All I'll say it's amazing

Will probably buy this album next month along with YUI TRIBUTE and Leo Ieiri's LEO. ><

Tim_E.D wrote:So it is the best album then? because i consider to buy one of these album (after all sony music distribute the first scandal new album in indonesia )

The cliched answer: "it depends on what you're into".

I think the compositions on this album are better than any of their other albums. But... it sounds kind of like a cover album to me. Hard to explain it, but there's no cohesion or identity to it of its own, and one or two songs pretty liberally "borrow" from popular western songs... it just doesn't really sound like SCANDAL to me.

Also I think it's kind of weird that Harukaze is on this album again. I think they should have picked a b-side or something instead, if they didn't have another new song.

Well, I felt kind of the same about Baby Action and I warmed up to it eventually. But if I had to take one Scandal album with me to a desert island, it'd still be Temptation Box. That's their best album IMO.

yeah, it seems like a few of SCANDAL's songs are borrowed from western music. I've heard a few songs that sound like things I've heard before, but I'm still very satisfied with all of their music. After all, Jpop/ Jrock gets its influences from 80s rock and Eurobeat, so I know there will be tons of similar sounding songs, but that's just the way it is.

yoshinator54 wrote:yeah, it seems like a few of SCANDAL's songs are borrowed from western music. I've heard a few songs that sound like things I've heard before, but I'm still very satisfied with all of their music.

Most of their music I think sounds pretty original, I think I was just listening to "Right Here" when I wrote my last comment, which is really obviously lifted from Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life". The only other song they have that I thought was blatant like that was "Koshi Tan-tan" (which borrows from the Offspring's "Come Out and Play"), but that wasn't on an album so I didn't care. "Right Here" makes me cringe a little, though, being on an album now that they've gotten pretty popular.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the album overall. But I think it's going to take a little while for me to really appreciate it more, like Baby Action did. I do really like a few songs already ("Koe" is probably my favorite, I like the straight up rock songs and hearing Mami sing once in a while).

Great news guys! On just the first day, Kirifuda Wa Queen went into the second position on the Oricon Charts, and sold 16,858 copies and the sales are bound to get higher. After all, it is only the first day!! Congrats to SCANDAL!!



http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/ja/d/2012-09-25/

Second day: stayed at 2nd place with 7280 copies (while Green Day's Uno! falled down to 4th with less than 5328 copies)

Japan sure is a tough crowd. Only 7000 copies?!

Got my physical copy yesterday

I just got my order from CDJapan and I've won a deck of playing cards. I'm so happy! :D


I've ordered the photobook and the DVD edition and they are both really awesome!

omg you got the sacred playing cards!

yay, qat opened (and stayed) at #2!
:cheer: :cheer:

is that the highest that scandal has placed with an album or single?

Are the playing cards supposed to be hard to get?

Vapour Trail wrote:Are the playing cards supposed to be hard to get?

As far as I know they were a lottery prize when buying the album in certain stores.
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/rcms/music/scandal_lottery1209.html

Yeah, they did something like that when I bought mine from Tower Records in Shibuya and I got the playing cards, but I didn't know that they were meant to hard to get. It was because of what it said on the back of my bottom sticker from the sticker sheet that I got them.

I guess I got lucky.

anyone know where i can get the Set of cards? or anyone willing to sell me a desk if they know where to get one?
Thank you

Vapour Trail wrote:Yeah, they did something like that when I bought mine from Tower Records in Shibuya and I got the playing cards, but I didn't know that they were meant to hard to get. It was because of what it said on the back of my bottom sticker from the sticker sheet that I got them.

I guess I got lucky.

Man, you got lucky to even go to Tower Records Shibuya! ;D I love that store.
What sticker sheet do you mean though? Would you post a photo?

I think I keep my deck of cards sealed for a little while.

Sales Data for all albums

Day 1 Day 2 Week 1
QaT 16,858 7,280
SS 15,978 9,803 42,246
BA 17,652 9,360 37,803
TB 13,398 7,937 34,946
BS 28,772

40K plus sales for week 1 would be great

I live in Shinjuku, so Shibuya is very close and I sometimes go to Tower
Records because it has a good selection. I suppose I'm lucky to be living here. I love it.

It was something on the bottom of of this sticker sheet. The lady at the counter peeled it off, looked at the back and then gave me the playing cards.



Also, for those that want to see the playing cards, here's a picture. It's
the middle of the night here in Japan, so without natural light, my
phone's camera isn't very good. I'll upload a better quality one
tomorrow (also, I accidentally got the back design upside-down). All the
other cards in the deck have a standard design, these are the special
ones.

Thanks, I see. I also got 2 of these sticker sheets with my order.

Yeah, I wish I'd be living in Tokyo too.

I bought a digital copy of the album on the American iTunes Store! Yes, the American iTunes Store has all of their albums on there for purchasing legally :D It's only $10 on iTunes where it would cost you close to $40 for a physical copy if you bought it on http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/

Also, I opened up the tracks in Audacity which is a free audio editing and recording program and this is what I found!



Looks like this album is a victim of the so called "Loudness war"!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

All you have to do after converting the .m4a files into .MP3 format is just use the 'Nomalize' option in Audacity, and after exporting the file and reopening it, it should look like this!

You can get them in the UK iTunes too. I think EPIC have been international with most of their releases.

Hopefully all the others will follow suit. Sony will of course be the last to do this, as they are the last to do everything.

SuperSentaifan4ever wrote:I bought a digital copy of the album on the American iTunes Store! Yes, the American iTunes Store has all of their albums on there for purchasing legally :D It's only $10 on iTunes where it would cost you close to $40 for a physical copy if you bought it on http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/

Also, I opened up the tracks in Audacity which is a free audio editing and recording program and this is what I found!



Looks like this album is a victim of the so called "Loudness war"!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

All you have to do after converting the .m4a files into .MP3 format is just use the 'Nomalize' option in Audacity, and after exporting the file and reopening it, it should look like this!

I got my physical copy (CD+DVD) for only $18.75 on eBay (though it's still in transit...)

As for the "loudness", just enable the equalizer setting in itunes and your ipod and all your songs should be of the same volume.

SuperSentaifan4ever wrote:I bought a digital copy of the album on the American iTunes Store! Yes, the American iTunes Store has all of their albums on there for purchasing legally :D It's only $10 on iTunes where it would cost you close to $40 for a physical copy if you bought it on http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/

Also, I opened up the tracks in Audacity which is a free audio editing and recording program and this is what I found!



Looks like this album is a victim of the so called "Loudness war"!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

All you have to do after converting the .m4a files into .MP3 format is just use the 'Nomalize' option in Audacity, and after exporting the file and reopening it, it should look like this!

Unfortunately, you haven't really accomplished anything by doing that.

What the normalize function does is reduce the volume of the track until all of the peaks (that is the parts where it hits max volume) are at the volume you chose. It's pretty much the same as decreasing the output volume of your music player.

There is no change in the dynamic range of the wave file when you do normalize.

The reason why your wave looks different is because when you convert to mp3 you are getting clipping from the compression.

You are also losing quality when going from m4a to mp3, since you are re-compressing already compressed files.

Uldred wrote:

SuperSentaifan4ever wrote:I bought a digital copy of the album on the American iTunes Store! Yes, the American iTunes Store has all of their albums on there for purchasing legally :D It's only $10 on iTunes where it would cost you close to $40 for a physical copy if you bought it on http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/

Also, I opened up the tracks in Audacity which is a free audio editing and recording program and this is what I found!



Looks like this album is a victim of the so called "Loudness war"!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

All you have to do after converting the .m4a files into .MP3 format is just use the 'Nomalize' option in Audacity, and after exporting the file and reopening it, it should look like this!

Unfortunately, you haven't really accomplished anything by doing that.

What the normalize function does is reduce the volume of the track until all of the peaks (that is the parts where it hits max volume) are at the volume you chose. It's pretty much the same as decreasing the output volume of your music player.

There is no change in the dynamic range of the wave file when you do normalize.

The reason why your wave looks different is because when you convert to mp3 you are getting clipping from the compression.

You are also losing quality when going from m4a to mp3, since you are re-compressing already compressed files.

That's very interesting! I wish that there was a way to remove the loudness, but I'm not an audio person unfortunately. .waaa.