Seal's Debut Album ReissuedFor some reason this reissue was relegated to, physically, a 4CD+2LP set. Which means the best you'll get out of that is of course 16-bit/44.1khz. No blu-ray audio or even SACD in the works (has Warner Bros music ever supported either?)
A Dolby Atmos mix is available on streaming platforms.
However, what they don't tell you is that the release on HDTracks (and I'm assuming other services that provide hi-res to purchase and download) is at the very least 24-bit/44.1khz.
So I wondered, would the 17 years of advances in remastering techniques for this reissue make up for the 1/2 sampling rate compared to the DVD-Audio release.
Full disclosure, I do not have the 2005 DVD-Audio release of Seal 1 (it is somewhat rare and is fetching a pretty penny these days.) What I do have is the
Seal's Best 1991-2004 which features a DVD-Audio disc of the same tracks on the CD. Several of which are from Seal 1.
Therefore, I bought the reissue from HDTracks. Put the flac files all on my Activo CT10 which already has the ripped flacs from the
Seal's Best DVD-A. Started flipping back and forth between the DVD-Audio flacs and reissue flacs for "Crazy", "Killer" and "Future Love Paradise" listening through my Sony MDR-7506 headphones.
First off, the volume level for the reissue is lower than the ripped DVD-A flacs so that was a little annoying having to adjust the volume (thankfully easy to do with the Activo since it has a physical volume knob.) Then comparing the audio, the reissue comes close, but I still noticed a little more detail in the highs and more powerful bass from the DVD-A tracks. So despite being 17 years old, the 88.2 sampling rate still made a difference.
And also means, unfortunately, I still have to try to find that 2005 DVD-Audio release of
Seal 1 for a decent price so I can get the other tracks not featured on the
Seal's Best in higher quality. The reissue will do a decent job tiding me over until then.