From: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org (seven-seas-digest) To: seven-seas-moderated-digest@smoe.org Subject: seven-seas-digest V1 #86 Reply-To: seven-seas@smoe.org Sender: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Precedence: bulk seven-seas-digest Sunday, September 8 2002 Volume 01 : Number 086 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 20:40:05 -0700 From: "Ivan Smith" Subject: Re: seven-seas-moderated first four album remasters? when I was referring to remix, I wasn't referring to remix in the deejay sense. I thought I'd read somewhere that the wrong mix of Heaven Up Here was pressed - not the intended mix, but another mix that was on the same master reel. Though I consider all these albums classics, it would still be interesting to hear the "director's cut", so to speak - the way the albums would have sounded, had Ian and Will had the technical knowledge and expertise to produce them. CD-mastering in the 80's was haphazard at best, as the technology was new. Labels paid little attention to quality and detail, hurriedly pushing their artists' catalogues to market to capitalize on the new medium. The initial Bunnymen releases are no exception to this, as evidenced by the thin, uninformative booklets accompanying the CDs. I have a near-mint vinyl issue of Heaven Up Here - sounds way better than the CD - warmer, and with more depth. An example of remastering/remixing done right: Jimmy Page took the helm in the cleaning up of the Led Zeppelin catalogue, bringing nuances in the music that hadn't been heard on previous, hastily-produced CD issues of the back catalogue. - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amy Moseley Rupp" To: > > I'm intrigued by the idea of having people *remix* some of the > songs... now *that* would be interesting, because there very often > things are - --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.385 / Virus Database: 217 - Release Date: 9/4/2002 ====================================== Choices! mailto:majordomo@smoe.org Subscribe/unsubscribe Seven-seas Seven-seas-moderated Both available in digest form. ====================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 23:44:31 -0500 (CDT) From: amyr@jump.net (Amy Moseley Rupp) Subject: Re: seven-seas-moderated first four album remasters? > when I was referring to remix, I wasn't referring to remix in the > deejay sense. I thought I'd read somewhere that the wrong mix of > Heaven Up Here was pressed - not the intended mix, but another mix > that was on the same master reel. Yup, and they went into a *store* to listen to it after returning from an American tour, found it to be wrong, complained, and still the record company sent the wrong/bad mix to Belgium? somewhere on the continent to try and sell it there -- but the Bunnymen found out about there too. I was just reading that aloud the other day... it *must* be in _Never Stop_... but that book's been wandering about the house lately, can't lay my hands on it now... but back to AAA->DDD etc. Three-letter codes (found on CD's and all digitally-mastered sound recordings): * DDD: Digital recording ; Digital mixing/editing ; Digital mastering. * ADD: Analog recording ; Digital mixing/editing ; Digital mastering. * AAD: Analog recording ; Analog mixing/editing ; Digital mastering Obviously the output of anything that is going to be written to digital media is ultimately digital, but until now I'd just assumed that the final stage would be to take an analog master, and run it through the best A/D converters available, and start stamping out the discs. I didn't realise that the mastering process was the final D. So that has me curious then... making a master ought to be simply faithfully rendering the original analog into a format that is used for mass producing all the copies. For example, if I take a digital photograph, the thing I took a picture of is the analog, and the output is digital. While having a crap camera would obviously make the picture less faithful to the original, it wouldn't *alter* it... that'd be Photoshopping it, or the mixing/editing stage. So... did they just use crap A/D recorders? Shoddy operators who didn't listen to what they were putting out? Or is there more to the mastering process than that? I went and checked the Bunnymen CDs I have... none of them indicate the recording type. *_Candleland_* is still AAD. Which then of course raises the question: if something is going to be released on vinyl, is that a strong influence in favour of using analog recording/mixing/mastering? I suppose not, because almost everything up until very very recently was still available on cassette, so an analog master had to be made up out of either the digital editing/mixing output, or from the digital master. Rush switched from AAD to DDD in 1985, as any good Rush fan knows ;-) but it appears that *all* the Bunnymen albums (well, that would include STLAS and the Grey Album) are AAD.... can anyone confirm? And yes, there have been great advances just in A/D conversion between the first days of CDs and now. - --Amy, who did an electrical engineering lab project on A/D D/A audio in college and was threatened with death if I broke the $25,000 DSP equipment I was using! ====================================== Choices! mailto:majordomo@smoe.org Subscribe/unsubscribe Seven-seas Seven-seas-moderated Both available in digest form. ====================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 22:52:52 -0700 From: "Ivan Smith" Subject: Re: seven-seas-moderated first four album remasters? zzzzzzzzzzz.....uh? sorry, I fell asleep somewhere after the part about A/D converters. just kidding... you said: "making a master ought to be simply faithfully rendering the original analog into a format that is used for mass producing all the copies. For example, if I take a digital photograph, the thing I took a picture of is the analog, and the output is digital. While having a crap camera would obviously make the picture less faithful to the original, it wouldn't *alter* it" your example's okay, except taking a digital photo is more equal to the original sound being recorded digitally. Converting analog audio to digital audio is kind of like scanning a regular photo into your computer. A few years ago, you couldn't buy a scanner that would sample at more than 300 x 600 pixels per inch. Similar to a scanner which breaks down an image into pixels, a digital recording breaks down the audio waveform into samples. When you listen to a CD, you are hearing the playback of 44,100 (44.1 kHz) samples per second. There are computer sound cards now on the market capable of sampling at 48,000 (48 kHz) - better quality than a compact disc Likely, the audio from the master was converted to a higher digital sampling rate than that. It then had to be compressed to 44.1 kHz, to fit the audio format, and meet the standard for CD audio. Therein lies one of the big issues - with compression, some data and fidelity is lost. It's normally scraped off the top and bottom ends, outside what the 'experts' say is our listening range. Some engineer had to decide what would be lost in the compression. It's subjective. - --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.385 / Virus Database: 217 - Release Date: 9/4/2002 ====================================== Choices! mailto:majordomo@smoe.org Subscribe/unsubscribe Seven-seas Seven-seas-moderated Both available in digest form. ====================================== ------------------------------ End of seven-seas-digest V1 #86 *******************************