How are digitally-recorded albums remastered?

[Ron Stone]

How are digitally-recorded albums remastered? Given STEEL WHEELS, STOP MAKING SENSE, and the Peter Gabriel remasters, I know digital masters can be improved for CD. But how much further can digital masters be improved?

It would seem that an analog tape can be remastered with technologies of ever increasing resolution and/or greater care, at least until the deterioration of the aging tape exceeds the sonic benefits of another round of remastering. (I'm not an enginner by any means, so please bear with me).

But a digital tape would seem to be a finite source. That is, once the storage capacity of the consumer end-product exceeds the number of one and zeros on the original tape/drive, you've gone as far as you can. With SACD, I assume we will have a storage device that exceeds the resolution of many digital recordings. What happens then?

[Steve Hoffman]

Nothing's finite. If I was remastering something digital, I would use digital mastering gear, that's all. My technique would vary but slightly...

[Steve Hoffman]

Forgot the SACD part, sorry.

Well, the regular digital signal is just upsampled and then converted to DSD. Works pretty well.

[lukpac]

Well, I might add that remastering isn't simply about getting "more resolution". It's about getting the right tonality. Who's to say they got that right the first time (read: they probably didn't)?

As far as techniques go, I know some engineers strongly feel analog EQ tools are better than digital tools, so they'll actually convert to analog first, master, then convert back to digital.

[Sound]

I am not an expert by any means. (We hire the experts for the tech stuff) For one, there is 'upsampling', were the digital source is converted to 24/96. All digital lps that were recorded at 14/44 sound crappy I my opinion. (Hence the bad name) When a 24/96 source is used, they can sound fantastic. Really. I don't think it serves people to eschew digital sources for LPs. The new 24 technology sounds many times over, better than 14/44.
Maybe Steve can finish this thought for me. When any major 'rebalancing' or 'remixing' needs to be done, the source can be converted to analog. Just like we do when we listen to it. Am I close Steve?

[Jeff H.]

Originally posted by Steve Hoffman
Nothing's finite. If I was remastering something digital, I would use digital mastering gear, that's all. My technique would vary but slightly...


Steve, have you ever had a problem getting a digital tape to playback? And should you backup digital master tapes with analog safeties? I'm interested in your opinion on this.

[John Buchanan]

Some of the early digital machines by 3M sampled at 50kHz. Apparently the tapes sounded great when played back in the studio, but, because there were no 50kHz to 44.1 kHz sample rate converters at that time (easily available now), the analogue output of the 3M machine was fed back in to the analogue input of a Sony machine to be sampled at 44.1. "Bop 'til you drop" and "Borderline" (Ry Cooder) are 2 examples of this and could be improved by a remaster. I wonder what machines thedigital Dire Straits were recorded on?

[Steve Hoffman]

Originally posted by Jeff H.



Steve, have you ever had a problem getting a digital tape to playback? And should you backup digital master tapes with analog safeties? I'm interested in your opinion on this.

Jeff,

Just catching up on old questions. Sorry for the wait.

I've had many problems playing back old digital tapes. Unlike analog, if there is a dropout, the sound vanishes and the thing mutes. Sigh.

Would I backup digital MIXES with analog backups? Well, I would mix to digital and analog tapes at the same time. Silly to make an analog copy of a digital tape, isn't it?

That would be like taking a photograph of a Xerox of a photograph....It would work, but better to do it right out of the console.

[Jeff H.]

Originally posted by John Buchanan
Some of the early digital machines by 3M sampled at 50kHz. Apparently the tapes sounded great when played back in the studio, but, because there were no 50kHz to 44.1 kHz sample rate converters at that time (easily available now), the analogue output of the 3M machine was fed back in to the analogue input of a Sony machine to be sampled at 44.1. "Bop 'til you drop" and "Borderline" (Ry Cooder) are 2 examples of this and could be improved by a remaster. I wonder what machines thedigital Dire Straits were recorded on?


John, I'm not certain of all of Dire Straits albums that were recorded digitally, but I know that "Brothers In Arms" was recorded on a Sony PCM-3324 multitrack recorder and was probably mixed to a Sony 1630 2-track.

[Mike V]

Some of the early Telarc CDs suffered from this downsampling from 50khz to 44.1khz. They lost a lot of detail you could tell was there (by listening to LP copies). People on this board told me I was wrong to suggest there were DACs out there prior to 1980 that could sample to 50khz. They were out there as early as '78 and possibly earlier.