To Mew or not to Mew

[stacee strap-on]

I have been reading this forum long enough to know that the Abbey Road engineer Peter Mew is not highly esteemed here. But a few days ago I read a thread by someone named Claus which praised Mew for his work on (as best I can recall) a Ten Years After CD. What surprised me is that no other members stepped forward to challenge Claus or differ with him. Does this mean that Mew is straightening out his act, or does Claus sinply have a different set of criteria when evaluating sound quality? Just curious.

[Gary]

I don't know. But perhaps not *everything* done at Abbey Road is that *bad*! Perhaps it depends on the master tapes - if they were hissy, more no-noise. If they were not hissy, less no noise.

Or perhaps it boils down to what is available. Are there other Ten Years After remasters? Don't think so - so there is not much of a choice. So the new remasters are pretty good, comparatively speaking!

There are three versions of Bowie's catalogue. The Abbey Road remasters on Virgin are the worse of the lot - yet they are the newest of the remasters! Why are things getting worse!?! Did AR need to make them sound better to make them different, brighter, boomier.... etc?

We really can't tell - we are not the remastering engineers. Are they hard of hearing (probably not - you'd think someone with that problem would retire, huh?) Do they have to toe the company line and use certain EQ settings? Are they under pressure to have more sales than previous versions in order to retain the Artist? Is the Artist the one who wants to punch up the music? Do they feel they have to compete with modern music standards and modernize their music to today's new buyers? For example everything seems to be compressed these days. Why would one buy something with dynamic range when you could be *RoCkInG, mAn?!?* You know?

..."Before you criticize, walk a mile in my shoes".....

Gary

[lukpac]

Or perhaps nobody else here has actually heard the discs...