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| From | Michael Myers <mmyers1446@yahoo.com> |
| Subject | Re: Remix vs Remaster Was: Beatles Remasters |
| Date | Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:26:43 -0700 (PDT) |
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Mark;
40 years ago, they used analog tapes to create the incredible and warm sounds that vinyl lovers want... so when the records came out back then, things sounded great...
In 1987, when it was decided to release the Beatles catalog on CD, the PROCESS of analog-to-digital transfer was not anywhere as mature as it it today... hence, many folks were disappointed at the sonic quality of the 1987 CDs... I just played my 1987 Abbey Road side by side with the new one I got last week and there is a world of difference because....
The new analog to digital transfer that occurred in the last 4 years made use of huge advances in technology... they went back to the old master tapes and did a whole new digital transfer BEFORE they started to clean them up... the sampling rates are better, and I read a comment by one engineer who said that even if they performed no other "wizardry" (such as removing hiss, pops, blah blah blah), the quality of the new digital masters would have been incredible if released "as-is" (in other words, if no "cleaning up" had been done)... I don't want to get in semantics here, but if they had ONLY done a new analog tape-to-digital transfer, I guess that activity IN ITSELF might qualify as per definition as remastering, but of course what occurred was that they cleaned up the sound as well as per he "rules" they had to follow (pop removal ok, coughing during a take - no touch lol)
Mike
--- On Wed, 9/16/09, Mark Eichelberger <markeichelberger@verizon.net> wrote:
From: Mark Eichelberger <markeichelberger@verizon.net>
Subject: Re: Remix vs Remaster Was: Beatles Remasters
To: audities@smoe.org
Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 12:17 PM
Mike,
Well, I still have a basic question. Just what occurs during mastering? (And I am assuming this mastering process happens after mixing.) If the producer/artist mixes the master tapes to get the sound they want, what else is there to do? Why does is now have to be mastered? Confused....
Thanks,
Mark
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Myers" <mmyers1446@yahoo.com>
To: <audities@smoe.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: Remix vs Remaster Was: Beatles Remasters
Mark;
Here's one easy way to think of it... but there are a couple fine points in here too :)
Any tape or original sound source can be remastered to some degree... whether it is the original "un-mixed" master tape for instance, or, as in the case of the Beatles, they took the MIXED tapes that were the ones used to create the singles and LPs long ago and did a lot of digital wizardry to clean the sound up.... and this is what you are hearing on the CDs we're all raving about... so in other words, the engineers did not feel empowered nor were they allowed to go back to the UNMIXED original tapes and make changes back at that point in the process...
REMIXING, however, is a whole other can of worms, and that is what I think you're wanting info on as well... if those engineers were to go back to the original 4 or 8 track tapes and start REMIXING things, it would have set off a whole new controversy... when things are remixed, that means they could actually pan sounds differently in the stereo channels, make the guitar lead a lot louder, change the dynamics in the harmony parts etc... remember, George Martin, some Abbey Road engineers and the BEATLES themselves made those music/dynamics/sonic choices as to how the songs would be MIXED and this is sacred ground in the opinion of many... those mixes were artistic statements and they resulted in the master copy tapes that were used in these recent releases...
You probably have other CDs in your collection that say they were REMIXED and REMASTERED.... which means someone like Jimmy Page or Pete Townshend or Robbie Robertson went back and took all of the unmixed contributions to a song and sat and made new versions of the sons with a remxing project that probably inlcuded remastering as well...
Did that help?
Mike
--- On Wed, 9/16/09, Mark Eichelberger <markeichelberger@verizon.net> wrote:
From: Mark Eichelberger <markeichelberger@verizon.net>
Subject: Remix vs Remaster Was: Beatles Remasters
To: audities@smoe.org
Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 7:47 AM
Folks,
All this talk of mixing, remixing, mastering and remastering is confusing my non-musician brain. Could one of you musician/recording studio types define these terms or describe the process. I've always been confused on the differences of a mix vs. a master.
TIA,
Mark E.,
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