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Post by WATERLOO on Apr 15, 2017 19:27:18 GMT
But there are images of the master tapes in the book. I don't think they were lost. They probably just used what they could find. The "odd mixes" were done in 1998/99 before the master tapes were digitalized. So maybe they didn't find the original master tapes for SOS. Because in 1979 there were similar mixes done for the back up singers to get to know the harmonies. And according to the book the English version of SOS was still available back then.
SO who knows.
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Post by Alan on Apr 15, 2017 19:51:38 GMT
There are master tapes and mixdown tapes though. For the ones where the master tapes are lost, there would still be the mixdown tapes, surely? oops sorry, I made a mistake, I meant the multi-tracks not the mastertapes (if this is what you meant by "mixdown tapes"). And now that I think about this, I seem to remember in the case of Abba the album, what was lost were not the multitracks but the mastertapes. Rudolf Ondrich uses the term "mixdown tapes" on his website. Presumably multitracks is the same thing. www.abbajustlikethat.comyr.com/1_4_audiophile-corner.html |
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Post by Fafner on Apr 15, 2017 20:01:26 GMT
oops sorry, I made a mistake, I meant the multi-tracks not the mastertapes (if this is what you meant by "mixdown tapes"). And now that I think about this, I seem to remember in the case of Abba the album, what was lost were not the multitracks but the mastertapes. Rudolf Ondrich uses the term "mixdown tapes" on his website. Presumably multitracks is the same thing. www.abbajustlikethat.comyr.com/1_4_audiophile-corner.htmlIn the article he seems to use the term to refer to the master tapes actually (and "mixdown" would mean the tape on which you mix the final song from the multitrack). |
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Post by Fafner on Apr 15, 2017 20:04:44 GMT
But there are images of the master tapes in the book. I don't think they were lost. They probably just used what they could find. The "odd mixes" were done in 1998/99 before the master tapes were digitalized. So maybe they didn't find the original master tapes for SOS. Because in 1979 there were similar mixes done for the back up singers to get to know the harmonies. And according to the book the English version of SOS was still available back then. SO who knows. First, you can't really tell by a picture whether something is the first generation master tape or copies made for vinyl production. And secondly, you can't make a remix from a mastertape, because it contains only two stereo channels, but only the multitrack tape. |
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Post by Alan on Apr 15, 2017 20:07:37 GMT
Plus he also uses "LP cutting tapes" - are these something else?
"[Tretow] appeared to use the original stereo mixdown tapes for the source (Which are the best source for the ABBA tracks as they are lower generation from the LP Cutting Tapes)."
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Post by Fafner on Apr 15, 2017 20:47:08 GMT
Plus he also uses "LP cutting tapes" - are these something else? "[Tretow] appeared to use the original stereo mixdown tapes for the source (Which are the best source for the ABBA tracks as they are lower generation from the LP Cutting Tapes)." From my understanding, those are copies made from the mastertape to cut lp's, and they are considered inferior because copying an analogue medium invariably adds things like noise, thus degrading the sound (and since both of them are properly called "masters" he gives them the different names). (and as sidenote, when you buy a "remastered" cd it doesn't necessarily mean that the cd was mastered using the lowest generation master tapes, sometimes they use copies of copies, like in the case of some Abba albums. So the whole concept of a "master" is a bit confusing, since it simply means the source that you use to mass produce an album, whether the medium is digital or analogue, but it doesn't by itself guarantee that the best sounding source have been used in the process). |
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Post by WATERLOO on Apr 16, 2017 10:29:41 GMT
First, you can't really tell by a picture whether something is the first generation master tape or copies made for vinyl production. And secondly, you can't make a remix from a mastertape, because it contains only two stereo channels, but only the multitrack tape. Ah okay, then I meant multitrack tapes when I said master tapes. |
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Post by wombat on Apr 17, 2017 12:44:57 GMT
theres always a lot of confusion with the terminology here.
Multi-track or "mother" tapes are pre-mix. These are the 24, 36 or 48-track tapes that have the original recordings of all the performances, each track with one instrument or vocal on it (usually). In the case of the Beatles, they had to work differently because they had only 8 tracks.
The songs are then mixed down, to a 2 track stereo tape, to the artists' satisfaction. This tape can be called all kinds of things too, master, mix, I've heard it called different things. This mixed down 2 track tape is, or was, then sent to a Mastering facility where additional work was applied. Overall EQ settings, lots of overall compression, the running order of tracks finalized, volumes of tracks raised or lowered, all kinds of things. This tape is usually called the master.
The master is then cloned many times for various uses. Some go to album or tape manufacturers, where the masters are then cloned again for the factory's own specific purposes and further alterations of the audio may be performed. Sometimes the master is cloned for a mono mix for television (especially in the 60s or early 70s). All kinds of different masters exist for popular albums where the music had to be prepared for different playback scenarios.
Thus you run into the problem of "remastered". With so many different masters floating around, many of them altered from the original master, you dont know what you're getting. Even if the CD says "remastered from the ORIGINAL master tape", the remastering itself will affect the sound.
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Post by wombat on Apr 17, 2017 14:48:07 GMT
I forgot to add... in the case of the original mix down.. I've been on projects where each song was mixed down to its own 2track tape. The client then wound up with 14 individual tapes he took to the mastering house. Then the mastering people cloned each of his tapes, onto their own tape and worked on that. Thats a very unusual example however. Most studios will kindly assemble all the 2track mixdowns onto a single tape, sometimes analog, sometimes DAT (digital audio tape) to go to the mastering house.
In the case of Abba, we dont know how they worked. The most likely scenario, each song was mixed down by Benny Bjorn and Tretow working together, to its own 2track tape. Then when they had them all finished, Tretow more than likely cloned each of those tapes, onto a single tape, which was sent to the Mastering house.
All this is somewhat important because as Fafner said, when you clone an analog tape, you get a tiny bit of inherent noise added.
Mastering houses still exist... a lot of studios still use analog tape at the end, altho the software and consoles are often digital. That tape then goes to a mastering house. The last one I used was Rodney Mills, fans of Lynyrd Skynyrd should know who he is. Its in his big house, you go downstairs and there are gold records all over his walls, Skynyrd, Springsteen, all kinds of people.... all the albums he worked on over the years.
It was Mills who gave me a lot of the info I stated above.
These days its all different. People do everything in their home studios, including mastering, and there are hundreds of youtube tutorials on how to master your own recordings. Then you send a CD to the disc manufacturing facility and all they do is clone it, duplicate it thousands of times.
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Post by Fafner on Apr 17, 2017 15:06:13 GMT
These days its all different. People do everything in their home studios, including mastering, and there are hundreds of youtube tutorials on how to master your own recordings. Then you send a CD to the disc manufacturing facility and all they do is clone it, duplicate it thousands of times. Unless they want to produce it on vinyl, which seems to happen quite often nowadays - though I suppose that most modern LP's are printed using digital masters, even when they reissue older analogue recordings (which defeats the whole point of a vinyl record, but that's another matter). You don't need to actually have your album on an analogue tape in older to print an LP with modern equipment, correct? Surely you can feed the digital signal directly into the cutting machine, without having it on tape. |
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Post by wombat on Apr 17, 2017 15:23:34 GMT
These days its all different. People do everything in their home studios, including mastering, and there are hundreds of youtube tutorials on how to master your own recordings. Then you send a CD to the disc manufacturing facility and all they do is clone it, duplicate it thousands of times. Unless they want to produce it on vinyl, which seems to happen quite often nowadays - though I suppose that most modern LP's are printed using digital masters, even when they reissue older analogue recordings (which defeats the whole point of a vinyl record, but that's another matter). You don't need to actually have your album on an analogue tape in older to print an LP with modern equipment, correct? Surely you can feed the digital signal directly into the cutting machine, without having it on tape. I'm guessing here because I havent made an album in fifteen years (wow has it really been that long!) and so a lot has changed since then. Back then, it was ludicrous to even suggest putting your next album available on vinyl, there was no call for it really.,... thats how far its come in only the last several years. so much stuff is now being done by people at home, it would only make sense for a vinyl manufacturer, to have a very good digital to analog converter for the very purpose of taking a digital master from somebodys CD and putting it on vinyl. Again, just a guess. When you get a remastered edition on vinyl, you are probably getting such a thing... a vinyl edition cut from a digital remaster, converted BACK to analog. Thats a weird process.... analog master - converted to digital remaster - then converted again to analog master for vinyl cutting. Back in the old days you used to have a record lathe cutter. I'm a bit sketchy on these details because it was before my time, really. I've seen lathe cut vinyl on various mediums - some of these things were the actual "master" cut vinyl that was used as a clone source. Some of these things were actually lathed by hand. I've seen hand-lathe cut vinyl for "demo masters" of various recordings by the band REM. You can even buy lathe machines now for your own purposes, I've seen them for sale on Ebay... if you want to hand cut your own vinyl albums at home. I suppose its possible that if you got a super-luxury-expensive vinyl remaster of an album, its possible the manufacturers found an old lathe cut master vinyl to use. Doubtful but I suppose it could happen. Lathe cutting is interesting, read about it on Wiki if you want. |
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Post by Fafner on Apr 17, 2017 15:46:18 GMT
Unless they want to produce it on vinyl, which seems to happen quite often nowadays - though I suppose that most modern LP's are printed using digital masters, even when they reissue older analogue recordings (which defeats the whole point of a vinyl record, but that's another matter). You don't need to actually have your album on an analogue tape in older to print an LP with modern equipment, correct? Surely you can feed the digital signal directly into the cutting machine, without having it on tape. When you get a remastered edition on vinyl, you are probably getting such a thing... a vinyl edition cut from a digital remaster, converted BACK to analog. Thats a weird process.... analog master - converted to digital remaster - then converted again to analog master for vinyl cutting. Back in the days of early digital recordings, before CD's were a thing, I guess they did something similar when mastering digital recordings for LP's. The difference is that it made sense to do it before CD players became widely available, whereas nowadays, you are just getting an identical sound to the CD, but with noise and distortion added. I really don't understand most people. (once I read some audiophile claiming that when you print something onto an lp it automatically upgrades the sound, even if it's from a digital source, just because it's an analogue medium. I think it makes little sense since you can't create information ex-nihilo just by converting from one medium to another). And yeah, some vinyl albums are mastered in pure analogue directly from the master tapes - I remember that the Beatles mono mixes were reissued this way recently, and also some classical music recordings, but I suppose it's the exception and not the rule. (and I bet that all the recent Abba vinyl reissues have been produced from digital masters). |
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Post by Fafner on Apr 17, 2017 15:48:50 GMT
so much stuff is now being done by people at home, it would only make sense for a vinyl manufacturer, to have a very good digital to analog converter for the very purpose of taking a digital master from somebodys CD and putting it on vinyl. Again, just a guess. Right, I forgot that you HAVE to convert the signal to analogue in any case, whether you are using a tape or a hard disc, just like with audio playback (i.e. DAC). |
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Post by Fafner on Apr 17, 2017 15:52:51 GMT
And yeah, some vinyl albums are mastered in pure analogue directly from the master tapes - I remember that the Beatles mono mixes were reissued this way recently, and also some classical music recordings, but I suppose it's the exception and not the rule. (and I bet that all the recent Abba vinyl reissues have been produced from digital masters). Here's am example |
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Post by wombat on Apr 17, 2017 15:57:40 GMT
Back in the days of early digital recordings, before CD's were a thing, I guess they did something similar when mastering digital recordings for LP's. The difference is that it made sense to do it before CD players became widely available, whereas nowadays, you are just getting an identical sound to the CD, but with noise and distortion added. I really don't understand most people. (once I read some audiophile claiming that when you print something onto an lp it automatically upgrades the sound, even if it's from a digital source, just because it's an analogue medium. I think it makes little sense since you can't create information ex-nihilo just by converting from one medium to another). And yeah, some vinyl albums are mastered in pure analogue directly from the master tapes - I remember that the Beatles mono mixes were reissued this way recently, and also some classical music recordings, but I suppose it's the exception and not the rule. (and I bet that all the recent Abba vinyl reissues have been produced from digital masters). It is true that analog has a certain characteristic that CDs or digi does not... its hard to put into words, but warmth or softness are often used. Therefore even a vinyl album cut from a digi master source, will sound differently than a CD cut from the same digi master source. Better? Hard to say. As you see on the Hoffman forum, these poor analog audiophile sods are chasing fairy dust and listening for things that they probably cant really hear. I feel sorry for them sometimes. Then again, maybe they can hear it and I cant because I cooked my ears a long time ago. Heh. A distinction to WHERE and WHAT SOURCE the masters were used, would be good info to have when purchasing a remastered CD. I havent seen that very often. Even when they say "from the original master TAPES" as I said above, those can be from any number of cloned and cloned and re-cloned masters. "Original" here is a curious word. |
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Post by Fafner on Apr 17, 2017 16:09:18 GMT
A distinction to WHERE and WHAT SOURCE the masters were used, would be good info to have when purchasing a remastered CD. I havent seen that very often. Even when they say "from the original master TAPES" as I said above, those can be from any number of cloned and cloned and re-cloned masters. "Original" here is a curious word. That's true, especially with classical music, most companies rarely provide any details about the remastering process and the sources. But still, I would guess that if they write "from the original master tapes" then surely they don't mean some copies of copies that were compressed and re-equalized for vinyl, or something of that sort. But who knows... But there are exceptions, some labels (again classical) pride themselves to have remasters made by remixing the original multitracks (e.g., Mercury living presence, RCA living stereo, Pentatone). |
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Post by chron on Apr 17, 2017 16:51:41 GMT
As you see on the Hoffman forum, these poor analog audiophile sods are chasing fairy dust and listening for things that they probably cant really hear. I feel sorry for them sometimes. Without wanting to derail the thread, that Hoffman forum is a bloody minefield, isn't it! I went there looking for some feedback on the recently released Vangelis Delectus boxed set, and walked into a storm about honouring the sound of old releases and the ethics of an artist adding fresh tonal colourings to their original recordings during the remastering process. A number there appear to have balked at buying the set because it's perceived that Vangelis has arsed around with the sound to an unacceptable degree (on the basis of the favourable descriptions gleaned elsewhere of the treatments given to the Opera Sauvage, China and Soil Festivities albums, I ended up pulling the trigger). |
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Post by wombat on Apr 17, 2017 16:54:31 GMT
That's true, especially with classical music, most companies rarely provide any details about the remastering process and the sources. But still, I would guess that if they write "from the original master tapes" then surely they don't mean some copies of copies that were compressed and re-equalized for vinyl, or something of that sort. But who knows... But there are exceptions, some labels (again classical) pride themselves to have remasters made by remixing the original multitracks (e.g., Mercury living presence, RCA living stereo, Pentatone). it was a long standing tradition that classical music received better production and manufacturing that pop or rock, so this wouldnt surprise me. There was a story from a long time ago and I dont doubt it. Led Zeps legendary manager visited the record manufacturing factory that Atlantic was using to manufacture the Led Zep albums. Whether or not they were all manufactured from one facility isnt known, but, the story was Grant saw these vats of chemicals where the vinyl was somehow processed. I'm not sure what process was being done, but, he noted that there was one dirty and disgusting vat and another one, much cleaner. He asked, what gets done in the dirty ones and they said, all the rock and r&b vinyl goes in there, and all the classical gets the clean one. Grant then demanded all the Led Zep stuff get the clean vat. Who knows. The Led Zep stuff did often sound pretty good back then. Point is, at least at that factory, rock and pop were considered lesser than classical, or that the audience of rock and pop didnt notice or demand a higher standard of sonic quality. Wouldnt surpise me to learn that this sort of thing went on at all levels of the production industry. Back then anyway. Fast forward 40-50 years and now the rock pop audience, or at least a certain segment of it, is more demanding. Hence the scramble by the record companies to find the best source possible of the old tracks and then remaster it... because its a new way to flog an old dead horse. |
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Post by Fafner on Apr 17, 2017 17:29:12 GMT
That's true, especially with classical music, most companies rarely provide any details about the remastering process and the sources. But still, I would guess that if they write "from the original master tapes" then surely they don't mean some copies of copies that were compressed and re-equalized for vinyl, or something of that sort. But who knows... But there are exceptions, some labels (again classical) pride themselves to have remasters made by remixing the original multitracks (e.g., Mercury living presence, RCA living stereo, Pentatone). it was a long standing tradition that classical music received better production and manufacturing that pop or rock, so this wouldnt surprise me. There was a story from a long time ago and I dont doubt it. Led Zeps legendary manager visited the record manufacturing factory that Atlantic was using to manufacture the Led Zep albums. Whether or not they were all manufactured from one facility isnt known, but, the story was Grant saw these vats of chemicals where the vinyl was somehow processed. I'm not sure what process was being done, but, he noted that there was one dirty and disgusting vat and another one, much cleaner. He asked, what gets done in the dirty ones and they said, all the rock and r&b vinyl goes in there, and all the classical gets the clean one. Grant then demanded all the Led Zep stuff get the clean vat. Who knows. The Led Zep stuff did often sound pretty good back then. Point is, at least at that factory, rock and pop were considered lesser than classical, or that the audience of rock and pop didnt notice or demand a higher standard of sonic quality. Wouldnt surpise me to learn that this sort of thing went on at all levels of the production industry. Back then anyway. Fast forward 40-50 years and now the rock pop audience, or at least a certain segment of it, is more demanding. Hence the scramble by the record companies to find the best source possible of the old tracks and then remaster it... because its a new way to flog an old dead horse. That's very interesting, the part about classical/vs pop vinyl production. But I also read that even classical lp's in America were considered of poor quality relative to Europe, especially Germany. And I think that you are right that probably much more rock/pop fans care about sound quality compared to listeners of classical. With the major labels at least, what you usually get when an album is remastered is some meaningless sticker saying "remastered with 20 or 24 bit processing", while the CD usually sounds identical with older remasters, or sometimes even worse, and people still buy it, and not many complain. |
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Post by wombat on Apr 17, 2017 17:37:57 GMT
You're over on the Hoffman classical forum all the time. Question, do those guys complain about the remastering as much as the rock/pop fans do?
I remember when I was a kid, my Dad proudly had this LP of Tchaikovskys 1812 overture, recorded on film, not audiotape... because it was wider and would allow more space between tracks, or some crazy thing. Then it had real cannons in it! They were freaking loud as hell too. He'd crank that sucker up sometimes.
This sort of thing was unheard of in the pop world at the time. Pop records were vomited out in the quickest and cheapest way imaginable. Think about it.. back then, consumers of pop and rock were often listening on transistor radios. Even by the time of Abbas heyday, rock listeners were only beginning to consider the quality of what they were buying. Most consumers were probably oblivious to the entire process. My sister had a phonograph where she could stack multiple LPs and one would play and then drop right on top of the next one and spin and get played... never mind the grinding going on underneath.
HAHA take THAT hoffman freaks!! :-)
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Post by wombat on Apr 17, 2017 17:39:28 GMT
anyway, sorry for derailing the thread.
Back your regularly scheduled discussion of unreleased Abba everything.
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Post by Fafner on Apr 17, 2017 18:07:04 GMT
You're over on the Hoffman classical forum all the time. Question, do those guys complain about the remastering as much as the rock/pop fans do? I haven't visited the forum for a long time, but I from what I remember, I didn't notice much complaining about the sound - a few people cared, especially the vinyl collectors, but the rest were happy with what they had. They were more interested in quantity rather than quality (that is, sound quality). But it's not like there are THAT many casual rock/pop fans wither who care so much about stuff like remasters etc., it's just that there are MUCH more people who are interested in non-classical music rather than classical, so you would expect that in any given audiophile community you will have more people caring about rock remasters rather than classical, and the labels know that the classical market is very small, so they simply don't bother as they do with rock. I remember when I was a kid, my Dad proudly had this LP of Tchaikovskys 1812 overture, recorded on film, not audiotape... because it was wider and would allow more space between tracks, or some crazy thing. Then it had real cannons in it! They were freaking loud as hell too. He'd crank that sucker up sometimes. lol I bet it was this recording - images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71J34K3CbUL._SL1079_.jpgCan't stand those cannons... This sort of thing was unheard of in the pop world at the time. Pop records were vomited out in the quickest and cheapest way imaginable. Think about it.. back then, consumers of pop and rock were often listening on transistor radios. Even by the time of Abbas heyday, rock listeners were only beginning to consider the quality of what they were buying. Most consumers were probably oblivious to the entire process. My sister had a phonograph where she could stack multiple LPs and one would play and then drop right on top of the next one and spin and get played... never mind the grinding going on underneath. My initial thought was that it was a result of some kind of musical snobbery, but from what you describe it seems that it was just the way the market was back then, there simply wasn't much demands outside classical music for high fidelity stuff. |
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Post by wombat on Apr 17, 2017 19:13:02 GMT
There wasnt any real demand for bootleg stuff either. Thats why the underground circuit came into being, to (quietly) provide underground mostly in concert recordings, sometimes illegally recorded or stolen soundboards etc... but not that many fans knew about it or seemed to care, in the 70s.
Everything has changed since these artists stopped recording. I mean, in 1982, nobody gived a fig about Abbas vault stuff or even if there was any. The CD had come out but most of Abbas stuff was on vinyl and consumers didnt really question the quality of it.
Now its all different, and everybody wants everything all the time. Give collectors a small sampling of something hidden away in an artists vault and they arent satisfied with a second rate version on a bootleg. They want the whole thing, the final mixed version, in superior quality, and sometimes they seem upset if the artist holds out and refuses to release it.
Whether he knows it or not, Magnus is simply fueling this fire. I wonder if he knows he is, and hopes he is somehow pressuring B&B to release it? I have no idea.
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Post by Alan on Apr 17, 2017 21:08:42 GMT
Whether he knows it or not, Magnus is simply fueling this fire. I wonder if he knows he is, and hopes he is somehow pressuring B&B to release it? I have no idea. I've wondered that as well. I can only assume he must know, and that maybe he thinks he can play a part in helping to get it released. If he isn't making that much profit from it (and his supporters claim that) then I can only hope he is doing it for the right reasons. I have my doubts though. I used to think he was genuine but he seems a bit too close to certain parts of the fan community now (and parts I'm none too keen on). It's good to read about the spoilers on here, and I thank those on here that have got the book and provided them, but I've still no interest in getting the book myself. |
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Post by gary on Apr 17, 2017 21:58:32 GMT
^
What do you mean? (I've always thought of CMP as a good guy!)
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Post by Alan on Apr 18, 2017 4:51:44 GMT
^^ Not saying he isn't and there's no evidence but the jury's out as far as I'm concerned. As I say, he's too in with a certain fan group now. I even notice the book is now only available through their website... www.abbatalk.com/tcrs/ |
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Post by Michal on Apr 18, 2017 15:57:17 GMT
It may be so... let us not forget that we wouldn't have things like Put On Your White Sombrero or Dream World if it wasn't for the first edition of the book. The problem is that back in 1993 Björn and Benny were with him in the studio and sort of rediscovered some of the unreleased tracks and found out there actually was some material worth releasing. It won't be the case this time. Still I think it's good that the vaults will be thoroughly mapped because otherwise there's absolutely no hope of releasing anything of it. This way it is at least possible to make suggestions :-) However what Palm's true motivation is we can only guess. After all, he is an ABBA fan too and he would be a fool to miss the opportunity to listen to all the unreleased stuff, wouldn't he?
By the way, what's wrong with ABBATalk? I haven't heard about them before but I noticed some negative remarks here.
...and that maybe he thinks he can play a part in helping to get it released... |
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Post by Michal on Apr 18, 2017 16:19:36 GMT
It is true that analog has a certain characteristic that CDs or digi does not... its hard to put into words, but warmth or softness are often used. Therefore even a vinyl album cut from a digi master source, will sound differently than a CD cut from the same digi master source. Better? Hard to say. I always believed it's due to a low capacity of a CD? That some parts of the sound are simply missing... And the use of digital media with bigger capacity (DVD or BD) should solve the problem. I thought the digital recording and mastering itself is beneficial because there's no hiss, distortion and the copying is lossless. Even ABBA used digital recorders at the end of their career. Also I've read somewhere that the first CDs sounded bad because they used the masters meant for cutting LPs and the sound characteristics of LP and CD are different - hence all the remastering. What I don't understand is why they remaster the sound for re-releases on vinyl - it should be perfect? |
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Post by wombat on Apr 18, 2017 16:53:10 GMT
I always believed it's due to a low capacity of a CD? That some parts of the sound are simply missing... And the use of digital media with bigger capacity (DVD or BD) should solve the problem. I thought the digital recording and mastering itself is beneficial because there's no hiss, distortion and the copying is lossless. Even ABBA used digital recorders at the end of their career. Also I've read somewhere that the first CDs sounded bad because they used the masters meant for cutting LPs and the sound characteristics of LP and CD are different - hence all the remastering. What I don't understand is why they remaster the sound for re-releases on vinyl - it should be perfect? its often boiled down to the digital conversion process from analog. Analog isnt about numbers, its about vibrations (mostly). Digital is about converting vibrations into numbers, and some of these analog things dont convert well. Reverbs in particular can be difficult. A lot of higher end studios dont use digital recording anymore, to a point. The console and outboard gear are all software/digital, but often, the sound is put onto analog tape, or at least DAT (digital analog tape, which is a sort of hybrid... that I dont really understand LOL). Neil Young once stated that recording and mixing in all digital was like taking a shower with ice cubes. And Abba ran into the same issue with the Visitors... eventually after recording in all digital, they didnt like the sound and had Tretow convert a bunch of it back into analog. At least I think thats what happened. Some of the early CDs were a matter of somebody slapping a vinyl album onto a player and then they'd needle drop it and run it thru whatever analog-digital converter they had. Results were often terrible. I'm guessing, but I assume that when you buy vinyl that has been "remastered"... its because of either one of two things - they could not find an acceptable analog master to work from, only a digital one, so they had to remaster it - or, the process they use to lathe vinyl today is so different from when the analog master was created, they had to work on it some to get it to where it would suit their process. Just guessing. I've never worked on anything that was printed to vinyl. I might be all wrong about all of that. These sorts of questions would be better answered on another forum called Hoffman - forums.stevehoffman.tv/ - mentioned previously on this thread those guys know a lot more stuff about mastering than I do. The owner of that forum is a famous professional mastering guy himself. |
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Post by Alan on Apr 18, 2017 18:00:40 GMT
^^ Steve Hoffman is the guy that ABBA audiophile Rudolf Ondrich rates highly. Rudolf is confident that ABBA remastering by Hoffman would be much better than any previous attempts.
Kate Bush recorded her 1993 album The Red Shoes digitally, and wasn't happy with the results. She had the album remastered in 2011 by converting it back to analog (there was a way it was done, not sure how). I think all of her subsequent albums have been recorded with DAT and she also mentioned using Pro-Tools.
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