Back in May Rush released 2 new digital-only album collections: Rush The Complete Mercury Years and Rush: The Studio Albums 1989-2007. Rush The Complete Mercury Years contains Rush's complete Mercury catalog (all their albums up through A Show of Hands), including the new 2112 Deluxe Edition and 2008's Working Man vault edition. This Mercury collection was essentially already made available via 2011's Sectors box sets (excluding the 2112 Deluxe Edition and Working Man vault edition), but this was the first time they were released for sale digitally. Rush: The Studio Albums 1989-2007 contains the entire Atlantic-era Rush studio catalog (Presto through Snakes & Arrows). The collections were mastered by Andy Van Dette from Masterdisk using the original master tapes through analog console, equalizers and compressors before being recaptured at 96kHz/24bit lossless audio. The lossless audio versions were made available via HDTracks.com for a significantly higher cost, but with much better quality than the mastered for iTunes versions. Masterdisk also promised that a physical version of the remastered The Studio Albums 1989-2007 collection would eventually be made available. Warner Music Japan looks to be the first to be offering these physical versions, as they will be releasing Mini-LP Super High Material CDs (SHM-CDs) of all of Rush's Atlantic-era studio albums on September 25th. It's likely that a North American release on CD will follow shortly thereafter. More information as I learn it. Thanks to Yoshiko N and Chris W for the heads up.

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