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The meaning of “Remastered”

A lot of music I already have is being re-released and “remastered”.  Some of those contain new tunes or printed material and I might buy (again) just to have that.  Otherwise, what’s the value of a new master?  I remember direct to disc vinyl was said to be limited to 10,000 copies because the “master” from which copies were pressed, wore out.  Tape masters would have physically limited lifespans, too.  But in the age of digital music, what is a remaster?  I suppose a new release could have been “re-mixed” or “re-normalized”, so there may be real sonic differences which may or may not be an improvement.  Does the use of the term mean there is some actual audible voodoo by an engineer rather than just procreation of an existing audio file?
77jovian
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
To simply summarize the ops question.
Remastered does mean that someone has changed the original recording release in some way shape or form.
Hopefully for the better as per Steven Wilson's work on King Crimson, Jethro Till etc.
However not always can you count on a remaster being an improvement on the original, different always for sure though.

A rerelease on the other hand might just be that, a straight release of an out of print album with zero changes made .
Although even that is not likely as record pressing and vinyl mixes all have changed so nothing from say 1970 original is going to sound the same as a rerelease in 2020 say.

Simple it is not!
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
To cut to the chase...overly compressed. 🤗
77jovian OP
387 posts
 
Thanks for the responses.  So, there's no standard use of the term.  Remaster could just be another generation of the original recordings with no attempt to change the sound or, on the other hand, a completely new artistic vision, which I would think of more as a remix.  Or maybe just a compressed version designed to sound louder.  But likely there will be some sonic change.  Often, just to tempt us to buy the music again.

I know lots of people have their favorite versions of various albums, but is there a resource that tracks the versions and comments on what changes have been made?
tablejockey
3,800 posts
 
remastered=buyers remorse.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,412 posts
 
Some "remastered" CDs sound cleaner and better, some worse.  It is possible that they removed noise or digitized again with stable A/D clock.  Artifacts of jittery A/D conversion cannot be removed ever.  The only option is to digitize (remaster) again, if analog tapes still exist.  I've heard stories of early digital recordings made from analog tapes already frequency corrected for vinyl pressing, resulting in bright unpleasant sound.
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