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

I think the answer mostly comes down to master tapes. Back in the early days of CDs, tapes from the 1960s and 1970s were 20 years old at most, and many hadn't been played since they were originally pressed to vinyl, so they still sound great. I watched an interview with Giles Martin regarding the 'Sgt. Pepper' stereo master, and he had the original 1967 stereo mastertape box in front of him, and on the box, it's logged how many times that the tape has been played. It had been played that much that they'd had to transfer the information to a new bigger sheet! I always understood master tapes to be like a Formula One racing car, which is the best that a car can physically be, but only for one or two races before the engine needs rebuilding. Master tapes are the highest quality, but only for a few plays before they begin to lose some of their dynamic range? I could be wrong... But the recent re-pressing of T.Rex's 'Electric Warrior' caused a stir because it was pressed from a safety copy of the original master, but original producer Tony Visconti insisted that the master had been played so much, that the safety copy actually sounded better and had more life in it!

You also have to remember that in the late 1970s, the music industry changed a lot, and it was the start of a lot of these tapes going missing in label buy-outs and careless storage. In the 1990s especially, lots of the reissues of 1960s albums included very low generation tapes and/or needle drops. A case in point was the Kinks' back catalogue on Castle Records in the mid-1990s, they all sounded terrible! They got officially remastered in 2012 (I think?) and they were all absolutely flawless. Likewise, the Small Faces' back catalogue was done at the same time, and it sounded flat and lifeless compared to the 1990s CDs from Castle Records. So its horses for courses, there's no "formula" why early CD pressings can sound better than new ones. It's a case by case debate I'm afraid.

 

They should in theory be better...
Better sources
Direct from masters
Better technology

But the mastering engineers take it upon themselves to make the record louder and all the background sounds at the same volume. Who decided this?
If they artist wanted it very loud, it was possible to do this on the original release?

 

Agree, but everything is now being mastered/EQ'd for portables/streaming in mind.
Good example of this is, for that latest Petty- a separate, compressed mastering was done specifically for it.

 

Replying to a 15+ year old post, I know.

But, devil's advocate here, if the rules of mastering for vinyl are so specific that they cannot be broken and considering the fact that back in the day (so before the introduction of digital) vinyl was the primary format, couldn't it be the case that the old recordings were mastered the way there were because of the limitations and not because the resulting sound was an artistic choice? What if the technical possibilities of today would have been available in the 60s and 70s, would the masters have sounded the same?

Then again, you might end up in a discussion on staying true to the original vs. how the artist wanted it to sound, but was unable to. In movies Star Wars is a prime example, we all fell in love the the theatrical versions, but since the late 90s, we've only been able to watch the special editions because that is the version of the movies George Lucas wanted to make, had he had the technical possibilities of today back in the 70s and 80s. Surely there are remasters on CD/Hi-res that sound BETTER than the original vinyl? I distinctly remember a discussion about The Band's first album and having all the low end 'cut off' during mastering. Have they since restored that?

 

To my ears the originals sound better then the remasters.

 

Definitely, the problem is that the cd with the better source loses his advantages when what is added to this source is exaggerated loudness, too much compression and drastic Eq, then the older cd with the inferior source with less compression , less loudness and without drastic eq becomes the better one.

 

In most cases I will prefer an original cds , but there are some remastered cds that I like.

 

Hmm, I seem to recall reading here in the forum that there are two original master tapes for "Electric Warrior", and the UK master is indeed completely worn out. However, the US master tape was reported to be in excellent shape and sound good to my ears. I wonder why Visconti didn't use that tape instead of a safety of the UK master? For that matter, why didn't he remix the entire thing from the multi-tracks, he's got them and has used them previously for selected track remixes?

Derek

 

I don't think I own many truly awful remasters on CD, to my ears, but I have a fair few examples on CD through the years where the tape used as source was seemingly pretty tired.

I do know my hifi now is a whole lot more defined than my first and that exposes more.

My leading thought on remasters now tends to be "do I really need another copy of that album?"

 

16 years ago this was relevant...

 

back in 2005 when this thread first aired ...I can say yes, I did. ; )

 

That begs the question as to what is studio quality equipment? Different studios have different monitoring equipment. What I have heard in the last 2o years I would describe as analytical but back in the day I think it was more likely to be tonally unbalanced in some cases. You would need to ask those who were in studios in the 50s and 60s. The best overall audio I heard in a studio was an older place that had a 4 track set up. This was the early 80s. In the 90s i heard a set of custom speakers at another studio which were some of the nicest dynamics I have heard to this day. Most studio sounds were average or outright unpleasant.

But yes they are aware that it will sound different on different equipment. I have seen studios try it out on three different kinds of systems, cheap, mid level and higher level.

 

I don't think it should matter.

 

Much of the time, the mastering engineers are following orders. Could be from the record label, or even from the artist in some cases. Some artists do in fact believe that a master resulting from the use of loudness, compression, extreme EQs, etc., is an improvement over the original, for the very same reasons that the average Joe does.

 

I know I'm replying to a 2005 post, but for anyone's reference reading it now ...

I believe the 1983 Beatles reference is for the authorized Japanese issue of 'Abbey Road' (black triangle) on CD. The authorized issue of the Beatles' catalogue on CD began in 1987.

 

Remastering has definitely been an issue unless you seek products from Audiophile companies such as Audio Fidelity, Analogue Productions, MOFI or DCC to name a few. Its even more rare if you find an artist that actually cares about sound quality and takes the necessary steps to master and/or remaster their material to please the community that cares about sound quality (Steven Wilson, Neil Young, Tom Petty, etc).

We could easily be hearing better quality results from both new recordings along with proper remasters of older material if the record industry weren't stuck in the old ways of what they call modern recording techniques circa 1994-2010. We have had streaming platforms around for a decade now and most if not all of these platforms have loudness standards in place to normalize the volume of every single recording and set them to a target level well within a scope that should not affect sound quality. The record industry is still of the mindset that they need to master new content and remaster old content as loud as humanly possible, a practice that was created for the CD physical medium for better or worse. So now all we are getting on streaming platforms is ultra compressed/limited, clipped & distorted media where negative gain was applied to lower the volume of the tracks to conform to the loudness standard. So the mastering/remastering process is even more broken and no one in music production as taken the time to reeducate themselves and adapt to a platform that has taken over 90% of consumer interest. I don't even want to get into modern mixing techniques where some (not all) are slamming their mixes by adding unnecessary plugins & tools onto the master bus and leaving a mastering engineer with no room to work with (I would imagine this happened on Van Halen's last album 'A Different Kind Of Truth' and that one always pops up as a popular choice to remix/remaster).