They’ve been a great success… but all good things must come to an end. The limited-edition versions of six Loreena McKennitt titles featuring a bonus DVD will soon no longer be available in retail stores. However, we’ve kept some stock for sale directly from QR. Learn more about these special offerings – and then visit the QR Shop to purchase these titles.
Message From Loreena
Loreena McKennitt explains: “This initiative began simply as an attempt to meet the demands of many listeners who have contacted us to request that No Journey’s End and the two music videos be made available in the increasingly popular DVD format. The remastering process, the fruits of which you will hear on the limited-edition versions of five of my studio albums, began some months ago as an archival exercise when we transferred these recordings from their old tape format to a more durable medium. This transfer process offered us a perfect opportunity to enhance the sound of the earlier recordings at the same time.
“These limited-edition titles will be offered to retail at the same price as the earlier single-disc versions, so it should cost you no more to acquire the new packages with the bonus DVD. Should you own all of these recordings, but still wish to have the bonus DVD, we are also offering the DVD for sale as a standalone item via Quinlan Road’s mail order service on this site.”
“Our aim at Quinlan Road has always been to do our utmost to show consideration for the customer above and beyond the standard you may have come to expect from the music industry. By offering this DVD across all six studio album titles and as a standalone mail-order item, we have tried hard ensure that we have offered the widest range of options for you to acquire this material should you so desire.”
“Finally, we have added a multilingual weblink to all of these audio CDs to make it even easier for you to visit the official Quinlan Road website, which we are presently in the thick of ‘renovating’, enhancing, and offering new items and features, including a sign-up feature which will enable us to keep you up-to-date with regular email newsletters.”
“As we move toward recording a new studio album, we hope you will find these Quinlan Road back catalogue ‘housekeeping’ exercises of interest and value. We welcome your feedback and look forward to your next visit to the Quinlan Road website, a community forum in which we aim to share the musical journey with you, the listener.”
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• Titles included are Elemental, To Drive The Cold Winter Away, Parallel Dreams, The Visit, The Mask And Mirror and The Book Of Secrets.
• Limited-edition packages will be available in stores from September 2004 while supplies last. They are also available from the QR Shop on this website.
• Following the limited-edition period, all six titles will revert to the previous single-disc configuration, but the remastered audio and weblink will remain a feature of these titles permanently.
• These limited-edition titles will be offered to retail at the same price as their earlier versions.
• These limited-edition titles will be packaged in a slimline, 2-disc jewel case. Minimal alternations have been made to the existing CD artwork.
• Each audio CD includes a multilingual weblink (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese).
• The Loreena McKennitt EP A Winter Garden: Five Songs For The Season and her 2-CD live recording Live In Paris And Toronto are not included in this limited-edition programme. However, A Winter Garden has been remastered. BACK TO TOP
• The bonus DVD is common to all six Loreena McKennitt studio albums.
• DVD features the 30-minute Loreena McKennitt documentary No Journey’s End and the music videos “The Bonny Swans” and “The Mummers’ Dance” (in both stereo and 5.1 mixes).
• Also included: “Explore the Music of Loreena McKennitt” feature, with short descriptive paragraphs on all Loreena McKennitt releases to date, along with selected audio samples.
• No Journey’s End subtitles and “Explore the Music of Loreena McKennitt” text are available in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Turkish, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.
• This DVD is available as a standalone item directly from Quinlan Road’s mail order service on this website.
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• Elemental, To Drive The Cold Winter Away, Parallel Dreams, The Visit and The Mask And Mirror have been newly remastered by Loreena McKennitt’s longtime musical collaborator Brian Hughes.
• Explaining the remastering process, Brian says: “Mastering is the final ‘polishing’ process before a CD is prepared for manufacture. The overall level, equalisation and compression are adjusted so that the various tracks on the album are balanced and flow nicely from one to the next. We have always strived to make the best-sounding recordings possible, and with these CDs being reissued, we were excited to be able to remaster and fine-tune the albums for the listener while we had the chance. The earlier albums – particularly Elemental, To Drive The Cold Winter Away and Parallel Dreams – were originally mastered for the cassette format, which was limited in the fidelity department. With the CD being the medium of the day and advances in mastering technology, it was decided to polish up the earlier recordings and bring them up to the fidelity level of The Book Of Secrets which we felt was the one CD in the catalogue that met today’s standards and did not require remastering.
• “In most cases”, Brian adds, “we went back to the original master tapes and remastered from there with a mind to stay true to the original ‘vibe’. The CDs have been remastered at the CD redbook standard of 44.1K / 16 bit. I think the first thing the listener might notice, especially on the earlier CDs, is that they are now fuller sounding and more present than the originals. There are other subtle differences of course, and we will leave them to you, the listener, to discover.”
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