There's an SACD version of this album (catalogue KIGA-1). Besides the fact that it's an SACD (Super Audio CD - Sony proprietary format), there's one more difference between the two versions. The SACD version has one extra track over this CD, containing "Moon Phase." Now, I am an audiophile at heart. I even have an SACD player, which has been sitting in my closet for almost two years, neatly packaged in its original box.
I can even appreciate that this CD may have been better mastered than other CDs because it was influenced by the SACD mastering process. What makes me think that this CD was influenced? To this date, this is the first time I've seen CD tracks containing full range signal to the Nyquest frequency limit without any apparent filtering. Of course, I don't go around analyzing every CD I own. Far from it. But I'm still surprised with this CD. Note that not every track on this CD qualifies.
But seriously, what is the purpose of making the 13th track only available on the SACD version? Because SACD sales is terrible and they're willing to try anything to get people to buy one? Too bad! Like I care about the dead formats (including DVD-Audio)! This is nothing more than a marketing scam. What? SACD version costs Y200 more? Well, if that additional song is going to cost extra, put it on the CD, too, and charge me another Y200. I wouldn't have cared. Frankly, I've already been avoiding Sony products because of their technically and ethically careless behaviors. This does nothing to wean me off that belief.
This time around, their crappy marketing decision didn't affect me because I already have "Moon Phase" on "Aqua Plus Vocal Collection Vol.4" (KICA-1424), but for the artists' sake, I hope they don't make such stupid decisions in the future. And instead of wasting time and money on these selfish formats, these companies should be spending some money properly training audio "engineers," so they can actually deserve to be called "engineers." We can talk about higher definition formats once you companies learn how to properly master existing CD formats, consistently.
