Jon Astley - The Master Of Remastering

It matters when we're talking about "brothers-in-law", but not as far as the music is concerned if that's what you mean.

Probably rumor. A google search I just did turned up nothing but 8 tons of conjecture.

 

In the current New York Times Magazine there is an article on female folk singers, a lot of whom are acknowledged lesbians. The funny thing is that there appear to be many female folk singers who are not gay but don't want to deny it because they are afraid of losing sales to the considerable gay market.

Point being, I don't know if an artist saying he is gay, or she is gay, is going to hurt sales at all. It might help sales instead.

 

Well, I imagine it all depends on the genre and the target audience, no?

 

Surprised no one else mentioned the recent "Rolling Stone" interview with Pete that addressed this topic. Here's a long quote (there's even more in the article itself):

Have you had many physical encounters with men over the years?

No. [Laughs] No, I haven't.

But it's not something that you're completely closed to?

No. I'm from the Sixties. You know, we tried everything. But . . .

Did or do you consider yourself fundamentally bisexual?

No, I don't. I know that I've got -- and this has got nothing to do with anything I've actually done, or not done -- a very, very feminine side. I think my creative side is very feminine. And I went so far as to say in that interview [with Timothy White in 1989, when Townshend was misunderstood as referring to his bisexuality] that I often feel like a woman; I can see what a woman feels -- the whole act of submission sexually. But, in a sense, what I was talking about was the act of submission sexually in a male-female relationship, that you can swap roles. But that's very common and corny now, in a sense, to even bring it up. And I suppose what I'm doing is taking all of the feminine attributes and regarding them as being passive, gentle, submissive or whatever. But in the sense that my creative side is archly feminine, it is "I want the baby and I want it now!" It's biological. It's absolute. It's the feminine side that says to you [raises voice], "If I need to take heroin, I'll ****ing take heroin -- who are you to even raise an eyebrow? If I need to give birth, I shall do it!" But it's got nothing to do with my sexuality.

So, to clarify, in your life when you had sexual encounters with men, did that have anything at all to do with expressing that feminine side?

No. I think what it had to do with -- and to be honest [laughs], I can't remember much about any of it -- was to do with the fact that I was actually completely smashed out of my head. I'm fifty-seven, I've got a young girlfriend, I'm not gay. I'm not interested in men. I don't think I ever really have been. I've had a high sex drive all my life, which has actually been difficult sometimes to reconcile with some of my spiritual aspirations, which are just like, you know, a monk, I suppose. But, no, I think it would have been because I was completely off my face with something. If you want to talk about this, and Danny's the one that's gone into print . . . [loudly] if Danny ****ed me, Danny drugged me first. So if you want to ****ing print that, then print it. Because that's the truth. It ****ing hurts, that he so ****ing carelessly said this in the papers. He should have ****ing told me what he did to me first.

 

My mistake...Astley uses "we" and "us" when referring to the Macpherson's work as if it was a collaboration...a little ambiguous. I had gotten the impression he contributed but was uncredited.

 

Hmm, I don't know..'Rough Boys" Autobiographical??

 

Who cares if the guy has "feminine" feelings.

 

As opposed to feeling feminines!

 

Yeah really! I agree with Grant. Does it really matter? All I care is that Pete is one hell of a musician and song writer and it's just a crying shame that his entire life's work is in the hands of Bozo the mastering clown.

 

CHEERS TO THAT!!

 

Many men who have "Femme feelings" have better odds of "Feeling femmes"!!!

 

I care. It's fascinating to find out what make people tick. It's usually a blend of disparate qualities that make people interesting.

 

Good thread Luke,

Astley is obviously interested in heavy manipulation of the sound. Look at his use of a Fairlight programming before he was a mastering engineer

I can appreciate using CEDAR on Live At Leeds to remove the horrible popping sounds. Sometimes compromise is necessary but as for the rest of it .

I'm sure he had quite a challenge with All Things Must Pass. Does anyone know how to solve the problem of missing frequency bands? Or do you just leave it alone? Too bad we never got to hear Steve work on ATMP.

 

De-clicking is one thing. De-noising is something else completely. De-clicking is fine, although it generally works better if you do it by hand rather than having software do it for you. De-noising sucks no matter what...

 

Yes, one thing I have come to understand since joining da forum.

In addition to sucking, does de-noising cause compression??

 

No, but it alters the dynamic range.

 

Can you explain please? I am guessing here but it probably reduces the noise floor.

 

That's a preference issue. I'm one of those folks who hates de-clicking in the ways it's used today. IMO not a whole lot different than de-noising. The algorhythms used or the heavy-handed approach by mastering engineers has rendered so many wonderful old recordings sterile and lifeless, with all kinds of weird artifacts left in the place of the music. Listen to the often-mentioned The Unforgettable Glenn Miller, and there is no question that there's a ton of life being stripped away from old recordings from overuse/abuse of declicking tools. I'd rather have all the pops and clicks in place, or removed by hand (that's it). There is no algorhythm out there that doesn't strip some facet of the music away, no matter how talented the mastering/restoration engineer. Human ears are the only way to go - too bad it's so labor intensive & time consuming, but it's worth it from an archival standpoint.

 

Well, keep in mind that even with most de-clicking plug-ins, you can listen to what it is removing, rather than what it is leaving behind. I.e., you're just listening to the clicks. That way, if the plug-in is removing something it shouldn't be, you can either adjust your settings or simply remove the offending "non-clicks" (maybe the leading edge of a cymbal crash, for example).

When used correctly, de-clicking tools won't change the *music* much at all, unlike de-noising tools.

 

Those are some amazing quotes.

Not to mention, it sounds as if Jon Astley has never heard a real instrument in his life. It isn't even the dynamic range that he potentially destroys, as much as it is the natural decay of the instruments.

By his standards, anything gained in artificially lowering the noise floor is lost by maximizing gain; at best it's counterproductive.

There are better ways to lower the noise floor without stripping away important information. Noise reduction should only be considered an acceptable practice in recordings older than 1940-5. There will still be trade-offs, but what is gained is far larger than what's lost. And even then, it should only aid, not replace, the brain's natural ability to remove unwanted noise.


Josh

 

Astley appears to be disconnected from the reality of what he is doing. Some of what he *says* is okay, but the facts do not agree. For example, he is against compression, but look what he did to All Things Must Pass. Why is his remaster compressed? He supposedly can hear all sorts of fancy things but he can't tell how bad the finished product sounds. Quite odd.

By the way, does anyone know if Astley did the rest of Harrison's remasters--the ones not released yet?

Too bad George thought the "modernizing" of All Things Must Pass was a good idea. And he was a vinyl lover who didn't think much of digital.

 

What's puzzling is he's very familiar with live music...he's done plenty of engineering.

 

De-clicking by any method should not cause artifacts or adverse treble attenuation IF quality software is used and used carefully, so forget using CD Creator!

 

It's all a matter of philosophy. Even some audiophiles believe perfection should be strived for, and their definition of perfection is cleaning everything up and fixing defects. In other words, their attempt is to make everything sound "digital".

Many people are still wow'ed by digital and it's possibilities. Sure, digital technology is and can be wonderful, but it's not a cure-all.

Personally, I find perfect is BORING!

 

I think the crux of it is that someone like Steve Hoffman will have an idea of what the record should sound like, and uses his gear to assist him in achieving that goal.

In other situations, the gear seems to be using the mastering engineer in order to implement what it can do onto recordings. Like, if it's there, use it, even though it is not necessary and may ruin the song. Sort of like Supertramp's sax player. He's part of the band so he's gotta play.

I think there is also an ego trip at work, where one guy is trying to "outdo" the other, the way recording engineers used to try for the biggest drum sound.