I picked up the new 2-disc deluxe version of Around The World In A Day. The main album has a slight bass and treble boost at least on some songs and is a tad louder. I haven't A/B'd them all with the original CD release, but that did stand out when checking out a few tracks. Some tracks also do have noticeable noise reduction in places. Sometimes it's only on an intro or fade out, while other times there is no evidence of noise reduction at all. "Raspberry Beret" is one of the tracks that oddly has noticeable noise reduction on the opening drum intro, so don't expect an upgrade from what we already have on CD.
The 12" version of "America" appears on CD for the first time, and it sounds like a tape source. There's a small amount of NR applied to the intro, but it's not aggressive.
This is also the first appearance for the 12" B-side songs "Girl" and "Hello," and both tracks sound like they are taken from the master tapes. The very tail end of "Hello" has a tiny bit of NR applied, but it's only on the last few seconds. It doesn't sound like the rest of the track has any NR.
"Pop Life" (Extended Version) is the most unfortunate part of the release. While it is a drastic improvement from what appears on His Majesty's Pop Life, this is a cleaned up vinyl transfer that has also been mastered from a lossy/mp3 file. Fairly heavy noise reduction is also noticeable throughout the entire track. While there aren't any better officially released digital versions of this song, my own vinyl restoration sound quite a bit better than this, so unfortunately I'm not getting an upgrade with the new deluxe mastering.
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Aaron Kannowski
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