Do You Agree With George Martin On Re-Mixing Analogue Recordings for Digital Audio?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Gersh, Oct 22, 2014.

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  1. Gersh

    Gersh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    About 25 years ago, George Martin gave an interview which contained IMO a very interesting thought especially the concluding sentence:

    "Everything is different. The [mixing] desks in those days were tube operated, they weren't transistorized. All the outboard gear that we have today didn't exist. The EQ characteristics are quite different, much cruder. The echo facilities in Abbey Road consisted of a long cellar like room with old drain pipes standing around; they had nothing like electronic echo at all. So yes, it's impossible to get exactly the same, no matter how much you try. But in fact, I think it would be wrong in any case to get the same mix. The mixes that I did in 1964 were fine for vinyl, issued in 1964. When you hear them on CD, they're not fine. Now the reason for this is that you hear a wider frequency range on CD, and you're hearing things that I never intended you to listen to in the first place, in 1964. I was making a record that was designed to cut through the fog of the players of those days.

    What I'm saying is that the mixes I did then, when they're heard in the form they were done then were fine; but if you're hearing them as CDs, they should be different in order to be the same".

    Does anyone agree, disagree? What if anything has changed since the decline of the CD medium in favour of MP3 and similar audio formats?

    This is the full interview: http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/kozinn.htm
     
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  2. delmonaco

    delmonaco Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sofia, Bulgaria
    In general I agree that each medium requires dedicated mastering, and that the producer/engineer have to take into account the reproducing audio equipment (a heavy task these days, having in mind the variety of audio equipment available), but I don't think that (in most cases) remixing is the way to go. Also many EQ tweaks when cutting vinyl are often made during the cutting process, very few albums were cut flat from the master tapes, and usually the master tapes are good enough source to master CDs, hi-rez digital, MP3 etc, using different EQ choices for each different medium.
     
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  3. Gersh

    Gersh Forum Resident Thread Starter


    Interesting, so you would support basically re-mixing only from an artistic standpoint? I.e., to change, if the band wants, the sonic picture but not to "make it the same" as George Martin was suggesting. That was always my understanding of re-mixing at any rate, it was, shucks, let's make Townshend's guitar louder because the track sounds better that way, not to make the CD sound like the vinyl did.
     
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  4. Veech

    Veech Space In Sounds

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    If he's saying remix the Beatles catalog, then I agree.
     
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  5. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Well George Martin is choosing his words carefully rather than just blurting out that Beatles records were cut a particular way so cheap tonearm-cartridges wouldn't skip. But the general proposition should be engraved in stone above on the wall of the recording booth. Digital does some things better and some things worse than analog. Different digital algorithms also have their sonic differences. Do you think it is an accident that electric guitars and keyboards have become more bloated and hazier with digital compared to records just as one example??
     
  6. Sneaky Pete

    Sneaky Pete Flat the 5 and That’s No Jive

    Location:
    NYC USA
    Best quote "they (the mixes) should be different in order to be the same."

    I think that is rather telling.
     
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  7. delmonaco

    delmonaco Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sofia, Bulgaria
    I can't see how remixing the original multitracks can make the final result (CD played on a more modern equipment, compared to an LP on vintage "foggy" equipment) sound the same. I don't think that George Martin's own remixes of Help! and RS, made in 1987 for CD sounds the same or similar to the original vinyl played on 196o's equipment. So what he says in this interview is not suported by what he actually did, so I don't really understand his point.
     
  8. konut

    konut Prodigious Member. Thank you.

    Location:
    Whatcom County, WA
    I agree the mixes SHOULD be different, but that still does not address the micro-dynamics that were squashed out of the performance before it got on the tape. None the less, good luck getting all those involved to agree to a remix.
     
  9. SoporJoe

    SoporJoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    British Columbia
    Agree.
     
  10. botley

    botley Forum Resident

    I agree that remixing is usually unnecessary when mastering vintage material, but I don't think the different flavours of digital you listed warrent different EQ choices. Cutting high frequencies for MP3 or whatever is counterproductive, the codec is going to do whatever it's going to do — once it's down a step from lossless it's out of the mastering engineer's hands. Your best bet is to make it sound good at standard CD resolution, and then also split the signal for a high-def transfer of the same master. It's 16bit lossless digital that really needs the finesse. Make sure it still breathes with a little headroom at that point, and it'll sound great on any final format.
     
  11. cwitt1980

    cwitt1980 Senior Member

    Location:
    Carbondale, IL USA
    Perhaps George has changed his opinion in the last 25 years, but I disagree. Those mixes are good mixes and as we've found out in the past 25 years, they can sound pretty darn good on cd. We've also figured out that in the past 25 years that the range is different on a cd, but it is not wider than vinyl. This was new stuff for George back then, so I don't dismiss his ideas from an interview this old.
     
  12. rockledge

    rockledge Forum Resident

    Location:
    right here
    You gotta consider that George Martin was a forward thinking producer and WAY ahead of his time. He was achieving things in the studio that other producers were in awe of.
    So naturally he is going to be looking at it from his side of the console, not the average listeners side.
    I would say that from a technical point of view he is right, but from a purely listening point of view, no.
    Remastering, yes. Remixes.... no. More often than not on a remix the moment is lost.
     
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  13. Gersh

    Gersh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    I thought it was very interesting he would say CDs let you hear things I didn't want you to hear. What does that mean?
     
  14. Wasn't it only a couple of albums he remixed for CD release back in 1987? I don't think it was the whole catalogue.
     
  15. botley

    botley Forum Resident

    ^ Correct, just Help! and Rubber Soul.
    Hard panning, for one thing (vinyl cutting naturally narrows the stereo image). Lower-end frequencies that would have been rolled off, too, I suppose. Little tops and tails that would have been trimmed out for CD but left in underneath the standard surface noise of vinyl, perhaps.

    What's really funny is that the team who remastered the Beatles' catalogue, from the 09/09/09 CDs forward, have consistently gone back to using the supposedly 'cruder' EQ from EMI's vintage analogue gear for all their reissues (using just a little fine-tuning in the digital realm where they couldn't avoid unwanted noise and artifacts), and even Giles Martin used the natural echo of Abbey Road for his 5.1 remixes rather than a digital outboard one.

    Maybe his dad was right, given that he had committed to being on board with all the fancy new 'transistorised' kit as an AIR studio owner in the 1980s, to insist on remixing. He got paid more that way, and probably got more business from clients looking to get 'his sound' from what he chose to use back in those days. But history has proven that the older ways from the original sessions were sometimes just better.
     
  16. bhazen

    bhazen ANNOYING BEATLES FAN

    Location:
    Deepest suburbia
    "F**kin' 'ell"
     
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  17. sgtmono

    sgtmono Seasoned Member

    I would like to hear Beatles remixes simply because I'm a mega-fan and I've listened to the original mixes hundreds of times.
    But I strongly disagree with the general philosophy that is endorsed by the Martin quotes above.
     
  18. Gersh

    Gersh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Ya think?
     
  19. Gersh

    Gersh Forum Resident Thread Starter


    Well, I see what you mean, but it is (was?) a tech issue, no? He is saying, you have to remix the digital product to make it sound like the analogue vinyl did - not better or different, but the same.
     
  20. Gersh

    Gersh Forum Resident Thread Starter


    Don't think he said that as such.
     
  21. cublowell

    cublowell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pittsburgh, PA
    Kind of a case of "do as I say, not as I do." He's explaining how different mediums create different listening experiences for the same material, which I think most of us agree with. But using digital reverb on remixes is akin to entering a mule into a horse show. In the end, you're left with an ass, & you don't win the contest.
     
  22. rockledge

    rockledge Forum Resident

    Location:
    right here
    I think he was likely talking about extraneous noises. I have heard such things as singers sucking a breath before a line. Stuff like that probably drives producers up a wall. I have also heard singers part their lips before a line.
     
  23. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Gently weeping guitarist.

    Location:
    Odense Denmark.
    How about we keep to the OP premise instead of sinking into the "the 86 mixes should never have been done" thing that has been done to death?

    My take is that the CD was still so new a medium at the time that nobody really was sure if the way it could reveal new things in the source material was a good thing or not.
     
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  24. bhazen

    bhazen ANNOYING BEATLES FAN

    Location:
    Deepest suburbia
    In a perfect world, I agree with you. But many studios today no longer have chambers or plate reverbs; digital's all you get. However, it's gotten much better than it was in '87; much higher rez, better algorithms, etc.

    Still: I coulda done with a little less early Lexicon or whatever it was G.M. used on Help!/Rubber Soul '87.
     
  25. Mal

    Mal Phorum Physicist

    All the little unintentional things that some of us love hearing on older recordings are anathema to some recording engineers. Noise-gates, noise filtering, noise reduction - the majority of engineers I know all LOVED this stuff when it came along.

    Sounds like George Martin was happy to let little things go at the time on the assumption that most would never be heard outside the studio. In fact, with advances in playback heads, we hear even more of them on re-issues (when they're not edited out) than the engineers would have done at the time.

    So, it would seem likely that George Martin wanted the opportunity to remix so he could present something he would be happier with overall, given the more revealing playback systems it was going to be heard on in 1987 compared with average 60s consumer gear.

    Oddly, in 1995 he had this to say about Anthology:

    "I couldn't justify using modern effects processors like digital reverb, or even echo plates, which didn't exist in the '60s. The only way we could achieve echo was by using either a chamber or tape delay, or a combination of both. So I told EMI that it was important I worked in exactly the same way on these remixes. Unfortunately, neither of the two echo chambers that we used at Abbey Road were available -- one has an enormous amount of electrical plant in it, emitting terrible humming noises. But eventually, they were able to dig out and refurbish the second chamber to make it work for us the way it used to, even to the extent of putting back a lot of the old metalwork like sewage pipes, which were originally glazed, and actually contributed to the chamber's acoustic qualities!"

    [Note: EMT 140 plates were in use at Abbey Road from the late 50s]
     
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