'The Cosmos Of Tomita' boxset

My 2006, 96k/24bit remastered 11-CD Tomita boxset ('The Cosmos of Tomita') arrived today (I thought I'd better get one before they all sold out.) Extremely good postage service from HMV Japan (I only ordered it at the end of last week.)

For those who've not seen it, it's a lavish set with accompanying 150-page CD sized booklet.

The booklet is basically all the Japanese (and occasionally in English) liner notes for the CD albums, sandwiched with their respective cover artwork, so its basically just the same as having 11 booklets stuck together. The quality of the remastering seems to be excellent so far, the best I have ever heard them with no apparent traces of distortion as yet. I wonder what Tomita-san himself thinks of them?

Ben

 

A minor point since it's a regular format CD, the CD itself is of course 16 bit audio and most mastering done today is done using a higher bid depth to preserve low level sounds if gain is applied amongst other reasons. What I have heard is it's done by JVC using their K2 digitizing system even though it's an BMG release (now Sony/BMG). It's essentially just using really good converters on the master tape and not fooling around with it trying to improve it. I do agree with Ben, these are nice sounding discs. The boxed set of all of them is for all intents sold out. But all the discs are quite available and worth getting if you are missing any or have LPs or old CDs you want to improbve on


Oh and by the way, if you can play DVD-Audio format discs, "The Tomita Planets 2003" out on Denon, is not only real 96/24 but in 4.1 channel. It should also play on regular DVD players in multichannel, though with audio compression. I had to try a couple players though since it's region 2 NTSC and a rather rare kind of dual format.

 

Your mention of gain applied during CD mastering reminds me that there is now a US CD of the Bolero/Daphnis & Chloe album. Here's what I wrote about it on Amazon.com:

I'm beginning to get an idea of why the company that released this CD is called "Wounded Bird" records. The first disc I received from them, Manhattan Transfer Live, was made from a severely damaged master tape. This Tomita CD has been seriously mangled.

First there is the track order. Ostensibly, this CD has been made with the track order used for the original Japanese album but, as has already been noted, the last two tracks have been mistakenly swapped. Also, the original cover art for the American version of the album is included without being updated, so it shows yet another track order.

Worse is that the recording has been severely over-amplified for this CD, driving the louder portions into clipping and making what was Tomita's "quietest" album into something bombastic. Also, the mood is changed by the elimination of silent portions between most tracks.

Tomita understands synthesizers better than perhaps anyone else (I won't quibble if you want to bring up Jean-Jacques Perrey), and each time he entered the recording studio he created a unique sonic world. His genius survives the wounds inflicted here, but not in its original condition. If you want to hear the full beauty of Tomita's work in this music, you have to seek out the Japanese CD of this album (which is titled Ravel-Tomita, Daphnis et Chloe).

If you want a version of this album tailored to tooling down the highway with the top down, this CD is for you.