Remasters vs. Originals? Remasters worth it?
 

So what are you guys thoughts on this? Do you generally stick with the original CDs (late 80s early 90s) or do you upgrade to the newer remasters? Do you think the originals sound better? Are bonus tracks enough to make you buy an album again?

Are remasters worth an extra $5 to you?

depends on the album... most of the time... I have not heard a remaster that lives up to its flawed original... other times, it is needed... such as say "...And Justice for All" which was not mastered very well to start with.

Bonus tracks are good though, i can not stand when somebody release a remaster of an album, but won't add incentive to buy it. Have to add something to it to give me a reason to buy an album twice.

The concept has a lot of potential. There's tons of 70s albums which are ingenious musically but feel a bit weak in the mixing.

Then again, modern mastering standards would just make them louder, and drown out the essential subtleties. But if the right adventurous hand was at it, then these could really have life breathed into them again.

Yeah, many albums have become casualties to the loudness war.

For real.
It's bad when you get ear fatigue 2 songs into an album in headphones because every single sound is compressed so hard that the drummer farts at exactly 0 decibels.
I like loud music, but I don't like flat, static, loud music.

A lot of 80's Thrash Metal has been given remasters and they quite frankly sound awful. Megadeth's So Far So Good So What and Anthrax's Among The Living are just 2 examples where the remastering sounds even worse than the original releases and I a m glad that I have the original mixes.

This does also hinder me if I don't have a particular album on CD for whatever reason and it's much more difficult trying to find the original releases. I usually have to search for small indie outlets in order to get the originals.

Heavier music recorded with limited resources in the first place does not warrant remastering at all IMO.

True. There's only so much that can be done to a song that was recorded on bad quality equipment. I can understand maybe slapping a multiband compressor/expander on a song and maybe a bit of EQ, but it's not going to do anything for the quality of the original sounds.

I think in this day and age if they do insist on remastering everything, they should do a 2 for 1 package. 2 discs, 1 the remastered version and 1 the original version as was when first released. My worry is that one day all the original releases will all be out of print, and all we will be left with are remasters that ruin may of the albums.

If I already have it in my collection, screw re-buying it just for a re-mastered version. But if I'm buying it for the first time, it all depends on the music. Stuff like Pink Floyd or The Doors is worth the extra money for the re-mastered version. Other older artist (Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, George Jones, etc) can only truly be enjoyed on vinal, with all of the pops and skips of the record player.

Well that is what's happening with many releases unfortunately. As Freebase pointed out, if the original tapes have multitracks that couldn't be processed onto the final mix due to budget or time constraints then I am all for remasters but if the original source material was limited then a remaster will only compound the sound and make it sound even worse.

Case in point: Black Sabbath's Paranoid album that was recorded on 4 track yet the Deluxe version has a 5.1 mix. How the frig does that work if you only have 4 tracks to work with in the first place?

Yeah. It is. I like things that stand how they are flaws and all, as I think that is what makes the albums good in many cases.

The only times I have liked some remasters is when the volume is really low. Like I remember the original version of Gob's "Too Late... No Friends" you could turn the volume all the way up and it was still not loud... They eventually corrected that was the re-release, and it was good. That is when i think it is alright. Some of those old releases suffer from not being volume leveled very well, so I can see just improving that aspect of it.

Yea, making releases louder doesn't harm anything if the extent of it is bringing up the volume as a whole and maybe putting a brickwall limiter on the master channel with no actual compression so that any errant peaks don't surpass 0db. But that's literally like turning up the volume on your speakers but without the peak limiting.
In some cases, that isn't enough, and compression is actually needed to bring the lowest parts up without having the highest parts go over the 0db threshold... and that's when you're sacrificing dynamics for volume.

If the original mix had elements that were simply mixed far too low in context with the rest of the mix, the decision has to be made whether those elements are critical enough that the dynamics between them and the loudest parts can be lessened without any ill effects. It's really a matter of circumstance.
With that said, some songs could benefit from it, while others simply can't, without making that dynamics sacrifice. I think that's where some remasters go wrong, in that, in a lot of cases, loudness is put before dynamics simply because of the way a lot of music is mixed now days. Those are usually the cases where remasters of this nature go wrong.

I've never bought a remastered album, and with the massive Floyd remasters set to come this year, I really have to make up my mind whether or not it is worth it.

stick to mp3s, if u wanna listen to em on stereo then just burn em to disc..

otherwise go vinyl..

Do you even know what a remaster is?

THIS is what you call a remaster...

The Fall : The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall: Omnibus Edition

Remixing in itself can be very benefitial. However, when dealing with the material off the album like some have already said they could mix it in a completley different way than expected. Turning up the volume louder and changing it to mono/stereo could have a lot of affect on the person listening to it. For the most part though remastering an album usually is a positive thing.

As said, this has nothing to do with a remaster.

However, MP3 is just alright, FLAC is the better format if you have the space for it, ripping and burning FLAC is much better.

well when u remaster a film it increases the quality of the image.

Cant be any different on audio since wiki says its basicly same thing..

if you want remaster quality then you get a remaster, but why bother getting discs when theres sites where u can buy remaster'd MP3s for 9c to 15c each?

I am not one to correct you, as I do not know the techincal aspects of it... so I am not going to rant about something where I will likely end up talking out of my ass on this one... If anybody can explain it it in a techincal way I will allow a much more knowledged person on the subject do so. But I think there is more to it than just "increasing the quality of image" or in this case sound.

the only remasters worth buying are the Hendrix ones - it has a crisp rawness missing from the muddy mixes of the originals

and the only newly remixed album I like is Iggy & The Stooges' Raw Power done by Iggy himself - it now sounds like a "punk" album and not a "glam rock" one, though I still do like the Bowie mix

Are you talking of the Hendrix remasters that were just released a year or two ago or the late 90s remasters?

Yeah, Iggy's 97 Raw Power kicks ass.

Yeah. The Bowie mix is alright. I remember at one point the original masters of "Raw Power" were stolen, and eventually found and retrieved by none other than Henry Rollins and a few others. Nardwuar asked him about it in the (hilarious) interview he did with Rollins which can be seen here:



Nardwaur is a love or hate guy though with people, excellent journalist, does his research and is very unique and knowledged... though his voice gets on peoples never sometimes... Personally I think Nardwuar is awesome, and his voice is part of the reason why, and his knowledge of so many scenes is always amazing. This one with Rollins is one of my favorites, Rollins getting pissed at him is hilarious.

One bit of trivia about this interview: Nardwuar originally asked Henry if he would be willing to do this interview in the local flag shop.... that none other than Ron "Chavo" Reyes, who was a vocalist for Black Flag before Henry worked at at the time. But, Henry declined doing the interview there though and it never happened.

The blues album is a ****ing masterpiece and thats basically a reimmagining ;)

ps, who the **** is that word spelled

the late 90s remasters, supervised by Eddie Kramer

depends on how old the album itself is really