Utada Hikaru – Ultra Blue

This is a pirated copy from China! Please support genuine

Much like the other hi-res Utada Hikaru remasters of 2018, these are sadly extremely poor in quality. The original CD releases were victims of the loudness war in a big way and, much like those, every track on the remasters is visibly brick-walled in the waveforms.

It's evident that none of the proper tools were used to assist with amplification artifacts, as errors and clipping are so obvious that even family and friends of mine (who listen to free Spotify) complained of "fuzziness" and "crispiness" in these tracks. The only benefit of these releases was quieter parts of tracks and certain instruments were indeed clearer, but this is offset by a clearly over-amplified Utada clipping across every chorus. The hi-res aspect actually makes the issue worse, as the clipping is only much sharper and more pronounced than it was previously.

Ultra Blue has some fantastic singles, but the choruses on those tracks are really hurt by this issue, such as Keep Tryin'. Colors is probably the most obvious, with *extreme* clipping occurring during times where Utada reaches higher notes with virtually no dynamic range whatsoever (it's actually much worse than the 2004 CD version). Like Deep River, this release includes the Kingdom Hearts II openings, but still has the issues listed above and negates the benefit of having them in hi-res.

Some recent (2019-2023) remasters of Utada b-sides and single tracks show that the original mixes are, for the most part, in decent dynamic range and quality. It's unfortunate that it appears they did not do this for these new releases.

Wonderful remaster on wonderfully pressed vinyl. These discs are dead silent! Pretty fantastic packaging too, a booklet extra would have been nice though.

Sound: perfect sound and volume, not background noise at all. A delight!

Any thoughts on this; mine's still in transit. Sound? Packaging? Gatefold? Merci!