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Sound Quality; LIFEHOUSE packaging



Phil:

>If you don't have the disc, how can you judge this?  Are you trying to
judge the quality of the disc from a little sound bite you downloaded
over the internet and played on your computer?  This is an unfair
comparison because most "multimedia" speaker systems sound like shit
and the samples are probably encoded with loss to make them quick to
download.<

Your point is at least halfway valid.  Unfortunately, I have no way of
listening to the discs themselves without actually buying them.
However, I have listened to LAL and IOW through my computer speakers,
and they sounded a lot better than what I heard.  I'm not talking about
the performance, understand, just the presence.  Lots of live albums
have crappy "presence", IMHO.

>> I decided not to buy it, because Leeds is so much
> better in comparison.

If your criteria is that everything *must* sound as good as Leeds or
you're not going to bother, you might as well not bother with:

    - Additional live tracks on the remasters<

No.  First off, they don't have to sound as good as Leeds--what
could?--but they have to sound good enough to me to justify spending my
money on them.  The additional live tracks on FD and IH sounded fine to
me, in terms of both performance and sound quality (even though they
didn't live up to LAL or IOW in either category, they were quite good
enough).

    >- Isle of Wight<

This was fine.

    >- Kids Are Alright soundtrack<

Same here.  A few tracks weren't all that great, but the majority were
quite good.

    >- any bootleg<

I freely admit that I haven't heard any Who bootlegs, because I no
longer purchase boots.

    >- Pete's live 2CD set at HOB<

I heard this in a store on a real CD player (with headphones) and
decided not to buy it.  Neither the performance nor the ambiance grabbed
me.  Sorry, Pete.

    >- Deep End Live<

No, I wouldn't buy the CD, because it's a ripoff--it doesn't include the
whole concert!  I taped it from a video I rented (could no longer buy
it, or I would have), and it sounds marvelous.

    >- John's Left for Live CD<

Sorry, I have no interest in John solo.

>I'm sorry, I just don't see the point of comparing everything to Leeds
and saying "Well, it stinks because its not as good as Leeds".<

You're quite right, but I hope I've convinced you that that's not really
what I'm doing.  I got suckered once into buying WHO'S LAST, and ever
since then, I've been careful about what live Who I purchase.  I didn't
like JOIN TOGETHER, and I gotta say that BTTB at least beats that
album.  But I can't say I'm interested enough based on what I heard to
get the record.

One other question, to you or anyone:  Is "New Song" worth purchasing
the ELEMENTS disc on its own?  Damn, I'm upset about this LIFEHOUSE
stuff.  I either spend a ton of money I can't afford for three discs of
great stuff and three discs of stuff I don't give a hoot about, or else
I buy one skimpy disc of material whose only virtue is that it has *one*
demo *not* included on the 6 CD set.  I love Pete, but this sounds
suspiciously like the sort of crap that McCartney likes to pull with his
music (releasing a new track as a CD single in Britain only, with
different new tracks on the different configurations of singles).

--Carolyn