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The Swarm by Jerry Goldsmith finally coming from La-La Land!


crocodile

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THE SWARM: LIMITED EDITION (2-CD SET)
LLLCD 1515
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Limited Edition of 3000 Units
RETAIL PRICE: $29.98

STARTS SHIPPING MARCH 3

Orders start 12 noon (pst) on 3/3 at www.lalalandrecords.com

La-La Land Records and Warner Bros. proudly present the remastered and expanded 2-CD reissue of legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith’s (PLANET OF THE APES, THE OMEN, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, BASIC INSTINCT), original motion picture score to the 1978 big-screen bees-gone-amok THE SWARM, starring Michael Caine, Katherine Ross and Richard Widmark, and directed and produced by the remarkable Irwin Allen. Giant in scope and sound, Jerry Goldsmith’s rip-roaring action score is an indestructible, hard-charging marvel of orchestration. This remastered, deluxe “Expanded Archival Collection” presentation showcases the maestro’s film score on Disc One, while Disc Two presents the CD world premiere of the original 1978 LP program, featuring unique edits and takes, and additional bonus cues! Produced by Bruce Botnick and Neil S. Bulk and entirely re-mixed and mastered in high resolution by Botnick from first generation ½’’ analog studio vault elements, this special release is limited to 3000 units and features exclusive, in depth liner notes by “The Fantasy Film Worlds of Irwin Allen” author Jeff Bond and stingingly sharp art direction by Dan Goldwasser.

This release is MQA encoded. Listeners with an MQA decoder can enjoy this album in high resolution, up to 176.4 kHz/24-bit, from these Compact Discs. For more information please visit https://www.mqa.co.uk/.

TRACK LISTING:

DISC 1: THE FILM SCORE
1. Main Title (Film Version) 4:26
2. Red Two Reporting 2:23
3. The Black Mass 2:33
4. What Happened? / The Picnic 2:13
5. The Bees’ Picnic (Film Version) 2:20
6. On Their Way :59
7. Get Him Out 2:13
8. Plastic Hives / Old Friends 3:14
9. Don’t Take Him (Film Version) 4:26
10. The Boys And The Bees 2:04
11. Oh Maureen / We’ll Come Back 2:26
12. Bees On Fire 1:31
13. Toward Marysville :37
14. The Lollipop :42
15. A Gift Of Flowers 2:01
16. The Bees Arrive (Film Version) 4:54
17. A Boy’s Story 1:51
18. The Park :41
19. Condolences :59
20. Empty Town 1:38
21. Train Attack 2:26
22. No Effect 1:11
23. Tommy’s Death (Film Version) 3:24
24. Exact Instructions (Film Version) 7:16
25. Departed Friend 1:15
26. The Glasses / Houston Headquarters 3:48
27. Burn ‘Em Out :44
28. Get Reinforcements 2:29
29. Bees Inside (Film Version) 5:23
30. End Title (Film Version) 3:07
TOTAL DISC 1 TIME: 75:17

DISC 2: THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK ALBUM
1. Main Title 3:42
2. A Gift Of Flowers 2:03
3. The Bees’ Picnic 2:20
4. Tommy’s Death 4:18
5. The Bees Arrive 5:51
6. Bees Inside 6:01
7. Don’t Take Him 2:30
8. Exact Instructions 4:39
9. A Boy’s Story 1:51
10. End Title 3:13
TOTAL ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK ALBUM TIME: 36:30

ADDITIONAL MUSIC
11. Main Title (Original Version) 4:29
12. No Effect (Alternate Take) 1:10
TOTAL ADDITIONAL MUSIC TIME: 5:39
TOTAL DISC 2 TIME: 42:09

TOTAL ALBUM TIME: 117:26
 

 

Karol

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Sweet! I think I'll be getting this along with Far and Away. 

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32 minutes ago, Jay said:

Interesting, this is the first I've ever heard of MQA encoding! 

It's obviously some new gimmick!

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2 hours ago, crocodile said:

This release is MQA encoded. Listeners with an MQA decoder can enjoy this album in high resolution, up to 176.4 kHz/24-bit, from these Compact Discs. For more information please visit https://www.mqa.co.uk/.

 

What the? I've never heard of this.

 

So they've found a way to encode compact discs with high resolution audio? Why isn't this being rolled out to all LLL releases?

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As I understand it, MQA is basically high-res audio that's compressed in order to allow high-res audio in streaming without significantly increasing the data rate.

 

It has nothing to do on a CD, and actually lowers the quality if one doesn't have a player with a built-in MQA decoder:

 

Quote

MQA-encoded content can be carried via any lossless file format such as FLAC or ALAC; hence, it can be played back on systems either with or without an MQA decoder. In the latter case, the resulting audio has easily identifiable high-frequency noise occupying 3 LSB bits, thus limiting playback on non-MQA devices effectively to 13 bit. MQA claims that nevertheless the quality is higher than "normal" 48/16, because of the novel sampling and convolution processes.[14]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated

 

I'm not buying a CD where the music gets a reduced bit depth on a regular player.

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Yup. It's going to make it fairly obsolete, considering it's the music industry's current attempt to make Hi-Res audio marketable. And that's not even getting to how it's technically lossy as when it isn't properly decoded. At least the other past formats stayed fully lossless.

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1 hour ago, HunterTech said:

Yup. It's going to make it fairly obsolete, considering it's the music industry's current attempt to make Hi-Res audio marketable. And that's not even getting to how it's technically lossy as when it isn't properly decoded. At least the other past formats stayed fully lossless.

 

As I understand it, it's also lossy when properly decoded.

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7 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

As I understand it, MQA is basically high-res audio that's compressed in order to allow high-res audio in streaming without significantly increasing the data rate.

 

It has nothing to do on a CD, and actually lowers the quality if one doesn't have a player with a built-in MQA decoder:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated

 

I'm not buying a CD where the music gets a reduced bit depth on a regular player.

Why the heck would LLL do something like that? I mean, they should know the effect.

 

Apart from that, this is one of the last great late Goldsmith scores I know nothing about, along with Lionheart!

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4 hours ago, Corellian2019 said:

Bruce Botnick first mentioned the concept of MQA during this talk w/ Mike Matessino

 

Botnick is a supporter of the format, as shown by a bullshit quote on the MQA website:

 

"MQA for me is quite an emotional experience. One of the great pleasures of MQA, beyond its ability to give the listener high resolution sound, is having a true centre come out of two loudspeakers or earphones."

 

https://www.mqa.co.uk/mqa-cd

 

Anybody else thinks that's a moronic statement? First Shawn Murphy, and now Bruce has lost it too. Time to retire, Bruce!

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Some harsh stuff collected on the wiki

Quote

Audio product manufacturer Schiit Audio announced that it will not be supporting MQA due to, amongst other reasons, the understanding that "…supporting MQA means handing over the entire recording industry to an external standards organization."[17]

In a blog post title "MQA is Bad for Music. Here's why"[18] Hi-fi Manufacturer Linn Products criticises MQA's licensing requirements, asserting that MQA is "...an attempt to control and extract revenue from every part of the supply chain, and not just over content that they hold the rights for."[18] After having discussed several disadvantages for both the artist and the consumer Linn concludes that as a consumer you will "…pay a higher price for the same music, and you'll pay more for your hi-fi system too. And even if you don't buy into MQA, everyone will get less innovation, creativity and poorer music as a result."[18]

In an interview for online publication Positive Feedback, engineer Andreas Koch is critical of MQA due to its lossy algorithms and compression, along with its licensing requirements; also saying that a format such as this "does not solve any problem that the world currently has."[19] Koch was involved in the creation of the Super Audio CD, the development of the Direct Stream Digital codec, and is co-founder of audio product manufacturer Playback Designs.

An article titled Digital Done Wrong[20] on the International Audio/Video Review web site, concluded that MQA is founded on a fundamentally unsound understanding of correct digital audio processing and found that playback of a sample MQA encoding demonstrated gross distortion and reconstruction failure. It did however comment that some listeners may find the technical defects of MQA encoding subjectively pleasing.

 

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30 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

I couldn't tell a difference between the 192/24 master and the decoded MQA track and the standard CD sounded really close to both.

 

In other words, ordinary CDs are good enough.

 

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nominally better than Horlicks. Growing up in the 70s it was the allowed alternative for Quik (now Nesquik) in my house. You could never really get those instant coffee-like crystals to dissolve properly in cold milk.

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I'am so looking forward to this set. Strangely, I always thought the mix on the Prometheus cd was a bit off and it did sour my feelings on the whole album. I havent seen the film since the time of its release but a revist ought to ignite the interest. And thank heavens for the OST presentation on Disc 2 that should set my appetite for disc 1. With all the recent breakthroughs in the remastering process (since it last came out out 17 years ago) and with the expertise of both Neil S Bulk and Bruce Botnick its bound to sound amazing. The sound clips are indeed very good. So yeah lets have it...

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46 minutes ago, Amer said:

I'am so looking forward to this set. Strangely, I always thought the mix on the Prometheus cd was a bit off and it did sour my feelings on the whole album. 

I had a chat with the venerable Neil S. Bulk about this - the mix on the Prometheus release was incorrect, with right and centre channels flopped. 

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No kidding. ;)

 

20 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

I think it will sound better than the Prometheus album. For one thing, we handled the "LCR" 3-track as intended. The Prometheus release was mixed in a similar fashion to the 1994 Varese release of "The Cowboys", which swapped the center and right channel positions. Our release restores the proper stereo balance, as did The Deluxe Edition of "The Cowboys", which I recommend. 

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On 3/6/2020 at 2:59 AM, Amer said:

Ok, some folks have started recieving their copies. Please share your first reactions... 

It sounds awesome. Throw the Prometheus release in the bin.

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