TODAY ONLY (12/2/11) - Best of Aretha Franklin 40% off!

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$17.99 is a great price! Get this while you still can. It's a great title IMHO and Aretha Franklin with all the great original songs. I bought the CD-4 for much more just to get these songs in Quadraphonic format.
 
It IS a great title. I passed on the CD-4 back in the day, since it is missing many great Aretha tracks. I bought the Quadio. A must have disc. Rhino must have been choking on these, which explains why we haven't seen any more Quadio releases. A shame.

Linda
 
It IS a great title. I passed on the CD-4 back in the day, since it is missing many great Aretha tracks. I bought the Quadio. A must have disc. Rhino must have been choking on these, which explains why we haven't seen any more Quadio releases. A shame.

Linda

I think it was a bad choice, mostly because it WAS a Greatest Hits disc when it was released, but in 2010, it was not. It did not even have "Think", let alone the hits from her Arista comeback "Freeway of Love" and others. 30 years later, it's an incomplete GH package, and it misses the mark.

Only those of us who were around when it was a GH disc find it worthy at $30.
 
It IS a great title. I passed on the CD-4 back in the day, since it is missing many great Aretha tracks. I bought the Quadio. A must have disc. Rhino must have been choking on these, which explains why we haven't seen any more Quadio releases. A shame.

Linda

Hi Linda,

Yes, but think about all of the other titles they're "choking" on worse. ;) As I understand it, supposedly the program is not dead. Titles are/were planned.
 
The special price made me finally buy this, too. Jon, even if released today it probably would not have her Arista tracks (or Columbia tracks for that matter). She earned the title "Queen of Soul" when she was on Atlantic. You are right about it not even having enough of her WEA tracks though. (How about "The House That Jack Built"?) My main beef with the album is the version of "Chain Of Fools". I know they say it is an extended version but to my ears it is a completely different take and lacks the grit and bite of the original. But, as a quadraholic it has bothered me that I didn't have this....so...purchase made.
 
Jon, I agree with you in principle, but disagree in many ways. Many classic tracks that had been released prior to the CD-4's release were ommitted. The CD-4 was released as half greatest hits and half recent tracks to entice us to purchase those early '70's albums. The Aretha collection could have been MUCH better. Yes, Wagonmaster, some of them are vastly different than the versions most folks know. I don't mean simply a different mix. Yet, if you like Aretha at all, it's hard to overlook Respect, Baby I Love You, Chain of Fools, Daydreaming and Natural Woman in Quad. These alone make this collection indispensable. If later tracks from Atlantic and Arista were included, it would involve a lot of mixing, not to mention licensing for the Arista tracks. That is contrary to the apparrent aim of Quadio: to make a quick buck by re-releasing old Quad albums.

I'll believe more Quadio is coming when I see it. No disrespect to you, OQG. The "spin" is that the program is still alive. We saw two releases, then nothing for a year and a half. If anything, WEA will introduce a line of SACD's, Blu-Ray-A's or advanced res downloads sometime in 2012, as they've vaguely alluded to. Although that's more likely, it's suspect until it happens.

As a hard core collector for over 50 years, I've witnessed the ineptitude and greed of the record labels. Likely I've spent more $$$ over those 50 years than anyone on this forum. I was sales manager for an electronics company where our president had previously been presided over a major record company. We had a corporate policy that forbade relatives to work there. The exception was that his wife was his administrative assistant. They were both summarily dismissed for financial improprieties. Corruption and stupidity have played a large part in the management of many record companies. IMHO, for every honest, music loving exec, there are three corrupt, greedy bastards that care little for art.

Linda the Cynic

Hi Linda,

Yes, but think about all of the other titles they're "choking" on worse. ;) As I understand it, supposedly the program is not dead. Titles are/were planned.
 
hey Linda, at very begining they have option to choose the artist who would be more interesting to potential buyers.
i guess that their quad masters in the vault didn't ended on Aretha.
secondly - DTS stream. more stupid move, after they already has previously released full range DVDA with lossless,
hard to explain or understand. i think this quadio venture as it is, was fiasco from the start.
 
You're right, Otto. I wondered why not DVD-A, but then it would have cost more on licensing. Advanced res, Dolby D and/or DTS and a stereo mix would have meant paying the royalty 3 or 4 times, instead of once. That's why they did DTS. One licensing fee and most everyone can play it. The CTA & Aretha are among my most prized discs, but they could have been SO MUCH BETTER in advanced res. I was hoping against hope that CTA was DVD-A, as the J-card has the logo, BUT NOOOOOO! And the bastards still charged 1 1/2 - 2 times what DVD-A titles cost at retail. Since they sold them direct, it was 3-4 times the profit. Suckers like me pre-ordered them both. In the unlikely event they do more, I'll buy those, too. Cha-ching!

Linda

hey Linda, at very begining they have option to choose the artist who would be more interesting to potential buyers.
i guess that their quad masters in the vault didn't ended on Aretha.
secondly - DTS stream. more stupid move, after they already has previously released full range DVDA with lossless,
hard to explain or understand. i think this quadio venture as it is, was fiasco from the start.
 
Suckers like me pre-ordered them both. In the unlikely event they do more, I'll buy those, too. Cha-ching! Linda
i won't, if it without lossless stream.
look at PentaTone, albeit it's classical and on SACD, but concept is pretty much same - re-releasing the old quadraphonic masters from DECCA archives.
so far they released just from old quad masters an 80 titles. and this is beside other 220 releases.
 
........but then it would have cost more on licensing. Advanced res, Dolby D and/or DTS and a stereo mix would have meant paying the royalty 3 or 4 times, instead of once. That's why they did DTS. One licensing fee and most everyone can play it.
Then add in the fact that until the last few years, AFAIK very few players or receivers included bass management and distance compensation for hi-res tracks. The bass management issue though was - and still is - the most important by far imo, since few people want to own speakers that can be called full range (to me that means at least down to 40Hz) and need b.m. for their smaller bookshelf speakers and associated subwoofer (while I and many others here may have no problem using 4 or 5 "large" speakers containing an 8" or larger woofer, nowadays many music fan/NON-audiophiles think it's mind-boggling to own just two such speakers!).

Now, the situation is much improved since the introduction of receivers with built-in hi-res decoders for the various hi-res codecs that Blu-ray discs can contain, so the distance compensation (which helps make sure the surround soundfield is formed correctly) and the b.m. systems are finally in place and at affordable prices.........but 1) those licensing costs are still present and 2) not everyone owns one of those newer receivers.

I also would like to see a hi-res version of the Quadio titles, but if they use DTS' highest bit rate of 1500kbps, that's the approximate equivalent of a 500kbps stereo MP3 file. And based on what I've read elsewhere & personal experience, many (most?) people cannot tell the difference between a 320kbps MP3 file and the original 44kHz/16bit PCM track on a CD.
 
years ago, like in the 70"s I was walking home very late one night and passed by a house where they were listening to Aretha
and I (in dead of winter) had to sit there on the porch and listen as they evidenly had a class system. I never to this day have heard Aretha sound soooo damm good! And I sat and listened to the entire album freezing but it was well worth it. Could it have been a quad album? Loud, clear, present, depth, etc.
 
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