What is re-mastering ? Why would you want to do it ? And how ? And even – should you ? Topics include:
- The ultimate goal of great remastering
- Why getting an ideal source isn’t always as simple as it sounds
- Restoration tools for mastering, and how to use them
- When remastering goes bad – the remastering backlash
- One of Ian’s most challenging remastering projects
Links
CDs – perfect sound forever ? Analogue versus digital
Mastering for vinyl (This may ruffle a few feathers !)
Thanks guys, for another podcast full of ideas and pointers. It makes me feel so sad when I see or hear that people are arguing over the rights and wrongs of recording/mixing/mastering. I seldom go on forums now for that very reason, there is always some muppet waiting to pounce.
In this day and age we have so many choices that the arguments are really nothing more than superfluous. If you like analogue then buy a vinyl or tape, if you like digital then buy that format, if you like the original version of something then don’t buy the re-master, and so on.
If you hate the idea of recording and mixing digitally, then find a studio that has old gear, or there’s the analogue and digital half way point, and finally all out digital, each has its pros and cons.
I heard a really obnoxious mixing engineer slamming mastering, which was so unprofessional. Worse still it was hypocritical because he has a mastering engineer working as part of the service he offers in his own studio!
Most things are subjective, whether it be the type of microphone you use in recording to the way mastering is done. Informed discussion helps us to grow – dogmatic bigotry does not.
I trust that my words have not offended, and ask only that people use common courtesy in heated debates – thank you.
Just one note – Apart from the Brian Wilson version of Smile and the bootleg versions that followed, “The Smile Sessions” included a similar reconstruction of the album, following the structure of the BW one but using all the multitracks, and so on, and mixed by Mark Linnett. If you haven’t give it a listen, cause it’s **wonderful**.
And also, I’ll take this chance to say “THANK YOU!!!” for doing this show, I can’t even start to calculate how much I’ve learned from you! Looking forward to the next one already!
Another good one with plenty of food for thought. I used to know someone who’d spent a small fortune on his very good hi-fi system, and used to boast about it. He also liked Steely Dan.
On a sideways topic: I have some 1/4″ audio cassettes containing the voice recording of a training from the mid 1990s that I’ve been thinking of digitising using a cable from a Walkman via my Scarlett 2i4 into my DAW. The tapes have been stored in a cassette box with drawers, in the back of a wardrobe in a bedroom that has had a damp problem together with black mould (aspergillus). Your podcast is the first place I’ve heard of baking tapes.
After a short bout of researching Wikipedia and Gearslutz, I’m now wondering whether my tapes are likely to need to be baked. Tape noise shouldn’t be much of a problem (or not as much as ambient room noise) and, it being recorded speech, I imagine that a bit of saturation should be enough to make the words more audible. So I’m more concerned about actually getting the signal from the tape. And none of what I’ve read so far discusses problems that might be caused by this type of mould. What would you do in my situation?
And back to the topic of your podcast, what do think of the Era-N single-knob denoising plugin? The video is impressive (or, at least, the audio part), but then it would be. It’s not going to put iZotope out of business, and I can’t see any mastering engineers using it, but seems that it might appeal to the home enthusiast, even at full price. (Usual disclaimer: I first saw this on the Studio One Expert site and am not even a customer.)
http://accusonus.com/products/era-n
Pretty impressed with Era-N in the quick test I did. It works well in combination with RX plugins. Will probably switch to that for my own dialog denoising.
I did a quick demo and will do mostly likely do a proper video for the reaper blog soon.
Looking forward to seeing that, thanks.