The Art of Re-Mastering

I listened to this on the way into work this morning, and it’s a great little documentary about the art of re-mastering.
Mohr-Pietsch talks to a number of different people who’ve been through the re-mastering process, and talks about the pros, and perhaps not so much, the cons. This is one of those instances where listening to a compressed mp3 of the programme perhaps hides the subtlties of the audio examples that are given.
It was wonderful to hear the piece where a telephone rang somewhere between the control room and a recording orchestra. In the original vinyl recording it would never have been picked up, but once the audio is cleaned up – there it is.
The editor of Music Week accepts that sometimes there are a few too many “remasters” appearing. Those bands that re-release their back catalogue every year or two are the guilt culprits here. It’s one thing to repackage the audio with additional tracks, alternate versions and B-sides, but it was refreshing to hear the person who re-mastered The Who more than once admit that his later tinkering probably wasn’t necessary.
There’s a separate argument to be had about loudness in some of these masters. Simply making certain elements louder “because you can” possibly doesn’t give the best listening experience.
I’d have also liked to hear more about the differences in types of re-masters – albeit that the programme opened with the clear statement that re-mastering means different things to different producers. The Beatles re-masters, for example, have been rebuilt from the ground up to a much larger degree than tracks where a bit of decrackling and pop-removal has taken place.
But overall, it’s well worth a listen! (And at time of writing, you still have the better part of six days to hear it).


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