Intrada Soundtrack Forum

I leapt on The Abyss and Star Trek Nemesis.

We'll have to wait until Jan 6th for them to start shipping (unless they start shipping early).

I've waited this long for Nemesis, and The Abyss is a fantastic (though not essential) upgrade, so I can wait a little longer.

One expensive year.

I had to order NEMESIS and THE ABYSS right away, both are scores I like but do not own the previous releases of.

Erick Labson (Universal Mastering Studios) mastered the Varese Runaway edition. He also mastered the Varsese "Star Trek" release of Michael Giacchino's score. It is this very fellow here: http://www.umldigitalops.com/ums/engineers.html

In any case, I usually deplore dynamic compression, though the Varese Deluxe release of RUNAWAY is the only release of the music I have ever heard, so I have no idea how much of it is due to dynamic compression and how it might sound otherwise.

Since Nemesis previous release on SACD had a vastly superior sound (direct DSD transfer from DSD recording master), I'll stick with it for now. It means that, 10 years later, we downgrade from a sound frequency of 2,8224 MHz on 1 bit, to 44.1 kH on 16 bits, and from a 6 channels mix to a 2 channels mix. I would have thought that 10 years would have permitted a sound evolution, not a regression...
I remember a time, just before his sad passing, when Jerry Goldsmith was one of the rares film composers to have his scores on the best technological format available (master quality and multi-channels mix): Star Trek Nemesis, The Great Train Robbery, Timeline, Telarc's the Film Music of Jerry Goldmith, etc.

Yesterday, I listened to the Runaway album for the first time in a while, and indeed, while I have no idea what the synthesizers are to sound like "naturally" here and some tracks sound fine, as soon as the volume goes up in the higher to middle registers, the sound becomes overly harsh and brittle, untransparent and overly dense, one yearns for more "air" around the sound.

Keep in mind that one should not have to seek out SACDs and DVD audio and multi-channel sound just to get good, clean musical sounds from the orchestra. The traditional CD can deliver it just fine. Old LPs did it just fine. This compression and normalizing of orchestral soundtracks and the mastering of them perhaps with MP3 players and audiences in mind is the culprit, not the standard CD delivery system.
--Doug

Looks like is on the verge of selling out, with less than 100 copies remaining at Varese. Anyone on the fence (or who expected to have more time) may want to take notice! Also available , of course.