Remasterings can be a fucking god send!

Some of you are full of it.

the remasters of the early van halen albums are great - i still don't like how vhii was mixed, but everything's louder/clearer. one of these days i'm going to run the didjits' catalog through some damn plugin or another - some of that stuff is so tinny & small-sounding...

Here's a worst mastering thread at stevehoffman.tv. There are several others if you search. It's probably the most popular topic on that forum.

Julian Cope's Jehovahkill got treated to a special 2CD remaster really recently...and the remaster is unfuckingbelievable in it's awfulness. There's distortion and clipping all over the place! And it's a UK only import so it's 40$. I guess the good thing about it is now all the people selling the original CD (which had been getting fairly pricey; it's been out of print for awhile) are now selling them for 8, 9 dollars - THAT'S the one you should get!
The best remastering I've heard is the Led Zeppelin 200g vinyl Physical Graffiti. Don't know how many copies anyone has heard, but the old records, there were at least 2 different mastering jobs....so different they may have even been remixes. One is totally shit. That remaster though, that's the best ever. Highly recommended. If there's a better way to spend 36$ let me know.
CD remasters....I liked the Zombies Odyssey and Oracle one.

'Murmur' by REM was remastered at some point, presumably around the time it was released on CD by Warner and it has created a sort of revisionist version of that particular album. It sounds as clean as the later material and a lot of people I know can't get into the album. I think that's almost entirely the fault of the remaster sheen. It used to be a very odd, mystical sounding record now it sounds mundane.

Dischord remasters are usually good though. They bring up the levels and leave everything else as it was. I hope they do the early Lungfish albums soon, especially 'Rainbows From Atoms'.

the sabbath remasters they did for the box set sound great, did each album fixed everything that needed fixing

Quack.

If you've tried to sit through the first round of ZZ Top cd's, you'll really wish they would hurry up and rerelease everything else. Hell, I'd even take 1990 quality cd's from the safety masters over what is out there today.

Eierdiebe wrote:Remasterings can be a fucking god send!

Some of you are full of it.

Co-Sign

murderedman wrote:Here's a worst mastering thread at stevehoffman.tv. There are several others if you search. It's probably the most popular topic on that forum.

I'm reminded now of why I stopped reading that forum. Maybe they're nice people, but I can't stomach the limitless praise of Huey Lewis and Amy Grant.

And actually, no, a lot of folks on that forum weren't nice at all. Many just want to kiss Steve Hoffman's ass, and many had childish attitudes about iPods. Furthermore, it pissed me off that somebody could start a thread saying something along the lines of "I'd like to buy a new receiver, but I only have $200 to spend. Any recommendations?" What would follow would be dozens of recommendations, all of which were for ultra-high-end $900 receivers.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: some remasters are good, and others aren't.