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what does "remastered" even mean? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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listening to lots of music lately and almost every second song is "remastered"; original is often not even available anymore.

and not one single time i can hear any kind of improvement. so what does it even mean, to remaster a song?

one of the worst cases, imo is atomic by blondie.

friggin classic

b-side abbba song?

and to add: iʼm not some kind of nostalgic puritan, plenty of songs get better after some remixing, covering and whatnot, like

The Clash - Rock The Casbah (12 inch Version)

But the remastered version?

dear god, if i wanted to listen to sting, i would listen to friggin sting.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mastering engineer here. Remastered means that the audio has been modified to fit a different sonic aesthetic.

In general this means made louder, clearer and perhaps bassier, to make it sound "as good" as contemporary albums, as well as optimising it for contemporary consumer sound systems (which nowadays range from 5.1 kits with huge subwoofers, to a mono smartphone speaker).

It's also an excuse to sell the same album again.

I'm not currently able to listen to the examples you've given, but I do believe it to be sometimes detrimental to change the aesthetic of a song and "take it out of it's era", because a cleaner or brighter mix might make it lose a lot of its charm.

It's also worth noting that nowadays, the quality of remasters can vary a lot due to more (potentially less experienced) people using music-making software to create and upload their own.

Hope that helped!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

late reply and you probably dont care, but holy shit, I DO GET IT NOW! i bought something from bandcamp simply to support the artist, then i got it as FLAC and jesusfuckingchrist! all those years spotify was stealing like 50% of the music i listen to! switched to apple music and god dammit ... those remasters do sound SO MUCH better, its like discovering everything new! keep the those remasters coming 😍 (but with 24bits pls, i swear i can hear the difference in like 90% of cases, made blind tests and all) the only confusing thing is this spatial audio / dolby atmos stuff. could literally not stop crying when listening to beethovens 9th and dark side of the moon, ~~but the doors were so bad, i cannot even listen to the "normal" versions anymore~~ just listened again and was wrong again, sounds kinda cool, keep those coming too i guess, no idea, but you audio and master engineers are doing gods work, keep it up and all the best 😊👌