HW: EMI Reissues

[Doug Pearson]

On Mon, 7 Apr 2003 18:44:39 +0100, Captain Bl at ck <starfield at SUPANET.COM>
wrote:
>What exactly does 'remastered' mean, anyway?

It can mean a lot of things - and it can mean next to nothing.  The one
thing I know for sure is that it's probably one of the most overused terms
in the CD industry at the moment!  However, I can tell you what *I*
consider it to be.

>If you make a digital
>recording from a vinyl copy, does that constitute 'remastering'?

Not a straight transfer, no.  But if the digital recording is then edited
to remove surface noise, re-eq'ed to obliterate any accidental vestige of
the RIAA curve in audible frequencies, expanded to allow for the wider
dynamic range possible with CD's (of course, most remastering jobs these
days do the opposite, but that's a whole *other* rant!), has the stereo
image re-created to allow for things not possible with vinyl (hard panning
of bass frequencies, for instance), etc., then it definitely qualifies
as "remastered".  I've heard some mastered-from-vinyl releases that sounded
like crap, and others that sound indistinguishable from a properly-mastered
digital recording (see below).

>To my mind, a 'remastered' recoding should be taken from the first
>generation stereo tapes; that is, the actual ones that were used when the
>stereo tracks were mixed down.

That's not always the best idea (although you're correct that it usually
is).  For an example, I'll again mention my friend Karl, who does an
excellent reissue label.  One of his first projects was an album for which
the original multitracks had been recorded using dbx noise reduction, but
were not decoded at mixdown, so the original master tapes and vinyl version
of the album sound awful (if you've ever played a dbx-encoded cassette on a
non-dbx deck, you know what I'm talking about).  Fortunately, he had access
to the original multitracks, so he was able to hire a skilled engineer (and
a dbx decoder) to remix the album (which was a very good thing in this
case - it turned out that the original mix was very "conservative", and
left out a lot of the cool sounds & fx that were on the multitracks, but
had never been heard by anyone except the band and the original recording
engineer).  However, the best (or at least the best-known) track on the
album had a number of special effects (ring-modulated vocals, etc.) which
had been added at the original mixdown, and were therefore not present on
the multitrack tape; the engineer attempted to re-create the effects, but
was unable to get the sounds close enough.  So they decided to remaster
that one track from vinyl (since it had been released as a single which
they didn't have the master stereo tape for, but at least proper dbx
decoding *had* been used).  They found the cleanest copy of the single in
the bandleader's collection, transferred it to digital, and did all the
good things that I described in the previous paragraph.  When I listen to
the CD, I can't tell the difference between the remixed tracks and the one
mastered-from-vinyl track.

>But I wonder in how many cases the tapes
>actually used for 'remastering' are just an earlier generation of a
>multiple copy used for pressing vinyl?

The Griffin version of 'Warrior' is said to have come from US Atco's safety
master, which would make it at least two generations removed from the
original UK master (UK master -> US "mother" -> US safety).  It sounds
better than the Dojo mastered-from-vinyl version, but I would hope that a
subsequent reissue *does* come from lower-generation masters.  But that's
just one factor affecting the sound quality.  An original master trasferred
to digital using crap A/D converters is going to sound worse than a later-
generation copy of the master transferred using state-of-the-art converters.

>I mean, do the EMI re-issues actually sound like they were taken from the
>original stereo masters?

They obviously haven't been remixed (unless someone did an *extremely*
accurate job of matching the originals).  But although my ears are pretty
good, there's no way I could tell whether they came from a first, second,
third (or subsequent) generation master.  Hiss & noise don't build up
nearly as quickly with wide-format (1/4"? 1/2") high-speed (probably 15 or
30 ips) tapes as they do with cassettes.

>Thoughtz?

Assuming that 'Warrior' & the Charisma albums are going to be reissued on
CD, and assuming that those CD's will be "remastered" (as opposed to the
Virgin issues, which sound to my ears like straight transfers from some
generation of master tape to digital through crappy 1980's-technology
converters), I hope that the mastering is done by someone with good ears,
who understands the strengths and weaknesses of Hawkwind's music
(especially as it relates to those five albums, which display a
*considerable* evolution of sound, and each have their own individual
strengths and weaknesses - to use a bunch of cliches, my ideal mastering
foci for each album would be: 'Warrior' - "powerful"; 'Astounding Sounds' -
 "lush"; 'Quark' - "warm"; 'Hawklords' - "clean"; 'PXR5' - hmmmm ... that
one's tough since there's no consistent overall sound to it because of the
different sources [studio vs. live vs. demo], the way there is for the
other four - making it sound consistent will be work enough for the
mastering engineer), and who *doesn't* make them sound like every other
rock release circa 2003 (the only thing worse than a "dated" recording is
a "dated" mastering job that doesn't fit the original recording!).

(I'd be very curious to hear if anyone particularly agreed or disagreed
with my rough characterization of those four albums.)

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com