Re: I think this is more important
Possibly because you can re-issue a song or an album, and fans who bought the original will probably buy the new version whether you have made a total hash of it or not. Possibly because it allows you to re-issue a song in a more "streaming-friendly" or "radio-friendly" format (long songs are cut down while short songs might have sections repeated), which might get you some more sales.
Often though the motivation is genuine. You have to remember that the "master" is not the original studio recordings; it is the version of the song which is copied to make the record, cassette or CD. If the original recordings were made in an analogue studio and edited on analogue equipment it is highly likely that all subsequent releases have been made from copies of that one final "master tape". This is the edited mix and it is used again and again because it's the definitive version.
What you hear on your 7" single isn't what was put down on tape by the musicians, it isn't what was heard in the recording studio's control room, it isn't what was heard in the edit suite once they'd run it through whatever post-processing they used and it isn't even what the editor heard through his speakers when he played back the master tape. After that last editing effort, the "master tape" was copied to create a library master and maybe a backup master, and those were copied to make reproduction masters which were sent to the factories which actually produced the vinyl, cassette or CD. In the case of vinyl the reproduction master is used to cut a master stamping disc, which itself will wear slightly each time it is used to stamp a wiggly spiral into a lump of warm plastic.
Each copy suffers "generational loss" and in some cases there could easily be half a dozen generations or more between the multitrack machine in the studio and the 0.125" of thin rust-coated plastic you slot into your Walkman.
Since the 1980s the copy masters are probably digital so you don't have to worry about them becoming worn out through over-use, but technology has moved on, and the generational losses that were an inevitable result of analogue processing, mixing and editing are not a problem for digital.
So in its simplest form, a "remastering" will go back to the original studio recordings and digitise them directly. A new mix can be created from these tapes and it could easily be exactly the same as the original mix, except that there is now no generational loss so the copies will be much "cleaner" and contain more detail. The classic example is whichever Beetles release it was where Lennon can now be heard swearing quietly just after the song finishes, something which was lost in the noise of previous releases.
On a more subtle level, getting rid of analogue tape noise actually makes the job of a lossy encoder much easier, so even when encoded at a low bit rate you will get a much better result than you would have from encoding the original hissy master.
Of course there are problems. From an artistic point of view the original studio engineer may not be around to re-create his mix, or the artist may wish to have more of an input and change the mix, or the record company may want to apply their new whizz-bang toy multiprocessor to the thing to give it more "punch" or "presence" or "body". These sorts of things are a problem mainly for fans.
Sometimes it is difficult to find a working machine to play a particular tape. This is less an issue for audio formats than video, but it can still happen. Sometimes the studio machine was slightly mis-aligned or poorly set-up, and the tape will only play back correctly on that one specific machine, or another one modified to have the same flaws.
A more difficult issue is that the studio tapes may have deteriorated through old-age, poor storage or if they are are of a certain vintage, from poor materials used in manufacture.
I think it was Ampex tape (but quite happy to be corrected if not) from the early 1970s that suffers very badly from poor glue binding the rust onto the plastic tape. Often when the studio tapes are brought out of storage they are found to be glued together in one lump, or when they are unwound the rust falls off the tape. Incredibly, many of these tapes can be rescued by "baking" them at a low temperature for several hours, but then they are played once only, digitised in as high a resolution as possible and then retired.
Lastly, and this is possibly slightly controversial, those digitised studio tapes can be digitally "cleaned" before remastering. If the tapes are poor quality this may be imperative, but for good quality originals some people would miss some of the analogue "foibles".
So there are lots of reasons for "remastering" and not all of them are bad reasons, in fact many remasters are done with the best of intentions and in some cases a fan with an older copy of a song may not "like" the new version, because it doesn't sound like the copy they have been listening to for thirty years, even though the remastered version may actually be much closer to the sound the artist, producer and engineer intended at the time the song was recorded.
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
