listening to lots of music lately and almost every second song is “remastered”; original is often not even available anymore.
and not one single time i can hear any kind of improvement. so what does it even mean, to remaster a song?
one of the worst cases, imo is atomic by blondie.
and to add: iʼm not some kind of nostalgic puritan, plenty of songs get better after some remixing, covering and whatnot, like
The Clash - Rock The Casbah (12 inch Version)
But the remastered version?
dear god, if i wanted to listen to sting, i would listen to friggin sting.
Mastering engineer here. Remastered means that the audio has been modified to fit a different sonic aesthetic.
In general this means made louder, clearer and perhaps bassier, to make it sound “as good” as contemporary albums, as well as optimising it for contemporary consumer sound systems (which nowadays range from 5.1 kits with huge subwoofers, to a mono smartphone speaker).
It’s also an excuse to sell the same album again.
I’m not currently able to listen to the examples you’ve given, but I do believe it to be sometimes detrimental to change the aesthetic of a song and “take it out of it’s era”, because a cleaner or brighter mix might make it lose a lot of its charm.
It’s also worth noting that nowadays, the quality of remasters can vary a lot due to more (potentially less experienced) people using music-making software to create and upload their own.
Hope that helped!
one more example, where you can hear the difference from the first second.
help by Beatles
the remastered version does indeed sound cleaner and even fuller, yet somehow still simply more empty. or I’m just Imagining things now 😅
The one original I don’t miss is the CD mix of Rushs Vapor Trails, as that was practically unlistenable and I have no idea who approved it, it clipped like crazy to the point where I was afraid it would damage speakers. Finally remixed in 2013 to a loud (which is fair that’s the vibe of it) but listenable mix. I’m glad rush managed to make that happen, one little victory is a great track that was murdered by the mixing.
Sugar Ray is also highly brick walled but I can’t tell if that’s agressive mixing or just an aesthetic choice to have that kind of distortion and dirtyness in there.
I’m listening with pretty fancy earphones, I can hear that is sounds more “clear” sometimes, but mostly it seems that stuff gets removed and sounds more flat overall if that makes sense. maybe can you post examples of good remastered songs?
There’s a delicate balance a mastering engineer needs to keep, especially on music recorded a while ago on tape and are considered classics. They need to enhance it but at the same time retain the spirit and soul of the music. That’s why the changes are so subtle you sometimes barely notice anything. I’m sure a capable engineer can make a song recorded in the 60s sound like it was recorded more recently, but then it loses some of its character because how it sounded “old” is what makes it a classic in the first place.
Try the Steven Wilson remasters of King Crimson, and other music he has remastered. A more modern and not so subtle example is Oasis’ remaster of The Masterplan. You’ll notice the orchestral section is fuller, and some intruments that were not really audible in the original are clearer in the remaster.
One that I’ve been on the fence about liking recently is the Metallica - Master of Puppets remaster that came out about a year ago. I can tell the two are different but it’s so difficult to describe.
There’s a Snoop Dogg interview where he makes an interesting point about this. Apparently, after 7 years, an artist has the right to reclaim ownership from the label by remastering?
This is essentially what Taylor Swift is doing with her Taylor’s Versions. After being ignored when she requested to buy her masters, she essentially did a “Fine I’ll do it myself” and is now remastering all of her old work.
From what I’ve heard, she didn’t remaster, she rerecorded those albums. These are new performances.
You’re correct they’re all new recordings of the songs, not remastered.
Correct. The royalties structure in music has the 2 parts - composition and performance. If you own both, you get 100% of the royalty from all those sales/streams.
well that makes sense, of course capitalism and greed has to be involved when stupid shit happens 😒
Somewhat related, The Loudness War:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
You can find loads of videos and articles about this topic.
A good remaster is amazing. A bad remaster is…loud and/or flat for my ears.
It could literally mean anything from a complete remixing from studio tracks to just adjusting the levels and eq a little and calling it good.
if only phones and such had an equalizer huh? 🤣
Most listeners won’t touch it apart from boosting bass, you also want to make it play well with the typical compressor and EQ profiles of FM radio still. Listeners expect music to start at a certain profile and want to go from their on their own as well.
A master tape is the song recorded in the studio which will then be replicated and distributed. A remaster means you make a new one of those. Often that can mean just re-recording (a lot of Taylors remasters do this) or it can mean you totally change the music. There’s never a situation where you can’t get the old version though. Just buy the old CD/vinyl/tape/whatever that comes from the master you like.
