Today I received a box in the mail from a rather kind benefactor that contained a bunch of copies of the Deluxe Edition of “13” as well as a vinyl copy of the album for myself.  I intend on giving away the majority of the copies of the CD in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, I have a few reactions to the packaging, so I thought I’d throw together some pictures and address a few questions I’ve seen online over the last few days.   Please note I DO NOT have a copy of the Super Deluxe Box set (or the standard CD), nor did I order one.  I’m sure I’ll end up with one somewhere along the way.

Also, if anyone has any questions about this that I didn’t cover, let me know in the comments, I’ll try and address that with updates if necessary.

The Deluxe CD

What I received was multiple copies of the 2 CD Deluxe Edition.   A few bullet points about it.

• It arrives shrink wrapped, with a sticker on the outside attached to the shrink wrap.
• It’s got one of those lenticular covers that changes its look based on what angle you’re looking at it.  I posted a vine video earlier today showing this.  You can see that here.
• The lenticular cover would be why folks were starting to panic about different covers and all that.  It looks a lot different in real life with that kind of cover than just the raw album art does.
• The package expands out and is a trifold.  The inside is a wider shot of the main cover art with a “13” on it.
• Inside are the two CD’s as well as the old “jewel case booklet”.
• The booklet DOES contain lyrics, although to this old fart, they’re kind of small.  :)
• The discs themselves have an art design on them that reminds me of something I’ve seen before from the Paranoid era of the band.
• Disc 2 has only the three bonus tracks on it.  Nothing else.  I hoped there might be some sort of hidden something – pictures, unannounced tracks, but nope.  Disc 2 is just three songs, and that’s it.   I presume the forthcoming Best Buy version will have a different version of this disc, just with four tracks.

Here’s a few pictures of the CD stuff…

   

These other pictures are a still sealed copy of the CD, the back cover of the CD, and one of the CD’s up close.

The Vinyl

The vinyl album is visually a larger version of what’s on the CD.  The exterior artwork is the same, save for the fact that vinyl has just the basic 8 tracks, and not the 11 on the Deluxe CD.   Also, the sticker that’s on the front shrink wrap is obviously different.  It also has a nice weight to it.   I remember the death of the vinyl era (yeah, yeah, I know it never really went away – but you know what I mean), and some of the vinyl produced in that area had a cheap flimsy feeling.  This doesn’t.  It’s the good 180gm stuff.   If you’re into vinyl, you might have a different say to this, as I’m not THAT into vinyl, but I can say this from personal memories of what vinyl used to feel like when it was being phased out.

I cannot attest to the audio fidelity here, because I don’t have a record player anymore.  Even if I did, with my ongoing tinnitus, I’m not sure if I’d notice the difference anyway!  ha.   A few bits about the vinyl

• Like the CD, it comes shrink wrapped with a sticker attached to the shrink wrap.  The sticker is different than the CD, however both in size and content.
• There are two discs in here, labeled Sides “A/B/C/D”
• The exterior sticker mentions there’s a free mp3 download available.   The card is very small – it’s just a 3 inch square.  It could quite easily be missed if you didn’t realize it’s in there.  Mine was stuck in the fold at the end of the vinyl case.
• The download card worked for me (I’m in Texas).   What you get in the resultant download is a Zip file that contains 8 mp3s in there, comprising the 8 songs that are on the vinyl release.  The mp3s themselves are encoded at 320k – and were encoded with iTunes 10.6.1.7 (according to the metadata).
• Each of the discs has artwork from the studio recording on the exterior of the paper.   Also on there are the lyrics to the songs, as well as the credits.
• The vinyl discs have the same pattern in the middle that the CD’s do.  When I showed that to my wife, she remarked “That would probably look cool spinning around on a turntable, shame you don’t have one anymore”.   She’s right.  If anyone here DOES have a record player and buys this, do me a favor.  Make a vine video showing it spinning around on the turntable and let me know about it.  I’d like to see that.  :)

Here’s some vinyl pictures…

 

  

Summary

That’s all I can think of for now.  If there’s anything about these two editions you want to know about, let me know in comments, I’ll try and address them.

I do NOT have the Deluxe Box set, nor do I have the “basic” single CD release, either.  If I happen upon them, I’ll add some addtl comments.    Let me know what you think.