The 2011 'Why Pink Floyd?' Discovery editions: completely new masters, not recycled from 2004

When the ‘Why Pink Floyd?’ campaign arrived in 2011, the Discovery series replaced the 2004 ‘Shine On’ box set as the budget-friendly way to own the studio albums. But they aren’t the same discs with new price tags. James Guthrie and Joel Plante went back to the original analogue masters and created entirely new 2011 transfers for every album from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn through The Division Bell. Different EQ, different compression decisions.

The 2004 ‘Shine On’ remasters were overseen by Doug Sax and James Guthrie, and they had a noticeably compressed, loud sound that some fans found fatiguing. The 2011 Discovery editions pull back on that — the dynamic range is wider, the stereo image is more open, and the bass isn’t as pumped. It wasn’t a simple copy-paste job. They rebuilt the entire mastering chain for the new campaign. A curious detail: the 2011 Animals master is the only version that doesn’t contain the “Sheep” phone-bleep mix-up found on earlier CDs, because they finally corrected it.