Re-mastering...Is it really as bad as we think?

This comp and all of New Order's remaster's beg to differ.
Same goes for anything Cocteau Twins/OMD

 

It's a mixed bag with remasters.

Done wrong: The Replacements "Dead Man's Pop" (Don't Tell A Soul) and "Pleased To Meet Me" deluxe sets. Loud and boomy, both. Original CDs far and away superior to these disks.

Done right: Craft reissues of Big Star's #1 Record and Radio City. Total ear candy, can't get enough of them.

You just have to research before buying, or take a chance.

 

For run of the mill labels I've been only to enjoy a few Gas, sucks.

 

Agree on those Replacements. Thankfully I can still enjoy the audio on them, they aren't as bad as they easily could of been. -->'Mastered for Portables/Streaming' everything is these days.

 

Not when they're the Robin Guthrie-remastered Cocteau Twins CDs... nope.

 

Recent purchases, like the Style Council anthology and the Sign O The Times boxset, suggest that while the loudness of these remasters isn't going to ever go back to the levels of the 80s and early 90s, they are not as brickwalled as the dark days of the late 90s and early 00s. There seems to have been an improvement, at least in recognising that recorded music needs a bit of breathing space and dynamics.

EG.

 

When vinyl remasters are done, they always send a test pressing to the artist for approval, but I know of at least one example where the artist didn't own a record player, so just looked at the appearance and went 'looks OK I guess'.

 

With modern mastering technics the album/albums in question should sound better, if done right.

 

They don't sound bad to my ears.

 

I'd say the opposite.

 

I'd agree with you

 

In Claus's case it may be correct, Think he probably has the largest collection of DCC'/AF's and MFSL's known to man-kind
Run of the mill major label, I'm with you. I wouldn't even go as far as 80%.

 

That or they play them on really bad Crosley/LP60 players. Obviously, it will not be as revealing sounding.

 

I agree.

 

The problem is that 90-95% of people listen to music with 2$ earbuds or cheapo car stereos.And the CDs are mastered with this in mind.That wasn't the case in the 80s and early 90s.

 

Consider an album recorded on analogue reel-to-reel tape in the 1970s

When recorded, the band or their people would have taken that tape, pretty much straight away, from the studio to the cutting room to be mastered to vinyl. It was fresh, it was essentially unplayed, brand new. LPs were pressed from that cut.

Consider the remastering engineer today, working from the same tape, which has been played, stored, maybe moved from store to store, etc, etc. If the album has been a good seller, the tape may have been used repeatedly for re-cutting, and could show significant wear and tear.

Will a remastered version of this old, perhaps compromised tape be the better of the version that was cut from the fresh-out-of-the-studio tape?

 

With all due respect Aqualung is a wrong example. New remasters from Steve Wilson box are the best sounding.

 

CDs done right can sound great...
I have a SACD player, the last OPPO 4K blueray player....and tend to buy SACD for the surround sound abilities, which are awesome...
If I was in front of a court of law, I could not swear that a stereo SACD sounds better than a CD of the same source material.....I haven't really A/B them to know....and I have never thought I have a great ear anyway, pretty sure I have lost some of my high hearing....
Of CDs that do sound good, one of Steves Door album CD sounded wonderful to me.....
I think the Lennon remixes from 2004ish also sound pretty good....

 

I find it really depends....
the trend today is to bring the dynamics back.
hopefully the squashed years are disappearing.

at any rate, after many many years you get to know "the good guys"
and their work.

you know who to look for

 

The real question should be "Are we all jaded into believing that re-masters, in general, are superior?" or "Re-mastering...Is it really as good as we think?". The answer is that most of the times, remasters aren't superior and aren't as good as we (and by we i mean the uneducated public) think. I say most of the times, but not always, of course.

 

IME, most remasters of 70s/80s Japanese albums I've heard are very compressed and brightly EQ'd. What makes it worse is that some of these remasters are just brickwalled versions of the original CD (Minako Yoshida's Light'n Up and Makoto Matsushita's Quiet Skies are 2 cases where I've seen this happen). Sad as this is to say, it's difficult to find a city pop remaster that's done tastefully, especially given the genre's popularity surge in the last few years.

 

My posting was from 2005.

If the tapes are in fine condition and the engineer does his job right, it would always sound better today.

 

I haven't gone through the entire topic yet, and I'm not sure of I should always trust the DR.Loudness website, BUT, I really like the Neil Young remasters; yes they are louder than the late 80s /early 90s (re)masters on CD, but I do have the feeling there is a lot more detail in them. From what I understood is that although the dynamic range for those 'old' masters was very similar to the LP masters, but that the quality of the tapes that were used were not always the best, although I doubt they would use a 2nd gen tape for something like Harvest.

Second, D/A conversion surely is better now than it was 20-30 years ago? Then again, CD players are now better than they were mid 80s, surely?

Third, when I enquired with Neil Young on his Letters to the Editor, he mentioned that CD and Hi res are the same master (level, eq, etc) and that only vinyl was mastered differently. Some of the discs in Volume 2 say that they were mastered directly from the analog tapes (Homegrown comes to mind) and others were mastered from a digital master.

I feel that often the main difference between CD and Vinyl is the mastering and not the specific properties of the medium itself. It makes you think, why would you master the CD with much less dynamic range than vinyl? I would understand if you made a separate master for portable music, or even streaming services that is 'louder' and less dynamic, but why the CD? I also wonder if, once the masters have been digitized (like the latest Queen, half speed mastered stuff), there isn't something 'lost' in A > D > A conversion. Many artists make it a point to record on analog equipment because it captures 'more', like Neil Young, but if those tapes are then transferred to digital for mixing and mastering, what is then the point in recording on analog equipment to begin with?

 

I think part of the problem might be ....people who remaster recordings only play them back on studio quality equipment. Do they give a thought to what the music will sound like on a home hi fi?

 

Just listened through old Dire Straits Albums
Honestly the remastered stuff sounds better than the originals
Can’t complain here