What CD in your collection most needs remastering?

The LP sounds like that, too.

Album You'd Most Like To See Remastered

Only trouble is, it has already been remastered. :-(

Personally, I would say Japan's "Tin Drum" and "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" are in serious need of a remaster job.

sublime. Cale is the greatest and due for a real retrospective, not that crap 2-CD set with liner notes by Colin "I'm an insufferable bore" Escott. There's a lot of unreleased & b-sides floating around on him, sigh

anybody catch his comments in "shakey"? on Cobain: "the kid could play guitar." as minimal as his music, I was amused

the DM is pitiful, though. I couldn't believe it when I got the vinyl.

That was remastered and reissued with a bonus disc of 12" mixes less than two years ago.

But MP3 'compression' is data reduction, not what's commonly understood in audio circles as compression (squashing the peaks of a recording and applying make-up gain to increase the overall level).

MP3s are surely as prone to variable volume levels as the tracks from which they were sourced?

If a track sounds weedy next to its intended neighbours on a comp, I tend to stick it through SoundForge or CoolEdit and hard-limit it by a few dB.

I know, I bought it and it's still way, way quiet...

- Sly & The Family Stone's "Stand" - you do have to turn the volume up rather loud.

- The Pogues' "Rum, Sodomy & The Lash" really needs all the instruments to be audible - mostly one can only hear the vocals and guitars.

- My Bloody Valentine's "Isn't Anything" and "Loveless" (especially the former) need some real sharpening of sound without sacrifcing the richness.

- Laurie Anderson's "Big Science" sounds very blunt.

why do any albums 'need' remastering? to make them sound all superSUPER loud? if youre that worried about the levels being low, if you have recording levels on your cd burner or burning program, you can adjust them yourself.

Remastering doesn't always mean making things superloud.

The Chameleons _Script Of The Bridge_ really could use remastering as it was a very early CD and probably used vinyl mastering settings.

I'd like to see the Cocteau Twins' catalogue (re-)remastered by someone whose name isn't Robin Guthrie.

Modern Life is Rubbish / Blur.

Listen to the intro of Star Shaped on cd or mp3 and tell me something's not up there.

The Embarrassment's Heydey retrospective: the worst-sounding cd ever.

pil - second edition

My band's album.

After having lost my copy of the second disc to Heydey, I just got the entire CD back at a friend's stoop sale and listened for the first time in years. It does sound as harsh as I remember and it wasn't untill ILX I realized it could sound any different. Still dying to hear the real thing. Forgot how much I liked some of those songs.

New Order - PCL

and fix the track order, plz.

so tough could use a boost or two

Funkadelic - Free Your Mind, And Your Ass Shall Follow

Its criminal what the CD version does to Funky Dollar Bill.

why do any albums 'need' remastering? to make them sound all superSUPER loud? if youre that worried about the levels being low, if you have recording levels on your cd burner or burning program, you can adjust them yourself.

One reason is because some albums were given terrible transfers from vinyl to CD. The original Celtic Frost CDs are a good example; they sounded much worse than the LPs.

I wonder if, now that everything's digital, we might have a future for "downgrading" album, i.e. re-releasing stuff with less compression etc. I'm guessing "uhm, no, don't be an idiot."

I'd like to hear a remaster of Mingus' "Pithecanthropus Erectus", but I'm not sure if there's much that can be done with it. I've not heard the original LP though, just the reissued one, which is probably from the same master as the CD.

I've got the Dolly Mixture CD ESOJ was talking about upthread and it does sound absolutely awful, I assumed it was just because it was a demo! There were rumours of a reissue a year or 2 ago but I don't think anything happened.

Also that Embarrassment 2xCD - reissue that bastard now somebody please? I've been looking for that for years.

Loveless.

And The Joshua Tree.

'cd'?

Just make all the Beatles albums sound as good as Love, please. And fix Cocteau Twins. And the last two Embrace albums. And Shortwave Set. And these, damnit... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Recent-Records-That-Would-Be-Great-If-They-Were-Quieter/lm/R3B3E6JXJYMN7O/ref=cm_lm_pdp_title_full/202-4517098-6134246

Watusi and Saturnalia (and Mini). Finish the job!

Just got the remasters of the first Monkees albums. I want my Beatles albums to sound just as great as those!

I would also like to see the Thompson Twins albums remastered, but I doubt that will ever happen as those albums will probably never be available in the shops again.

Are Agharta and Pangea ever gonna get straight remastered re-releases?

is remastering going to be like haircuts, i.e. in 20 years will all these great new lush remasters sound dated and horrible?

"The Nightfly" has yet to be remastered, no? I mean, it sounds great, like most digital recordings, but it still suffers from having that typical 80s CD sound.

if youre that worried about the levels being low, if you have recording levels on your cd burner or burning program, you can adjust them yourself.

But why would one need to do that on an original CD? Shouldn't it be possible to actually listen to the original CD rather than burn it to somewhere else?

I've got the Dolly Mixture CD ESOJ was talking about upthread and it does sound absolutely awful, I assumed it was just because it was a demo! There were rumours of a reissue a year or 2 ago but I don't think anything happened.

-- Colonel Poo, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 7:16 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

yeah, the label that was meant to be doing it fell off the face of the earth, evidently taking all the tapes with them?

the original vinyl isn't especially hi fi but sounds 100000x better than the royal mint reissue

"But why would one need to do that on an original CD? Shouldn't it be possible to actually listen to the original CD rather than burn it to somewhere else?"

have people forgotten about something called a volume knob? i know when making comps, its annoying to have to keep turning it up, but if youre just making a comp via your mp3s, then you could always just normalise the levels.

Funkadelic - Free Your Mind, And Your Ass Shall Follow

It was reissued about a year ago. Major improvement over the original Westbound CD, which was the quietest-mastered CD I'd ever heard...and that includes my Webern CDs.

(Don't worry, the reissue isn't super-brickwalled or anything.)

Are Agharta and Pangea ever gonna get straight remastered re-releases?

Supposedly there's a 70s live box in the works...so like with all Miles reissues, we gotta wait at least 6 months until after the box is out for the remastered individual discs to be released.

have people forgotten about something called a volume knob?

Portable CD players these days are so preoccupied with protecting their customers' hearing that turning up 80s CDs sufficiently is just not possible.

But if you are going to decide that you have to listen on crappy equipment, that that's really the best way for you to hear your favorite music, then maybe it's better for you to adapt the cds to that environment rather than hoping that record companies will boost the volume and quash the dynamics in order to suit your equipment. (My fantasy: that they aren't going to do that anyway.) Or get a headphone preamp.