Miles Davis Kind Of Blue 96/24 FLAC HDtracks

Kind of Blue is an album most have heard many times before in a wide variety of formats. Now, you can hear it as if you were right there in the recording studio with the musicians! After many years, Sony finally decided to remaster Kind of Blue hi-res at 192kHz/24bit with the brilliant engineer Mark Wilder and the dedicated and knowledgeable producer Steve Berkowtiz (who has spent more time with and knows this album better than anyone out there). The quality of sound on this recording is unparalleled—listening to this release is like being IN THE STUDIO with Miles.

Kind of Blue Becomes Digital, by Engineer Mark Wilder

"Since the Kind of Blue mixed masters are multiple generations from the original (due to excessive play/wear), we decided to go directly to the original session reels. Not only does this put us at the original session as a starting point, but it also allows us to deal with the pitch issue as well.

The three, 3-track half-inch tapes are in good condition, but age has force them to “scallop” a little, meaning that the edges curl away from the tape head. This changed the initial focus from mixing from the originals to archiving them before mixing and working from the archive files. This allowed us to gently guide the tape against the playback head to get optimal contact and fidelity.

The archiving was done at 192kHz/24 bits, played from a modified Ampex ATR 104, and hard-wired to HDCD Model 2’s directly patched to a Lynx 2 sound card.

An upside to working from the archive files was the ability to chase the original fader moves done during the mix in 1959. We constantly compared to an early pressing - mono and stereo - and worked bar by bar to duplicate the level moves on the three tracks to match as well as possible.

Each channel was converted to analog and passed through a GML mixer, bussed to stereo or mono - depending on the release format - and converted once again to 192Kc/24 bits. At the GML, we inserted processing where needed.”

– Mark Wilder, Battery Studios

So, what does all of this mean for you, the listener?

With this new hi-res version you will hear purity of tone that is impossible to get with a CD (which has a certain 'hardness' to the sound). Additionally, the spatial cues are 'wider' and you can hear the real physical depth of the sound stage of the Columbia Records 30th Street Studio. You will feel more of the size and immense space of the studio than ever before, and it will sound as if Miles was right there in front of you in your living room! This new hi-res version of Kind of Blue is a testament to the great and simple engineering of the day.

Miles Davis' legendary album, Kind of Blue, is considered to be the best jazz record of all time, as well as being both Davis' best-selling record and the best-selling jazz record of all time. It has been certified quadruple platinum and is considered to be Davis' masterpiece. An incredibly influential and innovative album, Kind of Blue was a breakthrough album, not in a commercial sense but in the fact that the record created an entirely new language. Chick Corea, one of Miles Davis' acolytes, said about the album, "It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what Kind of Blue did."

Kind of Blue was recorded at Columbia 30th Street Studio (also known as CBS 30th Street Studio and nicknamed "The Church") on March 2 and April 22, 1959. The 30th Street Studio is considered by many to be the greatest recording studio in history, with a stunning acoustic space—100 foot high ceilings and a 100 foot floorspace for the recording area. Some of the records recorded at 30th Street Studio include Pink Floyd's The Wall, Glenn Gould's Bach: The Goldberg Variations, Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story and the entire Masterworks discography of Vladimir Horowitz.