Archives Review of the Moment: "Music like it was all new again"

The Neil Young Archives Comment of the Moment is by gobacktogo:

Well my parcel from Amazon.ca arrived on Monday, June 15th, and well, I've been downstairs listening to this box set ever since. It's honestly that amazing...

Comprised of 128 audio tracks, hours of video footage, and countless pieces of memorabilia all spread out over 10 Blu-Ray discs. And to think a Blu-Ray disc's storage capacity is anywhere from 25-50GB, so that's just goes to show the amount of material there actually is in this set. Not only is the content amazing, the actual audio quality of it is truly unbelievable. Over my lifetime I've probably spent days worth of time listening to Neil Young's music, but I've never heard it like this. The Blu-Ray set features "ultra-high resolution 24-bit/192 kHz stereo PCM state-of-the-art master quality sound". And to most that may sound like a load of technical gibberish (me included) but after experiencing it for almost 3 days now, I can see what all the fuss was about. I'm experiencing this music like it was all new again, I'm hearing guitar parts I've never heard before, I've listened to each of the classic 'jam' tracks like "Down by The River", "Cowgirl In The Sand", and "Southern Man" 4-5 times already. It's far beyond just listening to a Neil Young song, it's an entire thing of it's own, it's the Archives experience.

A set like this is totally foreign territory for myself, as many of you know I am more or less strictly a vinyl collector, and while I do use digital formats (mp3) out of convenience, I still understand that nothing can beat the warmth of a vinyl record. So when I heard about the whole Archives project being planned for Blu-Ray format I didn't think much of it, and when I heard the price tag I thought even less of it. All I can say is that I tremendously happy with my change of heart, it has opened my eyes to what Neil is trying to do and has succeeded in doing, which is create a state of the art listening experience. All the while create a direct link to his fans through the Blu-Ray Live Updates, now throughout the years to come as more and more material gets chosen for the Archives collection it can be simply added through an Internet gateway. It really goes to show how amazing technology can be when it's utilized the right way and that one doesn't have to be content with 128kbps mp3's for the rest of their life.

More commentary and thoughts on Neil Young Archives and our review here.

---