Dear Nigel, or anyone else with an opinion,

People understandably get excited when their fave music comes out on CD in a 'new, improved' digitally remastered version. Often, however, there does not seem to be much to distinguish between the new and previous releases. Or am I a bit too deaf to appreciate it?! My question is: is digital remastering all it's cracked up to be? Jim Green

p.s. I eagerly await the digitally remastered release of 'Ship to Shore' and my other old faves that will hopefully follow!

-- Jim Green (jengreen@westlodge.u-net.com), January 19, 2000

Answers

Ahem :)-as an ex sound engineer my experience was that as listeners expect a wider frequency response these days & broadly speaking have better Hi-Fi equipment than 25 years ago (yes, StS is that old..) a mastering engineer today will take time to "retrieve/rescue/ (over)emphasise" the low & high frequencies that may have been regarded as less important back then.

We would also EQ (especially bass) to ensure that we could cut a higher level to vinyl - this obviously isn't necessary anymore! Also the kick drum _can_ be panned hard left without sending the stylus flying out of the groove.

Dynamics are also possible on CD (grin) so hideous grinding stereo compression is no longer de rigeur. We also have much better mastering compressors now so a high perceived volume level is achievable (important for listeners in cars) without the whole track sounding like it's being played through a Marshall stack. Spot my pet hate...

But...you can hear the tape hiss. Oh yesssssssssss...

Hopefully this should mean that Ship to Shore no longer sounds it's being played thro' old WEM columns. Oh, yes, I forgot.

-- Graeme White (graemew@mac.com), March 12, 2000.

Hi, Thanks for those accurate comments, Ship To Shore has in fact been remastered already and sounds great. A direct trasfer of the tapes was made without compression etc. There was very little tape hiss on the masters. Before it goes onto cd we will go through another mastering process but this will only tidy the frequency range that is already there. We like to keep the sounds as near as poss to the original with minimal interference. After not hearing the masters for twenty years I was pleasantly surprised to hear all sorts of small subtlies that I had forgotten about so in the Autumn you listeners can join in the fun in digital. The Ship did reach Shore then despite the Chris De Burgh pale echo of it in '81.N.M.J.

-- nigel mazlyn jones (iol@cerbernet.co.uk), April 06, 2000.