Quality Re-Masters

FrantzM

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Hi

It is all about the music for me .. yet it remains that some mastering jobs are atrocious.. The other day I purchased the Isley Brothers (what ?? Yes , I listen to them too .. fun .. light and repetitive, but that's part of my early teens..so ...) "The Collection" Box Set
omg .. the sound is so compressed as not to be enjoyable .. The songs start loud, remain loud and finish loud.. Seems every instruments in the mix are at the same level .. Soundstage? you gotta be kidding ? mhhh? No infllections in the voices.. Man!! Bad mastering !!

The reason for this thread is for you people on this board to post your examples of good mastering on ANY medium be it CD, LP, Hi-Rez or R2R Tapes from yesteryear music Rock, Jazz, Pop, Classic, anything.. I am particularly NOT interested in $500-per-pop-special-edition-anything. I must say I would prefer digital .. honestly, but any medium will really do.

Now .. Still looking for a decent mastering job for the aforementioned Isley Brothers ... :D
 

Ron Party

WBF Founding Member
Apr 30, 2010
2,457
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Oakland, CA
Hi

It is all about the music for me .. yet it remains that some mastering jobs are atrocious.. The other day I purchased the Isley Brothers (what ?? Yes , I listen to them too .. fun .. light and repetitive, but that's part of my early teens..so ...)

Oh, man, don't dis the Isleys. Some of the best baby making music ever sung! Play something like For The Love Of You and follow that up with Teddy Pendergrass singing Close The Door and, well you know where your evening is headed ...
 

FrantzM

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
6,455
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Oh, man, don't dis the Isleys. Some of the best baby making music ever sung! Play something like For The Love Of You and follow that up with Teddy Pendergrass singing Close The Door and, well you know where your evening is headed ...

:D ... My girldfiend simply loooooves this song ... but truly, the sound remains atrocious ...
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
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New York City
Pretty much anything done recently by Steve Hoffman, particularly the Blue Note, Impulse, Prestige, Riverside, Pablo and Verve 45 rpm jazz remaster series. Same goes for his RLJ and Yes reissues.

Bernie Grundman's work for ORG also stands out. The ORGs sound totally different than the Classic Records he cut, principally because he gutted his remastering system beginning with the tape heads and not stopping til he got to the mastering lathe! The 45 rpm Impulse releases are outstanding as are the Dire Strait's reissues (33 rpm).

So far not a big fan of the George Marino/Sterling Sound reissues :( Too electronic and solid-state sounding.

Pure Pleasure is a totally mixed bag.

The real problem is that outside of AP, ORG and MM, you don't know what the hell you're getting!!! Digital copy. 3rd gen tape. God only knows. That's why not a big fan of the Japanese reissues because they sound washed out because they're second or third gen tapes at best.
 

RUR

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
647
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SoCal
The three Alan Parsons HDAD's released last year(?) are superb. Not truly remasters, since they were made directly from Parsons' original 2 track analog master tapes. Also available on vinyl, though I've not heard those.
 

Phelonious Ponk

New Member
Jun 30, 2010
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The Beatles re-masters. To be honest, these weren't great recordings in the first place, so even the re-masters are not "audiophile" recordings by a long shot, but they are world's better than the original CDs and clearly done with love and care. I have both the mono and the stereo sets. Which I prefer varies from cut to cut, though in general the stereo masters are better, I think, if you can get past some of the hard panning of instruments. Some of the monos sound a bit congested to me.

Not to be disagreeable, but I'm not a huge Steve Hoffman fan. He does a lot of things right -- goes to great lengths to get the original tapes so not re-master from a copy, does not compress, avoids noise reduction, etc. He is clearly a dedicated craftsman. But his eq is, in my limited experience with his work, digital for people who don't like digital. He tries to make CDs sound like vinyl. To me that just sounds a bit rolled off up high and chunky in the middle. But one man's muddy is another man's warmth. They might be just the thing for you.

P
 

Johnny Vinyl

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
May 16, 2010
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Calgary, AB
Bought this some time ago.....need to have another listen

IMG_0162..JPG

John
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
81
1,725
New York City
Not to be disagreeable, but I'm not a huge Steve Hoffman fan. He does a lot of things right -- goes to great lengths to get the original tapes so not re-master from a copy, does not compress, avoids noise reduction, etc. He is clearly a dedicated craftsman. But his eq is, in my limited experience with his work, digital for people who don't like digital. He tries to make CDs sound like vinyl. To me that just sounds a bit rolled off up high and chunky in the middle. But one man's muddy is another man's warmth. They might be just the thing for you.

P

Wrong and you simply have no clue what you're talking about. In fact, you're the first one who has ever described Steve's re-issues as chunky in the mids; OTOH, maybe you're hearing the upper octaves like they are, rather than some re-equalized, amusical release.

Steve Hoffman's AIM is first and foremost to make his reissues sound like the tape they come from. No more, no less. Perhaps you should look at your system first rather than blame the engineer. Perhaps you're actually hearing what the music sounds like rather than some crappy digital remaster from the major labels. Perhaps you should tell us what Steve Hoffman remasters you're talking about.
 

FrantzM

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Myles

Let's be cool .. Digital is not that and you know it ... I don't know about Steve Hoffman by the way .. I usually don't care about whose mastering what...

FWIW, Dire Straits re-masters or not are great sounding almost across the board. Now any Steve Hoffman -mastered CDs?

And I am still looking for a decent sounding " Best of the Isley Bro's" or equivalent.
 

Phelonious Ponk

New Member
Jun 30, 2010
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Wrong and you simply have no clue what you're talking about. In fact, you're the first one who has ever described Steve's re-issues as chunky in the mids; OTOH, maybe you're hearing the upper octaves like they are, rather than some re-equalized, amusical release.

Steve Hoffman's AIM is first and foremost to make his reissues sound like the tape they come from. No more, no less. Perhaps you should look at your system first rather than blame the engineer. Perhaps you're actually hearing what the music sounds like rather than some crappy digital remaster from the major labels. Perhaps you should tell us what Steve Hoffman remasters you're talking about.

Didn't know an opinion could be quite so definitively wrong, Miles, but OK. The one that comes to mind is Late For The Sky, which I own. I've heard a few others that gave me the same general impression, but that's the one I've listened to repeatedly, and that's my evaluation. Rim shots have no snap. there's little shimmer in cymbals. Vocals are a bit recessed. Bass guitars seem a bit too prominent. Kick drums put out a dull thump without any of the snap of the mallet hitting the head. The whole thing is a bit dark. Maybe that's the way the tape is, but I don't remember the vinyl that way.

I said my experience with his work was limited and stated my opinion pretty gently, Miles. I don't think there was really any call for the attack.

P
 
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DWR

New Member
Jul 26, 2010
262
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Western burbs of Detroit
Well I am going to order the re-issue of Horace Silver's Song for my Father tomorrow done by Hoffman on Blue Note 180 gram vinyl so I will see how that sounds. Interesting seeing the two opinions on Hoffman's work.
 

Phelonious Ponk

New Member
Jun 30, 2010
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Well I am going to order the re-issue of Horace Silver's Song for my Father tomorrow done by Hoffman on Blue Note 180 gram vinyl so I will see how that sounds. Interesting seeing the two opinions on Hoffman's work.

I have no opinion of Hoffman's vinyl work. In fairness to Hoffman, my opinion of his cds is based on just a few releases and only one heard more than a couple of times. Probably not a good enough reference. But I'm listening to the one I own, Late For The Sky, right now, to double check. It still sounds pretty murky to me. I wish I had the non-Hoffman CD for comparison.

P
 

Old Listener

New Member
Jul 18, 2010
371
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SF Bay area
naturelover.smugmug.com
I'm mostly interested in re-mastered CDs of classic music. Re-mastered versions of old favorite CDs have almost always been an improvement.

A Philips set of Mozart Violin Concertos performed by Grumiaux/Colin Davis was described as involving 24/96 processing. Those CDs sounded compressed and harsh.

A comment about what FrantzM said about the Isley brothers. I sometimes buy a single song of rock n Roll music from my youth as an MP3 download from Amazon. The song is often available on different albums. I try to listen to the short samples to pick the one that sounds most natural. The samples are themselves a low bit rate, low quality version of what I'll get on an MP3 download. Picking the best version seems a difficult, imperfect process.

Bill
 

rsbeck

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Isley Brothers --

I've been through a couple of different Isley Brothers "Best Of" sets and some offered pretty bad audio quality.

This is the best one I've heard on CD....

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Isl...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1283333658&sr=1-1

I wouldn't call it audiophile quality, but the sonics are what I would call very good. A significant step up from anything else I've heard. It's a great collection, IMO, and certainly communicates their music well.
 

Old Listener

New Member
Jul 18, 2010
371
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0
SF Bay area
naturelover.smugmug.com
Isley Brothers --

I've been through a couple of different Isley Brothers "Best Of" sets and some offered pretty bad audio quality.

This is the best one I've heard on CD....

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Isl...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1283333658&sr=1-1
.

Thanks for the link. I listened to the samples from this album on Amazon and to samples from several other CDs. I was mostly interested and two songs: "Shout" and "Twist and Shout". I wound up buying the mono recordings from the early 60s rather than later and better sounding stuff from the 70s. I usually go for the performances I like rather than better sound quality for performances I like less.

Bill
 

Phelonious Ponk

New Member
Jun 30, 2010
8,677
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I'm mostly interested in re-mastered CDs of classic music. Re-mastered versions of old favorite CDs have almost always been an improvement.

A Philips set of Mozart Violin Concertos performed by Grumiaux/Colin Davis was described as involving 24/96 processing. Those CDs sounded compressed and harsh.

A comment about what FrantzM said about the Isley brothers. I sometimes buy a single song of rock n Roll music from my youth as an MP3 download from Amazon. The song is often available on different albums. I try to listen to the short samples to pick the one that sounds most natural. The samples are themselves a low bit rate, low quality version of what I'll get on an MP3 download. Picking the best version seems a difficult, imperfect process.

Bill

I don't find there's much of a problem in the classical arena. Much of it was very well recorded in the first place. The objective seems to be to re-create the sound of the performance, not a multi-tracked work in which a big part of the "art" is the recording. When engineers re-master classical recordings, compression and excessive EQ are almost never an issue. It is just a matter of cleaning things up a bit and adjusting for the digital medium. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I haven't heard them: I've yet to run into a classical remaster (and very few jazz remasters) that suffered the indignities foisted upon classic rock and pop.

P
 

Jay_S

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
309
5
16
San Francisco - East Bay
The classical labels differed vastly in recording quality. Many people know about the superb early RCAs and Mercurys. But there is much that was not as well recorded, for example, almost all classical music on Columbia, RCA post-1964, multi-miked DG, etc.
 

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