Why on earth would an album that was originally released ON CD in the early 90's need a remaster?

Blue Lines? I don't know...maybe because I have to turn the volume up to 30 in my car just to hear it over the traffic.

How much could really be done for the pre-Warners Husker Dus?

Similarly, I haven't heard the Rhino 'Ramones' reissue (already have the All The Stuffs) but wonder how that came out considering it was a 6 grand recording.

The Ramones reissues are great. Both in quality and quantity.

and probably a bunch of old hip hop albums.

I have a Rhino 2-disc set that I assume re-masters the first album, adds 10 or so b-sides and demos and includes a second disc of live recordings. Looking at it now, I'm not so sure that they re-mastered the first albums tracks as there doesn't seem to be any details about the mastering. I don't have the original CD to compare, only the original vinyl.

Actually, there's a very good reason. The sampling rate for CDs has improved dramatically in the last few years. If you listen to the Stone Roses CD singles (before Second Coming) and compare them to the remastered versions on the recent Best compilations there is a big difference both in volume (which is actually a problem with many remasters in that they compress the shit out of stuff and lose dynamics) and fidelity.

This actually goes right back to the digital v. analog argument. An analog soundwave is smooth and curved. When you transfer that to digital, the soundwave literally becomes stepped. The difference between stuff digitally mastered in the 90s and that remastered in the last five or so years is that the steps have become smaller and closer together, so it essentially gets closer to the smooth, curved original analog soundwave.

Seriously, the best example of this is the Stones ABKO releases. I played the original vinyl version of Beggar's Banquet next to the 80s CD release next to the SACD remaster from a couple years ago. The sound quality is vasty improved in the new release compared to the 80s CD and much closer to the original master.

I have a 2001 "remaster" of Sly & The Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On that still doesn't sound very good. I think that one might be another case of fucked up source material especially given surrounding circumstances, but someone has to be able to clean it up a little. The two previous albums sound a lot better to me.

Oh sure, there's still plenty of room for cheap remasters or for human error/lapse of judgement (see my statement on compression), but technically speaking, digital mastering has come a long way.

Well, they say you should learn something every day. Pressure's off 'til tomorrow.

Thanks!!

Um... nope. Whaa? I bought a cd copy of it in about 2004 and it wasn't remastered. ????

Yeah, what Smiths material has been remastered? Maybe individual songs on a Best of comp, but as far as I know none of their albums have been remastered. Please, tell me I'm wrong!

Yeah, you can't improve much on source material, but why not remove an additional layer of shit from a bad digital remastering?

And there are some fidelity improvements available through the use of filters that can improve poorly recorded source material. The Beatles Anthology disks are a good example. Some of that very early stuff was recorded on shitty home two-track tape recorders. And while it's still not hi-fi, the mastering certainly isolated and cancelled some of the more annoying frequencies, which makes for a better sounding recording.

I wasn't actually addressing your point. Just listing another example of an album I want to hear done right, but like Village Green, I'm starting to wonder if that's even possible.

You're the first person I've seen use the curves vs. stair steps analogy since a friend explained it to me years ago. Very few people seem to get this, but it seems pretty obvious. Digital technology has improved drastically over the past 15 years, so of course things like the compression and transfer quality of CDs made in 1991 could often be greatly improved upon.

Gotcha. And I agree with Village Green. I bought the 180 gram audiophile release last year and it still sounds like shit. That one may be lost to bad engineering.

Yes!

I have four different version of this on CD (although admittedly, three of them may be from the same (re)mastering session), and none of them sound very good. Methinks it's time for me to try to find an original Pye vinyl copy.

My bad - I meant to "quote" the picture of Ride's Nowhere, but it got mangled in my response. I don't know of any Smiths remasters, but the Ride discography (or at least the early good albums) was remastered in 2001.

Give those new Warrior Soul remasters a spin. Truly terrible - clipping all over the place, very very harsh to listen to. They claim to be "remixed and remastered" but there are no credits in the liner claiming anything of the sort, which means whoever did it didn't want to take credit. My guess is they weren't remixed, but someone remastered audio ripped from CDs and didn't really know what he was doing - and just upped all the highs to make it sound "modern." I've never heard remasters that actually sound REALLY bad - until now.

With you on this one, if only to fix the volume problem

Here you go.

All of the Ride releases have been remastered with bonus tracks (usually the ep's that accompanied each release).

Yeah I got what you were saying. The original Ride pic I posted dissapeared & I had to replace it.

Yeah. It's insane. I guess they probably wanted to record with lots of dynamics/little compression, but seriously (!). Like Jeff Buckley's Grace, if I want to hear it loudly without destroying 3 square blocks around me I have to keep me hand on the volume knob the whole way through the album and adjust it for each volume shift (!).

Wicked. Thank you. How did I miss this?

I just listened to this record the other day.

WEEEEEEEEEE DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
WEEEEEEEEEE DddIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I love that song.