The new digital reissues were encoded from 24-bit / 96 khz high resolution masters and then remastered for iTunes according to the announcement. The remastered titles include the studio album's "Iron Maiden," "Killers," "The Number Of The Beast," "Piece Of Mind," "Powerslave," "Somewhere In Time," "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son," "No Prayer For The Dying," "Fear Of The Dark," "The X Factor," "Virtual XI," "Brave New World," "Dance Of Death," "A Matter Of Life And Death," and "The Final Frontier."

Band founder Steve Harris also selected two compilation albums and two live albums for the digital reissues: "Somewhere Back In Time," "From Fear To Eternity" (2CD), "Live after Death" (2CD) and "Rock In Rio" ( 2CD).

Harris had this to say, "The Mastering For iTunes procedure allows the listener to experience the music as close as possible to the way the artist intended it to be heard. So of course I was very keen for the Maiden albums to be mastered in this way. The records have been available digitally before, when this medium first became a platform for music distribution but that was mastered with CDs in mind.

"The iTunes process involves a different approach and it's great to finally deliver the music to our fans in as close to a pure and accurate sound as we could possibly achieve.

"For example, as most people know, I was never really happy with the sound on the first Maiden album but listening to it now, the guitars are louder, the drums more substantial and the overall tone is so very much improved in my opinion.

"Tony Newton and Ade Emsley who worked closely with me on the project did a terrific job recapturing everything from the original masters and together we've re- mastered them all digitally and I'm really happy with the results."

Newton had this to say, "The process started with locating all of the original album mix tapes (or whichever format they were mixed to). Then the choice of analogue to digital convertor was chosen for the most accurate capture to make it as close as possible to the sound of the mix as it was intended by the band.

"When a lot of these tapes were last captured it was in the 1980's, early days of digital and only 44.1khz/16bit files were possible. On top of this the new A/D convertors are far superior now, and of course it is possible to produce files of far higher resolution.

"The result of this is that the songs now sound more defined with added depth and warmth. I was very excited to be asked to be part of this project, I honestly feel that there is a massive improvement in the quality of these classic albums."