G. I. Joe's album was mastered from a lossy source. Apparently a spectral analysis on the contents of the CD revealed that half of the album exhibits certain frequency cutoff patterns that are hallmarks of MP3 encoding.

I've had a closer look at the spectral and the disc is definately lossy mastered. Usually, in spectral view, above any lossy frequency cut-off there is nothing but black space. The spectrals shows 'snow' above the cut-off at 16hz. This means the stream is genuine lossless but the original music files used for the master were lossy. But its strange that some tracks are real lossless, and the other half lossy... what a shame.

I am just listening to the score on good stereo equipment and i think whoever made that album master must have been deaf or blind or both. Deaf because he did not hear the crap he produced and blind for not noticing that he used a lossy format of some sort.
Sometimes i can even hear a compression noise and the brass sounds completely muffled, not transparent at all. You have to crank up the higher frequencies to compensate, which will increase the compression noise!
What a terrible job! I can only recommend everyone to write both varese and colosseum about this issue!

I think this is BS. The CD hasn't even been released yet.

I think this is BS. The CD hasn't even been released yet.

Sorry, TJ but that is a typical american response since they are used to get things first way before for example europeans but as the famous Ford A. Thaxton would have said: "Get your facts and do some research before posting".

I've listened to this a couple of times now on my hifi via good headphones and Ipod with good in ear headphones and although there clearly is an issue with regard to digital artifacts gurgling away at the end of some tracks during fade out and one specific cue that it is evident throughout, in general sound quality is very good. Most will not notice it, especially during the abundant action cues. This score is a lot of fun, the most fun for quite sometime. Yes, Varese should not have allowed this to be released like this but it is not as bad as some say. IMHO. I've heard worse from Varese - Hellboy and From Hell to name two.

What does being American have to do with anything? Even the European distributor lists a release date of August 4th.

I've informed Alan about this disturbing matter. It seems he didn't know and he's looking into it. Let's wait what will happen and if it's true let's hope that Varèse is honest enough to admit their mistake and that they will take measures to correct it. But I guess a lot will depend on how bad the sound quality is. But in my opinion any lossy MP3 compression is unacceptable.

Agreed TJ. That is a typical response from someone who actually knows nothing of the rest of the world. If he did, he wouldn't assign such concepts to an entire nation of people for one person's remarks.