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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 10:21 pm Post subject: Beatles Remastered - improvement, or... |
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...another volley in the loudness war?
And, of course, when I think of remastering, I think of this:
A quick listen to an interview posted with a CNN article doesn't answer much - the remasters don't seem obscenely loud, but it was a quick listen indeed - and streamed at low bitrate, surely.
I'm not about to go out and buy the thing (feeding money to the RIAA isn't on my list of things to do, not because I want to legally file share, but because of their legal efforts to curb fair use and crush the rights of independent musicians) but I'm curious to know if they actually did a good job.
Anyone have any waveform comparisons ala the one in the wiki article? Direct listening comparison experience? Sat down with Ringo and Paul over a beer and asked them? 
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km987654
Joined: 25 Jul 2007
Posts: 2874
Location: Australia
TV/Projector: Barco BG809s
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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Well Paul says it just like being in the recording studio but then he would.
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AnalogRocks
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Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 26706
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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I thought this was amusing from the Wiki page:
"Examples of "loud" albums
Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf"
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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 11:34 pm Post subject: |
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| km987654 wrote: | | Well Paul says it just like being in the recording studio but then he would. |
Right - what's he gonna say? "Oh, yeah, right. They did the TBC remaster on this. You know what that means? Treble, Bass, Compression. But hey, it sounds good on a boombox. Wankers."
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Curt Palme
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| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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I dunno. I like analog recordings and all, but listen to any of the early Lenny Kravitz stuff, and it sounds pretty bad. Ditto for Led Zeppelin stuff, mind you, apparently everyone including hte engineers were drunk or stoned when they recorded. Lenny insisted back when on using only vintage equipment, from the instruments to the recorders and everything inbetween. Some sounds OK, but there's a bunch of distortion there as well.
I don't know how much more you'll extract from 40 year old recordings on 50 year old equipment, no matter how good your audiofool stereo is.
And no, it doesn't sound like you're in the damn studio. Sheesh!
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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY
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| Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 12:05 am Post subject: |
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| Curt Palme wrote: | I dunno. I like analog recordings and all, but listen to any of the early Lenny Kravitz stuff, and it sounds pretty bad. Ditto for Led Zeppelin stuff, mind you, apparently everyone including hte engineers were drunk or stoned when they recorded. Lenny insisted back when on using only vintage equipment, from the instruments to the recorders and everything inbetween. Some sounds OK, but there's a bunch of distortion there as well.
I don't know how much more you'll extract from 40 year old recordings on 50 year old equipment, no matter how good your audiofool stereo is.
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I guess if they were really doing their jobs, they might try to find the exact equipment used, run tests with it to determine what the response curves were, and make a filter that inverts it to EQ the stuff back to where it ought to be - kind of an empirical bass/treble enhancement, but one that would hopefully puff out notches in the recordings, etc.
Another possibility is that the previous remasterings were done off of the final tape, or a tape of the final tape, but these were pulled off each track and remixed from the get-go, thus eliminating all the crap that got introduced with the lower-quality mixing done before. But then they'd have to recreate all the work done during those original mixing stages, which given what they had to work with at the time probably involved a lot of destructive, layered edits...
But given that it's also possible that they just made it louder and turned up the treble, and that'd be a LOT cheaper, it'd have taken some serious commitment to actually do the job right... which is why I'm interested in finding out whether or not they did.
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Curt Palme
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| Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 12:06 am Post subject: |
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Since Alan Parsons was at work during the Abbey Road days, I'd say it was close to perfect at the get go. 
I met Alan at a NAMM show one year. If I'd meet him today, I'd ask him all about exactly what's being talked about in this thread.
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AnalogRocks
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| Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 1:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Curt Palme wrote: | Since Alan Parsons was at work during the Abbey Road days, I'd say it was close to perfect at the get go.
I met Alan at a NAMM show one year. If I'd meet him today, I'd ask him all about exactly what's being talked about in this thread. |
I emailed Alan's manager. Unfortunately he's not available.
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WTS
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
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Location: Calgary
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| Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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Alan Parsons is/was definatley a perfectionist.
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draganm
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 8990
Location: Colorado
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| Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:20 pm Post subject: |
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Remastering can be mixed bag. first question is "remastered by who?" Everything i've heard i've from Kevin gray or stan Ricker has been just absolutely amazing. This beatles thing , who knows?
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/04/07/the-beatles-remastered-albums-due-september-9-2009/
| Quote: | | A crew of engineers at London’s Abbey Road Studios have spent four years working on the remasters using new technology and vintage equipment, the press release says, in an effort to preserve “the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings” and ensure “the highest fidelity the catalog has seen since its original release.” |
they mentioned that the "love" album was an early "taste" of the bigger effort which is just now complete. I have that album on vinyl and it does sound pretty good. It has a much better soundstage than the originals and you only get a little bit of digital "edge" every once in a while from the use of digital mastering (Yes, I can hear it).
Alan Parson's might have been a perfectionist but they did some stuff back in the days that just sucks. Putting vocals in just one speaker , purely mono, is one example. You can certainly Phase a vocalist to shift the stereo image left or right, like Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" where Christy Mcvaigh is left of stage and Stevi nicks to the right, that works very well. but to have someone sing out of just one speaker sucks.
With instruemnts on the other hand this can work great. The Who's Pinball Wizard a great example. Townsend's Guitar riff to the right and I think Entwhistle coming in with the resounding electric note on the left. Also, drums can be Phased entirely from left mono, to in-pahse, to right mono with an amazing effect as lets say Keith moon comes acorss the tom-tom's? So it just depends who is at the console doing the mixing? I will not spend $30. on an album just because it was re-mastered for someone's shittly little I-pod.
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