85-91 CD remasters of 1970s Material...Yeeugh!

Dedicated to the silver disk spinner
Post Reply
Cressy Snr
Amstrad Tower of Power
Posts: 10547
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 12:25 am
Location: South Yorks.

#1 85-91 CD remasters of 1970s Material...Yeeugh!

Post by Cressy Snr »

I've not bought a CD for around 15 years but I have recently acquired a CD/DVD rewriter for the Mac Mini so I was able to import a lot of stuff from my old CD collection into the computer.
I wish I hadn't bothered with some of it. I did secure bit for bit rips with XLD so the rips could not have been much better, but compared to my iTunes downloads I found quite a lot of them severely wanting.

The chief culprits are 80s/ early 90s mainstream record company remasters of old 1970s albums. I found them with few exceptions (Pink Floyd being one such exception) to be thin, weedy and lifeless shadows of how I remember their counterparts on LP. Now it's well known around these parts that I hate vinyl, but I have to qualify this by saying I only started hating it when I fell for the flat earth bullshit, which I've never really recovered from. Most of the 70s vinyl I used to own, was played on a Pioneer PL12D with Ortofon FF15E cartridge so I remember the nice, cuddly analogue warmth, my old Bowie, Elton John, Purple et al produced.

I was able to compare these CD rips with iTunes downloads of the same album and I'm afraid the iTunes versions in 99% of cases just blow these rips into the weeds. Solidity, dynamics and presence from iTunes, thin, scrawny, bass light and boring from the rips.

Artists contemporary to the 1990s such as the Lightning Seeds albums "Sense" and "Jollification" sounded wonderful, as did all the jazz rips from Linn/Blue Note; new at the time or old stuff remastered. Also 1960s soul reissues from the smaller specialist labels were fine.

It's interesting that a triple CD of "The Rolling Stones singles Collection" A and B sides from the Decca/London era I bought around 1997 sounded stunning all the way from "Come On" to Sympathy for the Devil" Seems that during the 1990s they took a lot more care over reissues of 1960s material than 1970s. Remastering of older recordings, if iTunes is anything to go by, appears to have improved substantially since the 1990s.

Digital these days seems a lot better than it was 20 years ago.
Sgt. Baker started talkin’ with a Bullhorn in his hand.
User avatar
Nick
Site Admin
Posts: 15694
Joined: Sun May 06, 2007 10:20 am
Location: West Yorkshire

#2 Re: 85-91 CD remasters of 1970s Material...Yeeugh!

Post by Nick »

Remember that when CD was first introduced no one cared much about jitter, so the recording clock in the studio was not going to be as good as it could be. And on top of that, the AES papers on dither in digital recording didnt start until 87, so its likely a lot of your earlier recordings will have been done without dither.

Not so much a case of not taking care, more of not knowing I expect.
Whenever an honest man discovers that he's mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or he will cease to be honest.
Cressy Snr
Amstrad Tower of Power
Posts: 10547
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 12:25 am
Location: South Yorks.

#3 Re: 85-91 CD remasters of 1970s Material...Yeeugh!

Post by Cressy Snr »

Never thought of that Nick, but it makes sense as the worst offenders I encountered, were remastered around 1985-86.
My 1993 Doug Sax remaster of DSOTM "Twentieth Anniversary" edition is as good as anything I've heard today.

My Very Best of Elton John" from 1990 is patchy in places. Some of the remastered tracks from the Captain Fantastic album that appear on "Very Best of...."are pretty ropey, but apparently when they got the masters out for this release, they found that many of the tapes were suffering from the Ampex sticky oxide disease, so had to cook said tapes then make "one chance only" digital copies, so there are no original analogue masters available anymore for a lot of Elton John's early output.

The Captain Fantastic and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road albums on iTunes are much better than the older CD remasters, so it is probably the case that the "one chance only" digital masters made 20-odd years ago, have been worked on by engineers using modern software processing to restore as closely as possible the sound of the original tapes.
Sgt. Baker started talkin’ with a Bullhorn in his hand.
User avatar
Mike H
Amstrad Tower of Power
Posts: 20156
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:38 pm
Location: The Fens
Contact:

#4 Re: 85-91 CD remasters of 1970s Material...Yeeugh!

Post by Mike H »

Don't forget during that period there was a mad rush by the record companies to get their vynil back catalogues onto CD's.
 
"No matter how fast light travels it finds that the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
User avatar
IslandPink
Amstrad Tower of Power
Posts: 10041
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 7:01 pm
Location: Denbigh, N.Wales

#5 Re: 85-91 CD remasters of 1970s Material...Yeeugh!

Post by IslandPink »

I must have been lucky in that some of the ones I play, ( OK I play mainly in the car ) I think are quite good . I went through a good stack while on hols in the Lakes ( with my portable HiFi system ) in March and enjoyed most, some have a better mix & less muddle in the bass than the original LP's . The Bowie ones and Soft Machine 1/2 are pretty good . CAN CDs from the 80's are excellent . I haven't got a lot of modern ones, though - I've been put off by the modern ones from recent bands or artists still recording, where they have the modern production with compression and a generally artificial sound . Perhaps I should get a couple of more recent re-masters by say Genesis or Led Zep ?
"Once you find out ... the Circumstances ; then you can go out"
Post Reply