I'm gonna give another example, real time, about my 'process' here. I may be making too big a deal about said 'process' but it kind of gives a clearer example to the ADHD above.
Last night I was listening to Apple Music's mix playlist of 80's hits and George Michaels' "Faith" came on. I flat out just
dig this song. Side note: if you haven't noticed it, the intro to "Faith" has a throwback to GM/Wham's "Freedom" song via pipe organ.
Now, I already have a ripped version of the original US album but it got me curious if there may be a different version or two out there that might be noticeably different. So I pull up the Steve Hoffman forum and do a search. I get quite a few hits. Notably these:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thread....160779/page-2
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thread...t-2010.223185/
The first discusses the SQ of GM's first two albums and the latter discusses the
2010 Remaster release. I do a bit of digging in the threads and find that for the original release, the preferred versions are
32•8P-231 (original Japanese pressing) and the
original US version (catalog number/barcode number CK 40867/074644086720).
As for the 2010 remaster, it's received pretty well. I didn't find a consensus on the remaster being excellent but just some posts here and there saying they liked it. So... yea.
With all that said, buy the one that fits your needs best. I wound up getting the Japanese pressing for about $8 shipped (it was the last one they had at that price).
The cool part about doing this process is the other things you run in to. For example, I found this article discussing the recording of the album that was really quite cool:
http://www.soundonsound.com/people/c...-michael-faith
And if you read through the 2010 Remaster thread linked above you'll find all sorts of little nuggets. For example, this post:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thread...#post-11816079