Reissue basics
mr.brett
678 Posts
I was talking to an emcee last night and he was talking about how he's a "cd head" and that he prefers og's over reissues because when they reissue stuff they "try to digitize it". Can someone elaborate on what usually happens when stuff is reissued. I alyways assumed that reissued/remastered cd's sound better. Do reissued (and remastered) cd's usually sound better or worse? As far as vinyl goes, I understand that there's a general preference for og's but if someone asked me for a complete answer as to why this is, I couldn't tell them. I've heard that OG's are usually better pressings, but is this always the case? It seems like some of the preference for OG's is attributed to a nerdy desire to have the original, but if someone could explain it I would appreciate it.
Comments
As to the LPs...a lot of reissues, especially the the shady ones (Scorpio, Tuff city, etc) are mastered from digital copies (DATs, CDs)...so basically with a reissue LP, you are going from an analog recording to a digital master to an analog format, which, more often than not sounds like ass. OG LPs and proper reissues are analog mastered, from an analog source, ie tape.
Beat me to it! Very rarely have I found a "reissue" LP with acceptable sound quality.
SG
I recently picked up a Horace Silver reissue(Total Response) from a wholesaler thinking it was a legit Blue Note reissue...nope, shady pirate reish...it is the WORST sounding reissue I have ever heard in my life, and you gotta do some work to make a Van Gelder recording sound bad...but whoever is responsible for this reissue was actually able to accomplish that.
count em
1 crate
of reissues
i have a/b tested shit like innocence/experience/meters/is it because i'm black/sweet charles etc as i replace them
and 80% of the time i can't hear the difference
minds playin' tricks on me
nope, not with this one:
actually, the repress has a much better quality and is therefore more desirable than paying 40$ for the OG which has a shitty quality. If I find an og for cheap, I keep it of course...it all depends...
A side of wax will generally begin to start losing fidelity at the 16 or 17 minute mark. The grooves have to be packed tighter which affects the sound output. So if the OG version of an album is packed full of tunes, chances are that the reish will sound worse. And there ya have it....
yes, the polske nagrania 80s reish LP is loud and proud!
Digital recording, on the other hand, analyzes the frequencies and stores the information as binary code and computer shit. If you can imagine `stop-framing' a slice of sound, analyzing it and converting the information into numbers and shit, that is what a digital recorder does.
The trade-off, analog enthusiasts say, is the loss of a natural, organic quality that many audiophiles and Stark fans say they hear only from analog sources such as Stark LPs.
There are Blue Note reissues that sound as good as OGs. $30.
Ha - I was just about to say I need to OG up my Eddie Fisher,
it's one of the few Scorpio-style reissues I own, and I think
it sounds like ASS.
the stones throw reissues sound waaaaaaay better than the og - more level, fatter grooves (less time per side) on the vinyl, and Dave Cooley did an excellent job of mastering. John Abercrombie hated the way his guitar sounded on the og, and loves the way it sounds on stones throw.
nuff said, before i get into more trouble with the "organic audiophiles"
All them audiophil dudes are OK, do what you wanna do, but please dont discuss anything regarding sound with me. I'm a person who says I can hear the wackness of a MP3, and yes if you do a A-B test with recordings from a record and from a CD there are defenitley diffrences, but at the end ?? Come on !!!!
So to answer the question. It all depends on who is remastering it and what kinda abilitys he got.
Mastering is there to make the stereo mix louder, wider and more brilliant. So if someone with taste does it, he can make a old shitty recording sound way better than the mastering dude back in the days could do. Beacuse today the technic is far better than yesteryears.
And most of the mastering today is done digitaly, so it will be sampled into 0s and 1s anyway.
Peace
Hawkeye
I always found that as the record gets closer to the end the sound got better, usually there was less crackling or hissing. I always thought it was because the needle was traveling faster as it got closer to the spindle like the way 45s sound better.
Actually ... the needle travels faster on the outside of a record. The time it takes the record to rotate (lets say "t") is always constant. However, the circumference (lets say "d") is larger on the outside. Speed is distance over time (d/t), so the speed is greater when the circumference is greater.
Also, I've heard that record producers tend to put the hit songs in the first or second band of a record for this very reason.
The noise you're hearing may have more to do with your tonearm than anything else.
I'd peep out audioasylum & run a search. There are some good tips there.
Let me try again, short version.
The master tape or usually a safety copy of the master is used to press up the vinyl. This "master tape" is the final mix of an album, and generally kept away from the pressing plant, which is why safety copies are made. These safety copies were then distributed to the international divisions of various labels. What you would get depends on the mastering engineer, who makes sure what gets to tape transfers well onto vinyl, and the kind of equipment used. This is the reason why first pressings of a lot of albums are desired. In some instances, second pressings are made from a generation down from the "safety copy", or it may actually be mastered by someone else. This is why a lot of the information in the matrix/run-off groove is important to collectors. It's not unlike looking at an old Tommy Boy record, and becoming like Ice Cube when you say "but who the fuck is Herb?"
CD's are a different story. When CD's first hit the market in the early 80's, there was not much of a push to dip into a record label's catalog and start releasing old music. It was always about the purity and clarity of "now". Slowly, labels started going into the tape library and for the most part had no knowledge of what lurked in there. "Reissue divisions" were few, and for the most part the tape libraries were a mess. Even Egon had said when he went in to do research on the David Axelrod comp he did for Blue Note/Capitol, the EMI tape vaults were a mess (now had my application for the EMI tape librarian position gone through, and I was hired, that may not have been the case.) When it came time to find older albums, they used the first things they could find. Sometimes it was the safety copy, maybe it was the copy of the safety, or in some cases the actual master. These early pressings are prized because they are considered to be the closest digital version of the best version of the master tape. No tape reduction systems were implemented at the time, which means if there was hiss, there was hiss.
As labels started developing "reissue divisions", each had a different approach on how to archive their music. Many people, such as Dennis Drake who worked with Polygram for many years, simply transferred the master tapes to digital, and mixed it the analog way. Other people who were praised for the remastering approach include Steve Hoffman:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv
Barry Diament
http://www.barrydiamentaudio.com
Robert (Bob) Ludwig
http://www.gatewaymastering.com
and Joe Gastwirt:
http://www.gastwirtmastering.com
While all of them have done work in the digital realm, they are firm believes that analog mixing is the best way.
However, not everyone shared their approach, and many major labels felt that the public only cared for the music (see "current MP3 phenomenon" for references) and really could care less about what was done to it and why, as long as the music was out on the market. Labels would hire their own mastering engineers, or create their own staff. The developments in digital and computer technology lead to the creation of the Sonic Solutions No-Noise reduction system, which made it possible to pretty much remove tape-hiss. This is now commonplace on a lot of audio programs a lot of us use, when we want to "de-hiss" something. But No Noise changes the dynamic of the recording, compressing things to sound very different from not only previous CD pressings, but the original vinyl. If a song has a quiet moment (like a lot of prog rock does), you're not going to hear much.
In the 90's, remastering engineers started using a lot more digital reverb and echo when mixing, adding this to older recordings. It's hard to listen to a song from the 60's and 70's and hear a type of reverb that did not exist. It ends up being very cold, which is why some say that a lot of remastered CD's sound "digital". There's a stillness to the music, and yet somehow that archaic format known as vinyl lacks the stillness, even when it's a digital recording being pressed on vinyl.
In the last seven years, labels have been listening to the public, but doing things the wrong way. A lot of new remasters will peak the levels all to 100, or to raise it higher, then lower it back. As any of you who do mixing know, if something goes "in the red", that means it's too loud. In digital, if it goes "in the red", you really can't rescue that sound. What you're hearing is someone taking a shortcut in getting product out to the public and saying "I know none of you know what I did, but this sound is now IN YOUR FACE, YOU LOVE IT. GOOD TIMES, YES?"
In countries like Japan and what was once West Germany, quality control in CD's were equal to that of Japan and their approach to vinyl. If a US pressing of a CD was crappy, there may be a chance that the Japanese pressing would be better, and a lot of times it was. Some may think that the same digital clone would be sent to every country, and a CD would sound the same around the world, but not so, at least not until the mid-90's. International divisions were sent a master tape or a master DAT and they would remaster it in their own way. Some just did it as is, while places like Japan and West Germany went out of their way to make sure the transfer was top notch.
As someone said, it really does have a lot to do with who did the remastering for a CD, and just because it's "remastered" doesn't meant it sounds better, is "new and improved", or "WOW, THE VOLUME LEVELS ARE NOT IN THE 50'S ANYMORE, IT'S LOUD AND I LIKE IT!". If it's remixed from the multi-tracks, that's another ball game altogether, and another topic.
Two quick examples. When Red Hot Chili Peppers released Stadium Arcadium[/b] on CD, some fans why the album sounded heavily compressed. Ripping the CD and analyzing the WAV files, they found out why. There were intentions of releasing the CD on vinyl, but the vinyl mixes were to be remastered by Steve Hoffman. He was given the master tapes (the entire album was recorded completely in analog), and when he started doing his versions of the songs, producer Rick Rubin had asked to take a listen. Apparently he was blown away by what he heard. Various Warner Bros. employees also went to Hoffman's studio, along with RHCP, to hear his work. RHCP, Rubin, and Warner Bros. approved of the mixes, and they came out (I believe) as a 4LP set. Fans heard it and noticed a huge, drastic difference. Fans also wondered why the CD had to sound like shit compared to the vinyl version, with some demanding Hoffman's version replace Warner Bros. CD version.
One of my favorite albums is the first and only album by Blind Faith. I bought the Universal Deluxe Edition for the bonus tracks, but I wanted to hear what they did for the remaster. I played "Do What You Like", noticed a difference immediately but it became very clear during Ginger Baker's drum solo. The solo sounded cold, no warmth, as if it was in a box. I also have the first two CD pressings (RSO and Polygram), but also compared it to the MFSL audiophile CD, which is the best version of the album. The MFSL blows it away, it feels as if you're right there in the studio with Ginger Baker. In fact, that's why a lot of older jazz albums work, it's not just the chemistry of the musicians and whatever substances and chemicals they may be consuming, but it's the room. We all know what an album on Atlantic sounds like, or that early Columbia sound, the RCA studio in New York, or hearing David Axelrod's "The Human Abstract" and saying "this has the exact same warmth and qualities as The Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice". Or as ma ny jazz musicians and collectors have said, the sound of Rudy Van Gelder's room, and the way it was designed, had A LOT to do with what has become known as the classic RVG sound. Analog has captured the music and the dynamics of the room perfectly, something that digital doesn't do because of how it's designed. Therefore, for those who care about the finer things in life, analog at its best is about capturing the sound of the room and the sound "within" the room.
Yes, it probably sounds anal to most of you, but when you do an A>B comparison, you'll hear it. Why half-ass on it when labels can do it properly? As far as I'm concerned, most labels are doing it wrong, and it's a shame because we're pretty much saying "throw your musical history in the trash like a Capitol Records employee circa 1978".
include things like what Monty had to say including his referance to Abercrombie--
-talk to a few other people,
and in a nutshell---submit this article to WaxPo and would be about 10 times better than most of the things I've read in there lately, continuing, but expanding in a different way the recording method article in a previous issue.
I like both versions on vinyl of Stark; of and the repress---they both appeal and sound interesting (on my "NOW" vinyl Cooley wasn't credited as having remastered it, and I was wondering, but he was mentioned on the unreleased material album)
and Monty---I checked out your site again lately (two thumbs up) and was wondering; Lee Stark (dark short hair boy in the 'bustin outta doors' video?) episode of hoady carcmichael's music shop was your son? cute having him on the show if that's true----and you engineered the Mandrill composite truth lp? damn
I was wondering - has there ever been a good sounding re-issue that was not taken from the masters? Like, can you re-issue something & make it sound good just by using a commercial lp/cassette?
Thanks
h
Most of the rare funk comps (and all of the boots) come from recordings of the 45s. Many of them sound pretty good ... Keb Darge's Legendary Deep Funk series sounds good, for example. But many sound horrible ... Keb did a comp with Goldmine Soul Supply (it has Leroy and the Drivers on it) where four of the tracks sound almost unlistenable. It comes down to the engineer. Dave Cooley always does a great job ... I'm sure most if not all of the tracks on Funky 16 Corners were from 45s.
From cassettes, not really, although it can be tweaked to make it passable. A number of indie labels, and even artists, have released their old works taken from vinyl transfers. If the original LP is a first pressing, and it's in minty condition or still sealed, then I'm sure a lot of people could not tell the difference. There are a number of high-priced turntables that are able to do it, without having to resort to spending $15,000 for the ELP Laser Turntable.
Mandrill recorded most of "Just Outside of Town" in NY, then came to LA where i recorded one tune and mixed the lp.
thanks
thanks
whoops, just outside of town was what I meant hah...word
It can be a digital input and an analog output, it depends how you're recording/saving the material. If it's on CD, then it's digital by default.
In other words, you can use ProTools to record, mix, and master tracks, and then run that directly to a 30ips reel. If it's vinyl, you can master directly from analog or directly from digital, it depends. Basically, a lot of variables.
so how does one succesfully get rid of the hiss with damaging the sound??
Mint 80s Japanese pressings/reissues I have recently copped sound unbelievable. I think it all depends on the source used. Scorpio BN pressings are not on same level as BN legit reissue pressings. And I know Fatback hates the DMM 80s/90s pressings, but I myself can't hear the difference on the few I have. But I can tell the difference between the 80s DMM 'Cool Struttin' and the Scorpio reish. Scorpio reish loses. The RVG CD reissues all sound great to me, though.
That's a boot not a re-issue. But og LP needs major eq tweaking when you play it out anyway. Lacks bottom, too much middle, and it's got severe panning. Other than that it's great.