"Avoid it... on the Warner or Rhino releases if you are deterred by the archival, analog sound quality that restricts the dynamic range of Williams' composition"

Um... The universe is analog! "Analog sound quality" (as Christian puts it) has nothing to do with restricting the dynamics of a recording. That comes down to who was in charge of recording and how well (or poorly) the mics were placed.

I couldn't help but post that because saying that analog restricts the dynamic range of a recording is like saying everything in the world is out of whack... except for the finite amount of data that's encoded digitally.

> "Avoid it... on the Warner or Rhino releases if you are deterred by
> the archival, analog sound quality that restricts the dynamic range of
> Williams' composition"

> Um... The universe is analog! "Analog sound quality" (as
> Christian puts it) has nothing to do with restricting the dynamics of a
> recording. That comes down to who was in charge of recording and how well
> (or poorly) the mics were placed.

> I couldn't help but post that because saying that analog restricts the
> dynamic range of a recording is like saying everything in the world is out
> of whack... except for the finite amount of data that's encoded digitally.

I believe was Christian was referring to was the mastering process, which in the early days of CDs was still performed using analog means. This, of course, resulted in additional sound quality degredation. If you have any early CDs, most where stamped with AAD, ADD, DDD, etc, which marked which parts of the process were performed via analog, and which parts were performed via digital. The early Superman album was mastered using analog equipment, which really hurt the sound quality.