Despite this being one of the major releases from the end of the year we never made a proper thread for it.  Based on a couple of preview listens and just the format of the release itself I already have some pretty strong opinions (more on the negative side than the positive) but for now a couple of burning questions:

1) Beyond the 23 orchestral tracks what are the other contents of the Blu-ray disc?

2) I always thought there were only two slightly different FFI-III medleys, the 2002 one from 20020220 and then the 2010 one on Distant Worlds Returning Home that merely swapped the Chocobo theme for the main FF one.  This 2004 one on Orchestral Album is completely different though.  What album does it originally come from?

There are some promotional videos on the disc as well as a bunch of pics snapped of Nobuo et al arriving for the recording session and doing it and what not.  There's also an original game musics playlist of the equivalent tracks you can play too.

In order to grab the 320 kbps mp3s you can stick the blu-ray disc in your drive and copy the file over to your computer.

i've read posts on other boards saying that this album isn't really recorded at 24kbits/96 kHZ.  Is this what you were referring to Adam? 

I'm not sure either where the 2004 Medley comes from either.  Maybe it was from another DW Concert before the albums came out?  Or was DW started by then?

The 2004 Medley is from the Tour de Japon concert series. It got a limited DVD release, but no CDs, which might be why you're not familiar with it.

Tour de Japon (which I've never heard) was my best guess.  Thanks for confirming, Vaeran.

It's too bad the FFIX "You're Not Alone" arrangement performed in the Distant Worlds Celebration concerts wasn't included here.  I enjoyed it far better than the boring "Unfulfilled Feelings" arrangement we got instead.

Too bad about the battle medley too.  It's pretty solid up to FFVI but after that you can almost imagine Hiroyuki Nakayama checking his wristwatch (or the Filmharmonic Orchestra's price per minute rate) as he rushes from one theme to the next.  Kills me every time I hear the FFVII and FFXII battle themes come to a stop right at the climax.

FFV "Dear Friends" is nice though.

Full album on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcbKrWGZSBU