Remaster decision

[Stephen Swann]

Le Monsieur Damon writes:
>
> On Tue, 30 Apr 1996, Stephen Swann wrote:
> > By the way, I was wrong when I said the hiss was *gone*.  On some of
> > the quieter passages in _In Search of Space_ (like the intro to _Master
> > of the Universe_, if you listen on a good pair of headphones, Mr. Hiss
> > is still there.  Or at least his empty cloak is still hanging there,
> > flapping ineffectually before the rising storm of MotU.  ;-)
>
> Of course, you do realize that there will always be just a bit of hiss
> regardless of the amount of hiss in the actual data on the CD.  It could
> all be from your stereo system or the headphones themselves.... unless
> you can somehow tell the difference. [If you can, tell me how! :) ]

Well, when I'm listing on a direct headphone connection from my CD
player, there's really no discernable hiss from the system until you
turn the volume up to "obscene" (my cd player is plugged into a
current smoothing circuit protector, and I have really good
headphones).  On DDD albums (where there is no tape hiss per se, the
only hiss inherent in the recording came from the equipment that the
recording was taken from), the hiss simply can't be detected until you
turn the volume up all the way, at which point it does become a
question of whether you're listening to the intrinsic hiss of the
recording or of your own system.

So therefore, at at any listening level below "maximum", any hiss that
I *do* hear is intrinsic to the recording.  Almost all recordings
except DDD have some.  Recordings from 1971, even ones that were
expertly engineered for the time, have LOTS, and a slap-dash recording
job like Doremi or In Search really has no business at all sounding as
good as it does.  :-)

Steve