modern re-masters.

[jkhuri44]

umm...

why do modern remasters...sound like garbage?


guitars that used to scream and sound creamy and saturated are seomwhere in the background getting swallowed by drums...

vocals that SCREAMED...are sort of weak and puncy...

can anyone explain why this happens?

with the large range of great mastering tools available to these great bands, why are the remaster's frail when heard side by side to the vinyls that shaped rock history?


A Confused JK.

[mark rachelle]

here here

i can't listen to the remastering of cold chisel


it doesn't make scense to take older recordings that sounded great for their time and stretch em out to have huge bass, a top end that is constantly maxed out and a dynamic range that looks like you can rollerskate on it.

just like it would bake scense to take an r n b record of today and make it sound like a sam and dave recording

but the slick marketing team at your local major label will think of anyway they can to rehash their back catalogue and thus extract some more cash from the die hard fans.

jeez i wonder if i should remaster some old tracks of mine

[Kris]

hmmm.... I just ordered the re-mastered Joshua Tree.

I always thought the album was a bit bass light.... so I'm hoping it's better this time around. I really hope they don't squash it.

[TimS]

i can't listen to the remastering of cold chisel

here here as well..
I loved my chisel on LP vinyl (dont even have any on CD!)
Just ain't the same...

Tim..

[jkhuri44]

this topic has probably been cried over to death...

i just wanna know WHY its bad?!?!!

i havent heard led zepellin on vinyl....(a friend is ripping me some as we speak)

but...he said.."you wont believe"..."its not the same music"


etc etc...

why when someone does a remaster LATER in time does it come out shit?

:?:

[rick]

there is this little device called the " digital brick wall limiter " it makes everything loud . kills all big transients and then it makes everything louder then everything else

i am sure in the scheme of things it would be ok if somebody was to jump in my way back machine find the guy who invented it and ..... whack him !

mastering was just different thing for vinyl , it was more about making sure the album did not jump or distort then it was about making it loud & limiting it then limiting it again ( like cds )_ , you had to cut the whole side in one past - real time , so your could not stack the kinds of mastering chains together that we do today

everything we used had to be a 4 channel device ( for stereo) , which meant there were actually stuff all mastering boxes on the market that we could use, it was not uncommon to cut 3 or 4 albums in a day , so every thing was really glossed over , checked for faults and then cut, if it was louder them the surface noise and did not jump , it was good enough.

today we kinda microscope things , i think a lot of would be mastering engineers feel the need to show off or compete against the next guy and we all know that sometimes this is a lousy combination .

i have heard many resissues they sound so much better then the vinyl , i would have to wonder if most reissues are in fact actually a good thing not a bad thing .
having said that the kiss remasters are amonst the worst sounding stuff that anybody ever got paid to do .
george marinos, bob ludwigs and ted jensons original vinyl versions were much better
sounding

so if your looking for "reasons" perhaps in many cases ,in their day the original versions were cut by the best guys in the business and untill recently record labels used the unamed factory mastering engineers to reissue everything, so maybe its just a matter of who did the job

i am not sure about the chisel call you guys are making
chisel was typically cut by my old boss paul ibbotson at festival , then don bartley at studio 301 did all the digital remasters .
i have the test cut of "flame trees" hidden somewhere in my stuff, it was the last chisel 1st gen vinyl cut .
the version on "standing on the outside- best of " we did here this year at turtlerock ( essentially straight of bartleys cd masters ) sounds much better

we do stacks of remasters here and typically it is because the released series of cds sound so bad that the labels want them "finally fixed" so i know there is some weight in the arguement , i guess it just depends who did the "bad" job

oh yeah there is one more reason your seeing lots of new " remasters" coming out again
the label can get another $1 off itunes because its "remastered" :)

you know everytime somebody asks me to cut a album without the brick wall limiters on it and they say that they dont care about loudness they want to keep the dynamics , within a week they ring up and i am recutting it
"just a bit louder so it competes you know"

[chris p]

Brickwall limiters and louder, less dynamic tracks, more mastering tools to play with.... well, Rick would know if anyone does. And from recent posts it seems mastering engineers have an unhealthy meter fetish - lesser lights than Rick, given the job of remastering, may well be tempted to master the numbers rather than the sound.

My guess is that there are also a lot of psychological and physiological factors going on as well - younger ears hear better than older ears, we have a tendency to apply a rosy tint to our memories, and never forget that your purpose in listening is quite different when working as a sound engineer compared to being the target audience.

Too, the point of remastering is that it will sound different. Our brains have a bias in favour of the known against the new. I found this listening to the Spectre-less Let It Be remix, my first reaction was that the remix showed that Phil knew what he was doing, but that was just my brain being too lazy to critically judge the new versus the old. After a few more listens I can see the craftmanship in the simpler versions. I think we could formulate the Turtlerocker theorem: all remasters of familiar material will sound crap at the first listen.

[heathen]

It's not just re-masters, the whole loudness war thing really is out of control, I used this as a benchmark before in talking about this and U2's how to dismantle an atomic bomb really pissed me off. The whole album has severe clipping the whole way through, sounds awful and no BS I reckon I could have done a better mastering job on it with the same tools. Seriously how hard could it be to make U2 sound great in mastering.

With all the new remasters of old music some are good and some bloody terrible. Having to compete with loudness I guess has always been around and it really does depend on who does the mastering to whether or not you'll get a good result, Rick's 100% right.

Too many people push for that extra 3db. Some music just does not have the potential to be loud, so its probably a bare knuckle limiter fight from the word go.

Then you have the new Iron Maiden album, somewhere so I heard Steve Harris said "we don wanna get the album mastered as it will sound squished like all the other stuff out there". Probably said with all the best intension, but something did not work out right to me. The album is limited to hell and squashed to death, sounds to me like a vari mu limiter going into about 4-6 db of gr, not good! Some nice analog eq and mild compression followed by a mild dose of L2 would have got them a much better result, I think.

A few artists are starting to forget the trend, Redmans new album "Red gone wild" is an example of an artist who stuck with conservative levels for his new record. Was mastered by Chris Athens at sterling sound and I reckon he did a fantastic job, the levels are smack bang on the loudness potential for that album, probably could have even been pushed an extra db or 2 but was'nt. I think the rms peaks out at about -13 dbrms mostly though around - 14 -15, which is conservative. Everything sound big and open. It's Hip Hop, yeah yeah I know, but it is worth a listen.

With most old songs its becoming hard to find a version which sounds great, I agree. Usually there are 10 different versions to choose from.

[heathen]

we have a tendency to apply a rosy tint to our memories

Yeah probably holds the most truth, I guess.

[Kris]

I guess you could always master your singles or radio songs in line with the trend of the day and master the album seperately.

What's worrying is that in a few years time the A&R guys that are calling the mastering shots on label releases will have no benchmark other than the latest Veronicas album. Of course, this is assuming that labels are still a going concern in the not too distant future.

[jkhuri44]

"i am sure in the scheme of things it would be ok if somebody was to jump in my way back machine find the guy who invented it and whack him"

you've been talking about the way back machine alot rick....and also whacking people....

hahaha

[walding]

One thing I've noticed is the modern master to be loud has the bottom end pulled out it as this where a lot of the energy lies (correct me if I'm wrong Rick or Mark) so to really limit the hell of it it is easier with the bottom pulled out.

I recently got the Toshiba black triangle version of Abbey Rd Mastered in 1983 or 4 on early digital off the 1st gen master tape, EMI (uk) when they heard it had it pulled so it's rare of the rare and everybody i've played it to (including a few studio's around melb) is just BLOWN away it sounds like the best F@#$ing vinyl the bottom end is so damm rich. I av the the 1st UK pressing on vinyl and the 1st aussie pressing and it REALLY leaves both of these in the dust.

WHY you may ask.....Cue big drum roll.......... It is un EQed and unlimited it is AS the Artist heard it when mixed, which is why EMI had it pulled. Hmm

IT it considered the holy grail of beatles mastering and on very very early digital...

Google it if you don't believe me

[scott]

I thought the recent (2003!) re masters of the ac/dc catalog were better than the earlier ones.

[rick]

wayback machine ...?


i have been suggesting somebody else uses my wayback machine at the moment because it has a slight problem that stops it working properly and you might get stuck in the wrong time zone and not be able to get back.

i have to be home in time to nurse my kids to sleep which is more important then time travel .

i am looking for a telefunken b3 11 ghj tube on ebay switzerland at the moment which should do the job , but i cannot read german so i am not sure its the right tube ......

meanwhie i am currently doing a very big job for a church from singapore for a christmas release , it has a dynamic range on some songs that simply preclude it being a loud cd .

you could have never cut this album on vinyl - its what i would call "uncuttable"
but when i am done it will sound fine on cd and that is BECAUSE of the lookahead feature of the brickwall limiter

brick wall limiters have their place