Sometimes artists release remasteres copies of their records. How can you remaster? Is it played and recorded again? Is it just digital work on the channels of the original record?
Sometimes artists release remasteres copies of their records. How can you remaster? Is it played and recorded again? Is it just digital work on the channels of the original record?
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> Is it just digital work on the channels of the original record?
Yup. Or analog, but obviously these days almost always digital.
When a track is mastered to a final version, they don’t throw away the stems/channels. They’re kept for future use, like remastering.
Remastering specifically involves taking those tracks and adjusting/applying things like EQ, compression, channel balance, volume, and other big-stroke changes.
You would find the master recording of the music. Then digitizing the analogue recording and then using a computer to clean up this recording.
You can remove unwanted noise (hiss etc) or just re-mix it for todays quality speakers and headphones
All of the above. Remastering involves reusing the original recording and recording new tracks for it.
Remastering happens for several reasons. Sometimes the artist’s original contract was bad. If they re-record enough of the original song, they can re-release it as a remaster and earn more money.
Other times the artist learns how they could’ve done a better job. They may have grown as a musician or new technology may require different mastering techniques. For example, albums released for vinyl, CD, and streaming all need to be mastered differently. So if an album was originally only recorded for vinyl, the artist may choose to remaster it for for streaming.
When you make a record you end up with a mix. That mix is then sent to a mastering engineer who will do a number of things including compression, eq, limiting etc to make it sound nicer and more polished. Like a coat of varnish on a nice piece of wood.
Back in the day this was really so the needle wouldn’t be jumping out of the grooves. They remaster using the original mix to make it sound more up to date and louder due to modern listening habits. And to make bank of course.
А recording is produced by summing together the sounds of all instruments, most commonly into a stereo track, one for each composition. These mixdowns are then archived.
During the mastering process these tracks are taken and further tweaked to form a whole album without jarring differences between songs. Subtle equalization is applied, say to raise of reduce the bass, a certain loudness level is chosen, and the endings are faded or overlapped. Limitations of the target medium are taken into account. For example, the size of the expected speakers or the inability for a vinyl record to reproduce bass in only one channel.
Many subjective decisions are made that another person might make differently. So during remastering, someone else goes back to the archived mixdown and does it again. Today, the loudness level usually gets raised.
They usually do not take the sounds of individual instruments and fit them together. If they do, it is called a “remix”. If the band records a new performance then it is a whole or partial “re-recording”. This can be done if the copyright of the original recording is held by someone with whom the artist has a conflict. A remix can be done if the original was perceived to be flawed or there is a need to have more channels (stereo from mono, or surround in place of stereo).
When you finishing a song you have a bunch of tracks. Vocal tracks, drums, guitar, etc.
Then you mix down into a final mix and set the levels of the tracks.
After this mixdown, you master which is the final tweaking of eq settings, compression to keep the volume mostly even, etc. Remastering is taking the mix down and do the final bits again. This works as technology gets better, they can do a better remaster of the final mixdown.
So far everyone is wrong! Remastering doesn’t involve re-recording or remixing the original stems (individual instrument tracks). What it does involve is taking the original mix, basically a stereo recording of the mix from the studio, and applying fresh eq to it to either enhance certain frequencies or subdue others until the music sounds either better or worse than the original according to your opinion!
It can be very useful to add some clarity to a previously muddy master and sometimes to lift or lower certain instruments according to their position in the frequency range.
If you’re talking “record” as in actual vinyl, it can be a number of “combinations” along the way that lead to the “remastered” outcome.
AAA = analog at all three major steps: 1) recording, 2) mastering and 3) cutting the lacquer.
Here’s a broader definition:
So “remastering” is going through this process again. How “good” a remaster is, will be based on the quality of equipment, the approach (AAA? or compromise and do digital at some point along the way to save time/money?) and the expertise of the engineers involved. In the deeper recesses of the vinyl hobby, record master engineers are as popular and famed for their quality as for instance Quentin Tarantino is for being a director of movies. There are “rockstars” for mastering the actual tracks, other “rockstars” for cutting the vinyl via the lathe (they even etch their initials into it so they “sign” the records they do), etc.
A properly remastered AAA vinyl from high quality original source analog 2 inch tapes at a quality studio (Abbey Road comes to mind) by a group of these “rockstars” and then reproduced on 180g vinyl by a record maker that knows what they are doing (MoFi comes to mind) can sound ridiculously good – vastly better than bargain bin thin vinyl represses mastered from a CD that were popular in 90s and 2000s.
It’s a deep, deep rabbit hole. These breadcrumbs can point you in the direction if you want to dig in more 🙂
And if your question was more broadly “remastering albums” to include CDs, there’s a whole process for CD remastering that has a broad spectrum of quality; look up “loudness wars” to get a peek into the dark days of when even CD music “went bad” to a great degree. Vinyl also suffered from this. And the war still goes on, but it is getting better if you know what to shop for!
Neat resource: Album list – Dynamic Range DB
The turn the dial marked “compression” all the way to 11.
Remastering is essentially taking the raw recordings and re-producing the track using modern production techniques.
For example, a remastered track might benefit from background noise reduction, equalization (where different frequencies are balanced to create a cleaner sound), and clarity/detail enhancement.
This can be a really major difference for some songs, and barely noticeable for others.