles. If that's the case, then they could argue that being true to the philosophy to this launch by keeping it vinyl only.
There are also a couple of counter-arguments against them missing out by not releasing it on CD.
Firstly, if this were even 5 years ago when vinyl was only just starting to make a comeback and turntables were in short supply on the market, you'd have a valid argument about limited playability, however these days, turntables have become quite affordable. In fact these days they're the price of a blu-ray player at the bottom end of the market, meaning that there simply aren't the reasons to not own a turntable that there were even 5 years ago.
Secondly, are their sales even hurting if you discount this argument? Clearly not. This is now on it's third repressing and you even have people like Ultra Marginal buying this when they don't even own a turntable.
Thirdly, I'd question what the original source for those CD releases was. If it was a digital source then there would literally be no difference between the optimum quality of a vinyl release and a CD release due to quantisation errors existing in both cases. Alternately, maybe the CD releases simply weren't bringing in enough revenue to justify them, or the company felt they hurt its image. That's something that only they can answer.
In short, while people with less discerning ears might want a CD version and perceive no difference between the audio quality of vinyl and CD (and hey, more power to them), they're clearly a negligible factor in the sales performance of this release.
By that logic, should Bentley release a $20,000 car because it's more convenient for people and would generate more sales volume - with no regard for the effect that would have on the brand image it is cultivating for itself?
And yes, when we're talking about a company dedicating itself to the audiophile market and producing the highest fidelity audio recordings possible in their releases, then that is an entirely fair and accurate analogy to draw.
You can go round in circles about sound quality but I am 99% sure that just being on vinyl by itself doesn't make anything "better", there are other factors involved.
It's not going around in circles. It is an unassailable fact that at optimum levels (ie a pure analog source), vinyl produces a less degraded audio copy than a CD does. Based on your response, I'm going to guess that you're not at all familiar with quantisation, or the process by which an analog signal is converted to a digital one.
Time for a science lesson.
While the quals are about 15 years old now, I'm going to put on my Advanced Diploma in Electrical Technology hat here and explain quantisation to people who might not be familiar with it.
For the sake of simplicity, let's take a sine wave (picture linked) as it's not only the most dimple explanation of this, but a representation of a pure audio single tone. For example, in recent years, the A above Middle C has a frequency of 440Hz (it used to be 432Hz but that's a story for another time).
You'll notice the sine wave is a pure curve, with no defects or anomalies to it. If I were to take a pure analog read of that sine wave, I would reproduce it exactly as it was. The reason for it is that I would in essence, be reading it using infinitesimally small small intervals - small enough that I replicated the curve exactly as it was.
However that's not how digital transfers work.
Take voice for example. Voice is typically sampled using an 8-bit sampler. That 8-bit sampler will give you the option of 2^8 intervals, or 256 interval points. In other words, if half of the crest of that crest (ie the top of the waveform) were a hill, imagine that someone cut 64 steps into that hill to climb up it with, like the way some mountains are cut out to lay down roads through them. What you have left is certainly audible and should be intelligible (ie you can make out what it meant to be), but now it has distortion and it's no longer in its purest state. That's just a single tone. The moment the waveform becomes more complex, the distortion gets worse.
Certainly there are ways to minimise that distortion. As a golden rule, you typically sample at twice the frequency of what you're sampling - hence why voice is typically sampled at 8kHz and audio is sampled at 44.1kHz.
Likewise, if your sampler uses a larger bitrate per sample (for example, CDs use 16-bit samples, while voice uses 8-bit samples), that means an (2^x-2^y) increase in the number of intervals used. However metaphorically speaking, you will always be cutting into that waveform and distorting and degrading it.
Certainly, everyone's ears have a difference sensitivity and therefore some listeners are going to perceive a difference to differing degrees to others and in some cases, not at all. From that perspective, an argument can be made that as long as the listener is enjoying it that's what matters and it's a fair argument.
However it is an undisputed fact that when being transferred from an optimal analog source, that an optimal digital transfer's audio quality is significantly inferior to that of an optimal analog transfer's audio quality.
I would buy a cd coz I don't particularly care to have the best of the best of the best. I don't have a record player and have no desire to own one. Yes I have some vinyls, but I bought them as a massive fan of the band. But I'll never play them. Just the same as I have a demo cassette tape of another band I really like, but I won't play it either, partly coz I don't own a cassette player and no desire to own one, but one day I will rip it so I can listen to it on my ipod.
Personally, I can't see a problem with releasing it in other mediums, or how it would affect their brand. All it does is limit who will buy it, so I guess I just have to miss out on it