cliveb;601885 Wrote: > For sure nearly all remasters are more compressed than the original > releases, but that's not the only factor that affects sound quality. A > lot of early CD releases were cut from Nth generation copy tapes. > (Example: the original British CD release of "Going for the One" by Yes > was excrutiatingly bad. It was the only CD I ever returned simply > because the mastering job was so poor). Remasters are typically sourced > from better analogue tapes, so provided the amount of added compression > is modest, you can end up with a better overall sound. Regrettably all > too many remasters go overboard on the compression. > > Of course there's no reason why the better analogue tape can't be > transferred unmolested, but unfortunately it seems to be some kind of > dogma these days that compression must be applied. I reckon there is a > generation of so-called "mastering engineers" growing up who genuinely > think that squashing the life out of everything is the right way to do > it. I get the impression that a lot of them are jumped-up DJs.
Can I just remind everyone that even in the pre-CD days it was normal to run the master mix through a final stage of compression (usually at least 3dB of level reduction+corresponding make up gain) - and on the vinyl master (the one that had the RIAA EQ on it) a hard limiter too, to protect the cutting head. There's nothing wrong with compression per se. All the great records have LOADS of it. All the "rock" audiophile classics have it in spades. You can't make a great sounding "rock" record without the judicious use of compression at both track, sub-mix (e.g. "drums") and master mix level. If you've ever tried, you will know exactly what I mean. You can ruin a rock record with excessive limiting or hard-knee compression. Driving hard limiting into clipping is not good... The Beatles 88 mixes/masters are IMO compromised by inadequate ADC's AND embedded jitter. The 09 mixes/masters sound substantially better to me in every respect I can assess them by. Oh and the mono versions sound way better than the stereo ones :-) -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal... Touch(wired/XP) - TACT 2.2X (Linear PSU) + Good Vibrations S/W - MF Triplethreat(Audiocom full mods) - Linn 5103 - Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Pekin Tuner, Townsend Supertweeters, Blue Jeans Digital,Kimber Speaker & Chord Interconnect cables Kitchen Boom, Outdoors: SB Radio, Harmony One remote for everything. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=72852 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
