Both pressings are not the same. If one desires the original album as originally intended by Common, you get an original. Remastering involves much more than just raising peak levels or normalizing. In a lot of cases, remastering engineers will tweak the recordings and add little things which try to sweeten the sound quality, but you're not really getting an accurate version of the original album. This includes everything from new echo and reverb, using effects created by new plug-ins, or if an album was recorded in analog, it has digital qualities that never existed when the original master was made.
But is there a difference between the same CDs (from different years)?
Yes. While the remastering process has been pretty much the same since 1982 (and back then, it was simply converting analog tapes to digital), each remastering engineer does it differently. It all depends on the tools they use, what type of boards, and what they did to fix the quality of the master tape.
Here's another way to put it. Let's take an album like Jethro Tull's Aqualung[/b]. When it was released for the first time on CD, it sounded like shit. The reason is because the label used the closest master tape they could find. It was discovered that the tape was a safety copy of a safety copy of a safety copy, so about three to four generations down. Not exactly ideal. Now, safety copies might be made for different international divisions of a label, and each international division may have requested something different. OR... when a master tape was sent to that international division, maybe the mastering engineer did something to it. There can be many variables.
Now, Aqualung[/b] was pressed on CD two more times, each one saying it was better than the version that came before it. Fans weren't happy. Then you have a mastering engineer who has a reputation for audio quality, and he goes out of his way to find the true master tape. Through three years of research, it all leads to dead ends, until finally, someone contacts that engineer and goes "look what I just discovered in the shed. It appears to be the true master tape." The tape is sent, it's baked, it's played, everyone goes nuts, the dynamics are great, and boom, that CD is now deemed to be THE BEST. Now you have about five or six different CD variations of the same damn album. Years later, the industry gets into Deluxe Editions, Legacy Editions, or simply wanting to do yet another reissue with additional alternate takes and unreleased material.
Short version: the record industry was originally hesitant to release older material on CD, because "who would want to listen to back catalog?" When they realized that people DID want to hear the older albums, they went out of their way to dust off the boxes and release what they had. With various record company mergers, or artists jumping to labels, with ownership of those masters switching hands, the whereabouts of those masters are often unknown until someone does the research. Record labels are not in the business to do research, they're there to make money. In that time, they release the CD, then a new version of the CD, and another, and another. Look how manytimes A Love Supreme[/b] has been released.
One would expect for those early CD's to not sound as good as a newly remastered version, but that's not always the case. With analog tape, it can reveal a lot about the original recording. In the late 80's/early 90's, the NoNoise reduction system was created for CD's, which made it possible to de-hiss all of those old songs. Compact discs were sold on the premise that it was supposed to make everything sound new and modern, with most people not realizing that when it comes to digital, what you put in is what you get out. If something has layers of tape hiss or bad tape edits, it's going to sound like that. If the condition of the master tape shows wear and tear, it's going to sound like it has a lot of wear and tear.
For a small handful of releases, albums were released in hi-resolution as SACD's or DVD-Audio discs. Fans who are into hearing a hi-rez version will want to seek those out, or for those who want to hear something that's technically better than a redbook CD. With the SACD's and DVD-A's being a failure, some are realizing that the best version of that album came on a dead format. Some will try to sell those for three times the original price, not realzing that all of them are still in print and being sold online at CDNow, CD Universe, Elusive Disc, or whatever.
There's also people who are realizing that those original, first pressigns on vinyl can be a lot more of value than even the best compact disc. Or what did I read in an article, that some engineers will master their CD's as if it was vinyl, to allow the music to breathe. Amy Winehouse's recent album is a perfect example of something that was done quickly, and done wrong. It sounds like shit, as if everything is being pushed up to a window and you're hearing the walls shake. If it was remastered properly, people would notice.
Is there any difference in sound between say Common "Resurrection" CD released in 90s as opposed to rerelease? My guess is no.
So how would CDs be valueable?
I can definitely imagine a world where CDs are out of print.
We're living in it. Quite a few shops - new stores like Virgin, not used - have CD bargain bins just like they used to have vinyl bargain bins. And you can stock up on all the new jack swing/hair-metal/pseudo-grunge/swing revival/ska revival/jam band shit from the '90s and early '00s that didn't make it.
And besides, the debut albums of Body Count and the Traveling Wilburys are like Exhibit A and B of collectable CD's you can't get anymore.
We're living in it. Quite a few shops - new stores like Virgin, not used - have CD bargain bins just like they used to have vinyl bargain bins. And you can stock up on all the new jack swing/hair-metal/pseudo-grunge/swing revival/ska revival/jam band shit from the '90s and early '00s that didn't make it.
Very true, and the close of Tower Records was just a brief hint of what will be coming in the next few years.
I look at it this way. As there was a transition from vinyl to CD's, and people were replacing their entire record collections with CD's, there was the hope that these labels would release everything on compact disc. The CD is now 25 years old, and it will still be around for at least another ten years in some form. While labels have not given up on the format, the articles which claim there has been a 19 percent drop in CD sales in the U.S. shows that the public prefers convenience over quality. Other countries, specifically Australia, show an increase in CD sales. U.S. statistics show there has also been a huge increase in music sales from previous years, but that's due to legal downloads. Oddly enough, in the last few years, vinyl and turntable sales have increased. Keep in mind that vinyl sales are fairly low, but it's 2007, not 1977. Nonetheless, older fans are going back to their records. We vinyl junkies are forever going to remain loyal, and younger music fans, like a lot of us, are rejecting trends and doing some digging of their own, or at least finding records and enjoying them as a source of entertainment, and not as museum pieces.
And besides, the debut albums of Body Count and the Traveling Wilburys are like Exhibit A and B of collectable CD's you can't get anymore.
The first Traveling Wilburys album is being reissued next month, WITH bonus tracks, and I believe it's part of a CD/DVD combo. I also think it's being pressed on vinyl too.
Body Count has a chance of being reissued if someone like Wounded Bird chooses to license it. With Body Count, you also have two pressings. The first may be desirable over the second because of the songs that had to be removed, although by the time the second pressing came out (with the "Cop Killer" tattoo removed from the guy's abdomen on the cover), no one really wanted the album anyway, so it may be more valuable than the first pressing.
younger music fans, like a lot of us, are rejecting trends and doing some digging of their own, or at least finding records and enjoying them as a source of entertainment, and not as museum pieces.
Yeah but that's gotta be less then 1% of all music sales. I wonder what percentage of people are buying vinyl vs digital downloads.
Yeah but that's gotta be less then 1% of all music sales.
Let's go to statistics:
Though vinyl LP sales constitute only one percent of new music sold in America each year, that percentage is growing as more record companies press new albums into vinyl. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, vinyl sales have doubled in percentage of music sales since 2000 to become a $110-million-dollar industry. Since that same year, overall music sales dropped to $12.2 billion from $14.4 billion, a plunge that the vinyl industry escaped without a scratch.[/b]
Most of the people buying and selling vinyl are the diehards, you and I both know that. In terms of new vinyl, labels who still press up records are still making some nice money. The target audience for vinyl will not get any higher, but that target audience will remain loyal. Obviously, if someone wants to start a label today, they either have to be dedicated in pressing up vinyl, dedicate themselves to physical and digital media, or avoid physical media and become all digital. To me, if you avoid those who don't want to commit to digital (or a digital format that they don't want), you're losing a part of that loyal audience. Of course, a loyal audience of 5000 is very different from the potential 2,000,000 people who may download your song and/or album, that is, if albums are even considered something worth downloading, if current trends are correct.
I know Def Jux have committed themselves to going digital. Rope-A-Dope already have a string of digital-only releases ready to go, and will only release physical media on reliable artists. Sadly, that is the trend, and a lot of people will follow.
Digital is here. Physical is over. Physical may be on its way to being over, but it will be awhile. The proof is in the Sunday ads, as more stores devote new CD's to maybe a quarter of a page. A number of stores already have MP3 "inventories", and that will continue.
Deal? How about record labels offer lossless files that are far more superior than MP3's? I'll support any label that does this. I'm able to download something from Sonar Kollektiv's website for $12, which is about half of what I would pay if I bought the CD from Dusty Groove. I may not get the graphics or the look of the CD that the artist and/or label wanted, but if I just want the music, I'll take that. I'll take an Olive Musica:
or the Olive Opus:
I would truly swap my entire CD collection for one or two of those.
On the topic of digital, what I don't get is why don't companies offer PDF or JPEG downloads of the cover art so that if you are so inclined you can make your own, "physical" album.
Don't tell Digger Phelps but prospective girlfriend mix-tapes with personalized cover art will become all the rage in 2017.
There we go. Value goes up 30% if mix-tape features personal audio message from the creator of the tape, 60% if it's sexual in tone, 200% if he does a Howie Mandel-like Gremlin voice doing one of his own love poems, and 500% if it's on one of only two tapes made on Sony's limited metal-shell Metal tapes.
On the topic of digital, what I don't get is why don't companies offer PDF or JPEG downloads of the cover art so that if you are so inclined you can make your own, "physical" album.
A few indie labels are offering this. A number of majors had talked about having the artwork available, and if one wanted to turn the pages like a CD booklet, they could do so online. I think with the controversy over DRM, labels are afraid that it will lead to "further" bootlegging, as if downloading for free isn't enough.
Your idea may already be in play, since I read somewhere that some labels and artists are telling lyrics websites to take off their lyrics or face a possible lawsuit. The idea is that labels will be incorporating this either on the websites (which they should have done ten years ago), or to include this in whatever type of downloadable artwork the labels plan on providing.
I also think that each label wants to try out their own unique way of creating content, and seeing how the public wants to access it. Should it be something they can access on the website, or can someone have the option to download it? Or as with U2, and how you could buy a U2 iPod, or from what I'm hearing, there may be a Beatles iPod with their entire discography on it, will that have the artwork for all of the albums, or just a front cover graphic, Apple logo, and songs?
There are lots of ways to do it, and I don't think it should be uniform. However, it seems as if labels are running around trying to find a uniform standard, while it is the fans who are deciding what they want and don't want.
Comments
they spent 10 minutes tuning their guitars...then i realized that was a song.
That makes perfect sense.
But is there a difference between the same CDs (from different years)?
Two words: brickwall limiting:
http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?storyCode=16969
Both pressings are not the same. If one desires the original album as originally intended by Common, you get an original. Remastering involves much more than just raising peak levels or normalizing. In a lot of cases, remastering engineers will tweak the recordings and add little things which try to sweeten the sound quality, but you're not really getting an accurate version of the original album. This includes everything from new echo and reverb, using effects created by new plug-ins, or if an album was recorded in analog, it has digital qualities that never existed when the original master was made.
Yes. While the remastering process has been pretty much the same since 1982 (and back then, it was simply converting analog tapes to digital), each remastering engineer does it differently. It all depends on the tools they use, what type of boards, and what they did to fix the quality of the master tape.
Here's another way to put it. Let's take an album like Jethro Tull's Aqualung[/b]. When it was released for the first time on CD, it sounded like shit. The reason is because the label used the closest master tape they could find. It was discovered that the tape was a safety copy of a safety copy of a safety copy, so about three to four generations down. Not exactly ideal. Now, safety copies might be made for different international divisions of a label, and each international division may have requested something different. OR... when a master tape was sent to that international division, maybe the mastering engineer did something to it. There can be many variables.
Now, Aqualung[/b] was pressed on CD two more times, each one saying it was better than the version that came before it. Fans weren't happy. Then you have a mastering engineer who has a reputation for audio quality, and he goes out of his way to find the true master tape. Through three years of research, it all leads to dead ends, until finally, someone contacts that engineer and goes "look what I just discovered in the shed. It appears to be the true master tape." The tape is sent, it's baked, it's played, everyone goes nuts, the dynamics are great, and boom, that CD is now deemed to be THE BEST. Now you have about five or six different CD variations of the same damn album. Years later, the industry gets into Deluxe Editions, Legacy Editions, or simply wanting to do yet another reissue with additional alternate takes and unreleased material.
Short version: the record industry was originally hesitant to release older material on CD, because "who would want to listen to back catalog?" When they realized that people DID want to hear the older albums, they went out of their way to dust off the boxes and release what they had. With various record company mergers, or artists jumping to labels, with ownership of those masters switching hands, the whereabouts of those masters are often unknown until someone does the research. Record labels are not in the business to do research, they're there to make money. In that time, they release the CD, then a new version of the CD, and another, and another. Look how manytimes A Love Supreme[/b] has been released.
One would expect for those early CD's to not sound as good as a newly remastered version, but that's not always the case. With analog tape, it can reveal a lot about the original recording. In the late 80's/early 90's, the NoNoise reduction system was created for CD's, which made it possible to de-hiss all of those old songs. Compact discs were sold on the premise that it was supposed to make everything sound new and modern, with most people not realizing that when it comes to digital, what you put in is what you get out. If something has layers of tape hiss or bad tape edits, it's going to sound like that. If the condition of the master tape shows wear and tear, it's going to sound like it has a lot of wear and tear.
For a small handful of releases, albums were released in hi-resolution as SACD's or DVD-Audio discs. Fans who are into hearing a hi-rez version will want to seek those out, or for those who want to hear something that's technically better than a redbook CD. With the SACD's and DVD-A's being a failure, some are realizing that the best version of that album came on a dead format. Some will try to sell those for three times the original price, not realzing that all of them are still in print and being sold online at CDNow, CD Universe, Elusive Disc, or whatever.
There's also people who are realizing that those original, first pressigns on vinyl can be a lot more of value than even the best compact disc. Or what did I read in an article, that some engineers will master their CD's as if it was vinyl, to allow the music to breathe. Amy Winehouse's recent album is a perfect example of something that was done quickly, and done wrong. It sounds like shit, as if everything is being pushed up to a window and you're hearing the walls shake. If it was remastered properly, people would notice.
We're living in it. Quite a few shops - new stores like Virgin, not used - have CD bargain bins just like they used to have vinyl bargain bins. And you can stock up on all the new jack swing/hair-metal/pseudo-grunge/swing revival/ska revival/jam band shit from the '90s and early '00s that didn't make it.
And besides, the debut albums of Body Count and the Traveling Wilburys are like Exhibit A and B of collectable CD's you can't get anymore.
Very true, and the close of Tower Records was just a brief hint of what will be coming in the next few years.
I look at it this way. As there was a transition from vinyl to CD's, and people were replacing their entire record collections with CD's, there was the hope that these labels would release everything on compact disc. The CD is now 25 years old, and it will still be around for at least another ten years in some form. While labels have not given up on the format, the articles which claim there has been a 19 percent drop in CD sales in the U.S. shows that the public prefers convenience over quality. Other countries, specifically Australia, show an increase in CD sales. U.S. statistics show there has also been a huge increase in music sales from previous years, but that's due to legal downloads. Oddly enough, in the last few years, vinyl and turntable sales have increased. Keep in mind that vinyl sales are fairly low, but it's 2007, not 1977. Nonetheless, older fans are going back to their records. We vinyl junkies are forever going to remain loyal, and younger music fans, like a lot of us, are rejecting trends and doing some digging of their own, or at least finding records and enjoying them as a source of entertainment, and not as museum pieces.
The first Traveling Wilburys album is being reissued next month, WITH bonus tracks, and I believe it's part of a CD/DVD combo. I also think it's being pressed on vinyl too.
Body Count has a chance of being reissued if someone like Wounded Bird chooses to license it. With Body Count, you also have two pressings. The first may be desirable over the second because of the songs that had to be removed, although by the time the second pressing came out (with the "Cop Killer" tattoo removed from the guy's abdomen on the cover), no one really wanted the album anyway, so it may be more valuable than the first pressing.
Yeah but that's gotta be less then 1% of all music sales. I wonder what percentage of people are buying vinyl vs digital downloads.
Digital is here. Physical is over.
deal
Let's go to statistics:
Though vinyl LP sales constitute only one percent of new music sold in America each year, that percentage is growing as more record companies press new albums into vinyl. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, vinyl sales have doubled in percentage of music sales since 2000 to become a $110-million-dollar industry. Since that same year, overall music sales dropped to $12.2 billion from $14.4 billion, a plunge that the vinyl industry escaped without a scratch.[/b]
Most of the people buying and selling vinyl are the diehards, you and I both know that. In terms of new vinyl, labels who still press up records are still making some nice money. The target audience for vinyl will not get any higher, but that target audience will remain loyal. Obviously, if someone wants to start a label today, they either have to be dedicated in pressing up vinyl, dedicate themselves to physical and digital media, or avoid physical media and become all digital. To me, if you avoid those who don't want to commit to digital (or a digital format that they don't want), you're losing a part of that loyal audience. Of course, a loyal audience of 5000 is very different from the potential 2,000,000 people who may download your song and/or album, that is, if albums are even considered something worth downloading, if current trends are correct.
I know Def Jux have committed themselves to going digital. Rope-A-Dope already have a string of digital-only releases ready to go, and will only release physical media on reliable artists. Sadly, that is the trend, and a lot of people will follow.
Digital is here. Physical is over.
Physical may be on its way to being over, but it will be awhile. The proof is in the Sunday ads, as more stores devote new CD's to maybe a quarter of a page. A number of stores already have MP3 "inventories", and that will continue.
Deal? How about record labels offer lossless files that are far more superior than MP3's? I'll support any label that does this. I'm able to download something from Sonar Kollektiv's website for $12, which is about half of what I would pay if I bought the CD from Dusty Groove. I may not get the graphics or the look of the CD that the artist and/or label wanted, but if I just want the music, I'll take that. I'll take an Olive Musica:
or the Olive Opus:
I would truly swap my entire CD collection for one or two of those.
There we go. Value goes up 30% if mix-tape features personal audio message from the creator of the tape, 60% if it's sexual in tone, 200% if he does a Howie Mandel-like Gremlin voice doing one of his own love poems, and 500% if it's on one of only two tapes made on Sony's limited metal-shell Metal tapes.
A few indie labels are offering this. A number of majors had talked about having the artwork available, and if one wanted to turn the pages like a CD booklet, they could do so online. I think with the controversy over DRM, labels are afraid that it will lead to "further" bootlegging, as if downloading for free isn't enough.
Your idea may already be in play, since I read somewhere that some labels and artists are telling lyrics websites to take off their lyrics or face a possible lawsuit. The idea is that labels will be incorporating this either on the websites (which they should have done ten years ago), or to include this in whatever type of downloadable artwork the labels plan on providing.
I also think that each label wants to try out their own unique way of creating content, and seeing how the public wants to access it. Should it be something they can access on the website, or can someone have the option to download it? Or as with U2, and how you could buy a U2 iPod, or from what I'm hearing, there may be a Beatles iPod with their entire discography on it, will that have the artwork for all of the albums, or just a front cover graphic, Apple logo, and songs?
There are lots of ways to do it, and I don't think it should be uniform. However, it seems as if labels are running around trying to find a uniform standard, while it is the fans who are deciding what they want and don't want.
NO DEAL, FUCK THAT. Howie, I'm going with Claudia at #1
(The remainder of my reply was flat out corny, so we'll just skip to the end)
STAY BACK, MUFALAKAS! It's all about the Dio
Okay, at least one person saw it. I'm alright.
Nothing like a back and forth discussion of dead media to get the Google image searches going.