It’s a thing that’s bugged me for years , I just wonder if it bugs anyone else. It makes a change from moaning about technical stuff, to moan about our primary hobby MUSIC
It started with Remastered plus Bonus Tracks and got worse with Deluxe double albums and then even worse still with Super Deluxe Albums like the Beatles re-releases of up to 5 or 6 discs
Mentally I remember an album, I almost anticipate track to track . When you get to what I consider the end another track pops up that wasn’t on the original album which to me spoils the album that I remember “from my youth”
As an aside Roon Radio nags me a bit on this but that’s another discussion, but at least you can turn it off, and yes I know I can Hide tracks that I don’t like so I could chop off the bonus tracks if I so wish
On the Remastered versions , I can see the logic of adding value from a 40 min LP to a 70 min CD as is often the case.
On the deluxe ones I get a bit confused , its almost always odd takes from the recording session that presumably were not considered good enough to make the “cut”. Now we get the original CD plus 2 - 4 other CD’s of questionable content. Is it just another money making exercise by the record labels.
Take Revolver as a good example , I have included the Tidal version in my library, yes the remastering is worth it , Sgt. Pepper even more so that was a definite improvement on the original but to the best of my knowledge you can’t just buy CD1 in all its glory without the rest of the “questionable” heritage tracks.
I suppose its interesting to see the development of a Finished Track in its various incarnations before the final version BUT a lot of the extras are of doubtful quality , at least to me
I think the original idea of a „Deluxe Edition“ was to fill up the extra space on a CD from an LP transfer… with the Beatles it’s morphed into a mess. They should released them as „studio sessions“ and stayed true to original album.
Definitely, or perhaps the original ca. 1990 deluxe edition CD, where they added 2 or 3 extra tracks. But that usually cranked up the levels (loudness wars), so the original AAD CD album is king!
I’m in the “it’s all gotten too much” camp. It’s obviously a transparent attempt to trigger a rebuy from the completists amongst us. Annoyingly, there are some gems amongst the extra material, I’m a fan of some of The Beach Boys Smiley Smile outtakes, but listening is generally a frog kissing exercise. @mikeb is right, dedicated studio session releases would be better…
I’ll add the original if it’s available at the highest quality. Otherwise, I will ban all of the extra tracks in Roon, so that I can still play the “original” album with a single press.
What’s interesting is that many albums are released these days with extra tracks as standard for marketing purposes. So what is the “original” album? I guess it’s what the artist intended, if you can figure that out.
I wouldn’t mind if the streaming service carried the original and the extended edition but when it’s only the remastered, extended version it’s a pain.
I remember when the Beatles - Let It Be “NAKED” came out. I like the undated mix but did not like the order that was laid out on the disk. It was different from the original Let It Be album. So in Roon I made a playlist of the Naked album in the order of the original Let It Be track list.
Enjoyed that mix very much because it was in the correct order.
Same here, I try and stick to the original releases. Having all these mega deluxe collectors anniversary remix bonus editions annoys me somewhat, where the original 12 track album is blown up to 26 all at sudden.
All of the Beatles albums and the early Chicago albums are ingrained in my brain. When something plays out of order or not expected, it throws me for a loop.
Most of the extras on these deluxe or super deluxe albums are not worth listening to IMO. I’ve got several in my library and I usually wind up banning these extraneous tracks like demo versions or alternate takes that the band didn’t really like anyway.
Yes you can separate out the CD1 which is normally the original album , but then the rest won’t equate to an album for Roon to ID , if that matters to you.
Its better to leave it as is , let Roon ID the deluxe edition then hide the tracks you don’t one by banning them .
Just to add, “deluxe” versions are often remastered and compressed, so simply banning extra tracks may still not give the experience of the original album.
It’s very disconcerting when your trained brain is expecting the original sequence and they have changed it.
My brain still expects the order some of my own tapes were recorded in. Why isn’t Breathing by Kate Bush following on from A Forest by The Cure?
Mine also remembers if there was a skip or some other weird artifact on a taped recording from back in the day.
I must have bumped the turntable while taping “Can’t Buy A Thrill” back in junior high school (late '70s), and I listened to that tape A LOT.
So listening via roon now, when Fagen sings “Turn that heartbeat over again” at the end of the very last track, I still expect to hear it jump the groove.
