CD reissues that are actually worth buying

I believe it was this one.....http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002IQ1.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

....that totally changed the sonic character of the tracks therein....i.e. an re-mastering that backfired (it should be noted that it was followed a few years later by yet another remasteing that appeased the purists).

Beyond that, I've stopped being suckered in by re-issues unless there is some appended tracks that were heretofore unavailable (and even then, sometimes it's not worth it). There are several albums that suffer from shoddy production that could use a re-mastering (FIRE DANCES by Killing Joke springs immediately to mind -- way too treble-heavy, no bass at all....much like AND JUSTICE FOR ALL by Metallica), but as a general rule, remasterd reissues just seem like an underhanded manouver to siphon (syphon?) more funds out of the devoted music consumer (as whose ears are sophisticated enough -- and we're not talking about dedicated audiophiles, but rather the average John and Joan Q. Public -- to really pick out subtle sonic differences heightened in the new mix.)

Sorry, I don't know anything.

Are the reissues blank?

current digital mastering goes further - it takes the final mix and tweaks all the tracks so that they sound good next to each other. it also allows any fixing up of dull final mixes and so on. i'd say that at least 50% of the sound of most recent releases is due to mastering.

re-mastering, initially, digitises whatever analog source material is available. usually some sort of noise reduction is then performed on the whole thing because tape, cassette or whatever is a bit hissy. and finally the standard digital mastering techniques are applied to some degree or another, usually not so much.

i'll take a good remastered cd against any medium. i was never fond of vinyl because you have to take such good care of the artifact else it easily gets scratched and, to my ears, any cd sounds as good.

as for great remasters, the best i've heard in recent times have been the 3 sock cover Henry Cow records. not only did they restore the original mixes (2 of the initial cd releases were remixed by the group) but they sound crisp and luscious, totally enhancing my love of them. the first one - Leg End - was actually digitised from an original Japanese vinyl pressing that had never been played (the original master tapes had been lost).

it takes the final mix and tweaks all the tracks so that they sound good next to each other.

i'd say that at least 50% of the sound of most recent releases is due to mastering.

I think Ryko is still printing the expanded editions of early Costello albums, and those are great to have. Out of print, sadly, are the expanded Ryko reissues of the early Bowie albums, which I recommend hunting down.

the mastering engineer will use a bank of analogue and digital equipment (equalisation, compression, volume, etc) to change the sonic characteristics of each track. comparisons are made between each track and the tracks that adjoin it (and the release as a whole) to ensure that they sound similar to one another and that, unless specifically required, transition from song to song is barely apparent.

if the mix of all tracks is good then very little work is required at the mastering stage. in any case, almost all current major releases will have a large amount of time and money spent on making the mastering as good as possible.

hope that explains it.

The BOC reissues are a no brainer. The first CDs just rocked. The reissues ROCK.

The bonus tracks on Secret Treaties are off tha hook! "Mommy" is a classic!! A sick Meltzer lyric that shoulda made the original lp. A great album, made that much greater...

the original cd issue of we're only in it for the money was remastered by frank zappa. he replaced the original bass and drums (and maybe some other instrumentation) with then-current Zappa bandmates (Chad Wackerman instead of Jimmy Carl Black; and Scott Thunes instead of Roy Estrada), as well as restoring portions that had been censored upon its original sixties. based on what i know and read, Zappa was pretty slippery re why he did this -- at one point he claimed that the master recordings were badly deteriorated and unsuitable for digitalization; at another he just came out and said that he didn't like the original Mothers' playing and wanted to replace it with the more technically-proficient Eighties bandmembers. the latter is probably correct, since woitftm was "remastered" again in 1995 after he died, and restored to its original recording.

i also know that Zappa pretty much junked the original orchestration for ruben and the jets, but since that one's only really for Zappa freaks who owned the original version vinyl, i guess no-one minded as much (except the Zappa freaks). the only copy of ruben i have is the remastered CD, which definitely sounds very Eighties (and not at all Sixties). the 1990 vinyl-to-CD you are what you is was badly remastered because apparently its remastering was done when Zappa was really sick from his cancer, and didn't exert any quality control at all over it (and it's real bad in spots -- very obvious drops in sound and equalization, an overall muddy mix).

Digital mastering *could* involve nothing so much as pressing the record button, seeing as the target medium doesn't have the limitations of vinyl and isn't going to throw a wobbly if you give it something with great flapping stereo sub-bass. However, mastering in the digital domain thesedays seems to involve a great deal of effort to promote a sense of coherence between successive tracks, or (less kindly) to make everything sound as loud as everything else. This can, at its crudest, just be a case of brick-walling everything above a certain level (i.e. compressing with an infinity:1 ratio above, say, -8dB and applying 7.9dB make-up gain; result = all transients squashed but everything sounds LOUD and FULL), or can involve subtler application of multi-band compression and EQ to nudge the sound towards a particular flavour.

When I do mastering for other people it's (thankfully) compilations of already well-recorded and mastered material which I tinker with as little as possible - just a bit of soft-limiting to balance out the perceived levels of successive tracks, and some attention paid to duration of inter-track gaps.

RE-mastering is usually a case of going back to the earliest-generation stereo mixdown tape available and getting a sympathetic pair of ears to caress the material into hi-res digital for dithering down to CD. If the stories are to be believed, many 80s CD issues of 60s/70s LPs were made from whatever nth-gen tape was to hand, frequently from one already RIAA-EQed for vinyl, and done with the relatively primitive equipment of the day (ADCs struggling to reach 14-bit precision). Of course, the counterargument would be to say that a decent digital transfer done in 1988 at least wouldn't bear the scars of a further 15 years of tape degradation, which a fancy 24/96k transfer done now would.

Remastering *can* indeed be a case of merely beefing up the low end for 00s audiences, remixing from the original multi-tracks (obviously this has to be done for the reissues that are now appearing in 5.1 surround), or any amount of cavalier dicking about. You just don't know.