Iron Maiden have remastered 19 albums from their catalog for iTunes.
The project sees the band re-master all 15 studio albums, 2 Best Of collections and 2 live albums from their original analogue sources exclusively for iTunes.
"The Mastering For iTunes procedure allows the listener to experience the music as close as possible to the way the artist intended it to be heard,” says bassist Steve Harris. “So of course I was very keen for the Maiden albums to be mastered in this way. The records have been available digitally before, when this medium first became a platform for music distribution but that was mastered with CDs in mind.
“The iTunes process involves a different approach and it's great to finally deliver the music to our fans in as close to a pure and accurate sound as we could possibly achieve.For example, as most people know, I was never really happy with the sound on the first Maiden album but listening to it now, the guitars are louder, the drums more substantial and the overall tone is so very much improved in my opinion.
“Tony Newton and Ade Emsley who worked closely with me on the project did a terrific job recapturing everything from the original masters and together we've re- mastered them all digitally and I'm really happy with the results."
“The process started with locating all of the original album mix tapes (or whichever format they were mixed to),” explains Newton.” Then the choice of analogue to digital convertor was chosen for the most accurate capture to make it as close as possible to the sound of the mix as it was intended by the band.
“When a lot of these tapes were last captured it was in the 1980's, early days of digital and only 44.1khz/16bit files were possible. On top of this the new A/D convertors are far superior now, and of course it is possible to produce files of far higher resolution. The result of this is that the songs now sound more defined with added depth and warmth. I was very excited to be asked to be part of this project, I honestly feel that there is a massive improvement in the quality of these classic albums.”
Check out Iron Maiden’s remastered catalog at iTunes.
The group will be awarded the 2015 O2 Silver Clef Award by UK charity Nordoff Robbins at their 40th anniversary gala on July 3 in recognition of the band’s “outstanding contribution to UK music.”
The honor also recognizes the group as one of the most globally successful and influential rock bands of all time, with more than 90 million albums sold worldwide.
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Search Iron Maiden at hennemusic
