Sony Music is celebrating the 50th anniversary reissue of Pink Floyd's landmark 1975 album, Wish You Were Here, with a multitude of sets repackaged as Wish You Were Here 50. Among the available formats are three-LP sets, a 2-compact disc set, a standalone Bluray disc, and high-resolution digital downloads. The crème de la crème version is Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition, a sprawling box set that features four LPs pressed on crystal-clear vinyl, the pair of compact discs, the Bluray disc, a 7-inch replica Japanese-market single, a poster and comic book (penned by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason), and a fabulous casebound book with an absolute treasure trove of band photos and album-centric memorabilia, with many of the images previously unseen in any collection. All are encased in a heavy, high-gloss black slipcase with a centrally located round die-cut that shows through to the casebound book's classic Wish You Were Here logo. It's a gorgeous package, the sort that collectors and completists will go absolutely gaga for! You can grab a copy of any of the available formats via Pink Floyd's web store HERE, which provides links to a variety of online retailers; the sets can also be found at many brick-and-mortar shops like your favorite independent record store. The high res digital files are available for streaming or download at all major online services.
Sony Music supplied me with a copy of Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition for evaluation, which arrived securely packed and in pristine condition. The slipcover has no markings other than its front panel die-cut, but was fitted with an oversized OBI strip that detailed the complete contents of the set on its back panel. The box set contains the original album's 2025 stereo remaster, along with a host of demos, alternate takes, rarities, and live tracks scattered across the four LPs and 2 CDs. Among the live tracks is the full concert from the Los Angeles Sports Arena in April 1975, bootlegged by legendary recordist Mike Millard, which is presented for the first time in an official release. And, of course, the Bluray disc gives you all the stereo tracks in high-resolution audio, along with a Dolby Atmos mix of the album, a 5.1 surround mix, and the original 1975 quadraphonic mix. Along with a handful of videos and a short film by the late Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis, who did all the design work for the original album package. Thorgerson's partners Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis and Peter Curzon of Storm Studios created the design for Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition.
James Guthrie, Joel Plante, Tim Carroll, and Bernie Grundman were involved in the mixing and remastering process for the 50th anniversary edition. With Steven Wilson brought in for additional restoration work on Mike Millard's live bootleg tapes of the Los Angeles concert. James Guthrie and Joel Plante apparently handling the digital and surround mixes and mastering, with Tim Carroll also involved in mastering the Dolby Atmos mix. Bernie Grundman mastered and cut the lacquers for the LPs—his initials are in the deadwax of each of the four LPs in the box set. It appears that the original 1975 album mix engineered by Brian Humphries and Peter James was used for all stereo versions. The LPs for the US and Canada versions for Wish You Were Here 50 were pressed at Memphis Record Pressing, with the international LP versions pressed at Optimal in Germany. The crystal clear vinyl LPs are absolutely gorgeous to behold, and for audiophiles (like me!) who have a deep connection to highest resolution analog and digital playback, Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition gives you everything.
My personal connection to Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd's epochal Dark Side of the Moon was a game changer for me upon its release in 1971, moving my musical interests more firmly into a prog-rock sphere of influence. But the band's 1975 follow-up, Wish You Were Here, instantly became a point of contention among my friends, and we argued endlessly over which was the better album. Both were models of recorded perfection, but I was particularly wowed by the more modern approach of Wish You Were Here, and it quickly spun into near-constant rotation upon its arrival. I'd also become something of a connoisseur of import LPs, and a couple of years later grabbed a black-wrapped import version of Wish You Were Here after stumbling onto it in a local record shop. My ongoing experiences with imports generally proved those pressings to be superior to domestic catalog LPs, and Wish You Were Here was still among my favorite albums—in my view, this purchase would be a definite upgrade.
Upon arriving home with my newest treasure, the excitement reached an even greater zenith when I removed the LP's black wrapper, which was adorned with only the classic Wish You Were Here round logo sticker. As I pulled the LP from its printed inner sleeve, I discovered it was pressed on crystal clear vinyl—and I'd never before seen a clear vinyl LP—ever! Popping it on the platter of my fully-manual Denon transcription turntable revealed the kind of sound quality that shocked me with its goodness—it was significantly quieter, more open, and had better dynamics and transient response than my original US pressing. To say that I was over the moon—maybe even the dark side—was a complete understatement! I don't recall the origin of the pressing; it was pretty easy to spot a Japanese import from their OBI strips, but things got a bit murkier beyond that back then.
Regardless, the clear pressing of Wish You Were Here was among my most valued LPs—at least until it was stolen a few years later during my move from northeast Georgia to the Atlanta metro area. In a much simpler time, all my possessions were packed in the bed of an uncovered pickup truck I'd borrowed, and at a stop along the way, someone helped themselves to a box of LPs. The one that happened to contain not only the clear vinyl Pink Floyd pressing, but also all my import LPs, MoFi pressings, and any other records of significant value. To this day, I've never been able to replace it—though intensive web searches have revealed that the clear vinyl import was either from Holland, Germany, or Italy. I've never seen one for sale on Discogs or elsewhere—there's not even a listing for it. It is what it is, and I lost a lot of great albums on that day, but the loss of that clear vinyl pressing of Wish You Were Here was the one I lamented the most. Opening the new Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition and revealing the clear vinyl LPs was a true déjà vu-like blast from the past, and a heady moment of nostalgia for me!
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition. (4) Crystal Clear vinyl LPs; 45 rpm Japanese replica single; (2) CDs; Bluray disc. $250
Nothing needs said about the original album music here, which is ingrained into the psyche of the record-buying public, but I definitely learned from this new set's live tracks how very quickly Pink Floyd worked in generating new album material. For example, Mike Millard's live bootleg tracks from April 1975 features not only the full album for Dark Side of the Moon, but also still evolving tracks for Wish You Were Here and Animals, both of which hadn't yet been recorded. Of course, Wish You Were Here came in only a few short months, but Animals didn't appear until two years later—Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason were definitely driven by their musical vision!
And while some of the bonus material here has been released on one or more of the many Pink Floyd compilations—like the Immersion box set, for example—much of what's here is more centric to the period of Wish You Were Here's development. At one point, the band explored making music on non-traditional instruments in an attempt to develop something completely new. They very quickly abandoned that, feeling it wasn't completely doable, but traces of the process are here—like the track "Wine Glasses," which is the acoustically created precursor to the opening of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." Or the multiple demo versions of "The Machine Song," which of course evolved into "Welcome To The Machine," which all contain elements that would eventually find their way into the finished studio track. And there are versions of "Wish You Were Here" that include jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli or even a pedal steel guitar part—but all show David Gilmour's process for developing his iconic acoustic guitar performance here. And there's a newly created version of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-9)" that seamlessly combines everything into a single track—it's incredibly entertaining, but also quite instructive in terms of how the band chose to break it apart for the album's eventual studio incarnation.
And there are the live tracks, from both Wembley and the Los Angeles Sports Arena, with the latter seeing their first ever authorized release. Legendary bootlegger Mike Millard's concert recording was made using a professional Nakamichi deck concealed in the base of his wheelchair—and no, he wasn't disabled! His recordings are shockingly good, and Steven Wilson's restoration magic lifts them to the point of almost sounding as though they were done by professionals, and it's a thrilling glimpse into the band's live process from back in the day.
Listening to Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition
I auditioned Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition over my current system incarnation that features Klipsch Heresy IV loudspeakers driven by Single Ended Triode tube amplification, with analog playback via my ProJect Classic turntable and high-resolution digital from Euphony Audio, Yamaha, and Aurender. A quad of subs from Vera-Fi Audio provided the requisite low-bass oomph that playback of Wish You Were Here definitely demands.
I was really jazzed to get the 2025 LP remaster; I'd been voraciously scouring the internet for months for any possible details, and the consensus has been that the 2025 version is definitely about as close to definitive as it gets. I still have my Columbia label original LP (the thieves were particular about which version they grabbed!), along with the 2016 remastered LP for comparison, and multiple CDs as well as the Acoustic Sounds SACD version. Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition has been in constant rotation since its arrival, and the consensus appears to be correct: the 2025 remaster is the version of Wish You Were Here to have. My Columbia original LP sounds very good, but is well worn, and the 2016 remastered LP struck me as somewhat flat sounding. The Deluxe Edition LPs from Memphis Record Pressing provide Wish You Were Here with greater clarity, more well defined bass, and a more pronounced stereo image than any of the previous versions in my collection, analog or digital. The compact disc versions always left me cold, and even the SACD struck me as somewhat lacking—the Deluxe Edition gets everything about as close to correct as possible, at least to my ears. And especially from a purely analog perspective.
On the digital side, Red Book CD playback has come an incredibly long way, with the sound quality of the CDs virtually indistinguishable from the LPs. The high resolution digital on the Bluray disc takes it to another level of goodness, whether you're principally an enthusiast of stereo or surround playback. My system is set up for both, though not sufficiently to fully accommodate the latest iteration of Dolby Atmos. Regardless, the surround mixes are superb, and even the original 1975 quad mix is shockingly immersive.
From a design perspective, Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition combines both LP and digital discs into a full-sized visual presentation, with the individual LPs in distinctive outer jackets taken from the original album art motifs. And new printed LP inner sleeves contribute to the effect, with stunningly striking graphics—and don't even get me started about the 68-page casebound book, which is beyond beautiful! The digital discs are inserted into pockets in the back of the casebound book, so you're not straining your eyes to read 4-or-5 point type on a cardboard CD jacket—audiophiles will definitely appreciate the large-format of everything in this set. The die-cut opening on the outer slipcase—besides allowing the Wish You Were Here logo graphics on the casebound book to show through—also effectively allows the central images on each LP sleeve to also be visible in various stages of insertion or removal. It's an impressive visual concept that definitely adds to the experience, and as an old-school LP spinner from way back, gazing at the impressive album art and the casebound book are part-and-parcel to my listening sessions.
Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition is the complete package
While this set offered an experience of indescribable nostalgia for me, there's something here for everyone, whether Pink Floyd fans, completists, or those who are simply obsessed with Wish You Were Here and its genesis as a fully-formed artistic statement. It's an impressively well-conceived package, both aurally and visually, and the included extras only add to its value—I'm blown away by the goodness of this package, and it ticks just about every box for me. Is it perfect? Not completely—I'd love to have seen the package produced for worldwide distribution by Optimal, rather than Memphis Record Pressing in the US and Canada. The LPs are beautifully realized, aurally and visually, but the MRP pressings—while acoustically superb—aren't in the same class that those typically from Optimal, and are a tad noisier than I would have liked in a perfect world, especially at this price point. It is what it is, and their sound quality is still miles beyond anything else I previously had in my record collection.
Many thanks to Anna DeNelsky of Shore Fire Media and especially Sony Music for making this review possible! Wish You Were Here 50: Deluxe Edition comes very highly recommended!
Pink Floyd
All images courtesy of Pink Floyd, Sony Music, and Shore Fire Media.
