The day has flown, but I feel I've hardly done a thing. I've decided to remaster Arcangel with the second option of new tracks of the same length as before, but better quality. The original recordings were very bass-heavy and rather compressed, and in 16-bit, and I can at least help address those problems. I don't compress any tracks now thanks to my lovely Cathedral Limiter, though this magical clipper might be considered compression by purists.
The new tracks sound about as loud but have far less compression. The quality isn't perfect; I'd prefer to remix, or prefer to re-record everything with Prometheus, but I can't do the former without an SY-85. That is probably the best option in terms of sounding like the original, as the analogue sound from the SY-85 was warm and different from that of Prometheus. Some of the sounds in the newer 2021 recordings, that I took just before selling the synth, are missing or panned oddly; but the recording quality is higher, and my only other source for these tracks are the final (compressed) 16-bit waves from 1999. Even if I had an SY-85 I'd need a mixing deck, as I'd want to high-pass many of the tracks.
The new album is certainly better than before, and I could consider these 24-bit files 'hi-res', to attach some label like an 'Apple Digital Master'; though I'm not sure if I'm proud enough of the mix generally for that. The results are, however, the best they've ever been.
Standards of naming have changed since 2001. I remember that the title 'The Arcangel Soundtrack' was considered incorrect, that 'Arcangel (The Official Soundtrack)' was preferred, though Arcangel wasn't released so one could say that it's not a soundtrack at all but an album called 'The Arcangel Soundtrack'! Secondly, the track 'SPDF' may cause problems, as since 2017 and the first digital release, tracks with letter-names have more restrictions. We shall see.
Here's an image from the iTunes Digital Booklet I've made for the album. All newly re-issued albums will probably include one, AND I'll have to update most of the album artwork as I've made it smaller than the 3000-pixel standard of today. Anything connected with technology is a matter of constant revision and updating.
The original 2001 album had a few (under 20) CD copies made and I sent a few to REV Records, who also had a few copies of the first Synaesthesia album. I don't think or expect they sold any, and I didn't either, though a few review copies were sent out. The rest were probably destroyed. Will the album ever be released on CD again? I'd like to think so, but not for a while. It's rather short at 21 minutes and I'm much more proud of many other albums that demand CD release. For this, I'd like to aim for a full remaster first, with other tracks from the era perhaps, I have many that used the same tools.
