Adventures In Mastering: "HEART GREATEST HITS" for Audio Fidelity Gold CD..

When I was told this Heart compilation was coming down the pipeline, I sighed. Doing comps are a lot of work, compiling masters from different sources, different studios, engineers, producers and eras. All to be fitted on a disk so they sound reasonably coherent with each other, same universe and all that.

I knew this one would be a pain in the butt to master and it was, but it turned out quite well.

Both Stephen Marsh and I are Heart fans and it was hard making sense of what Mike Flicker and crew were going for way back then.

For example, a song like BARRACUDA was mixed with the instruments practically sounding like they were draped in a big blanket while the vocals were "out there" with top end, cutting through the murk.

I remember playing my old LP way back when and thinking that the thing needed to be LOUD for it to sound any good and perhaps that was the idea.

When all of the songs were put together on our "test" disk (for my home use), I knew we really had our work cut out for us.

The first song on the disk is a much later recording called STRONG STRONG WIND that was new when the Greatest Hits was released in the late 1990s and I knew I would have to struggle to integrate it in to the rest of the songs, tone wise and volume wise.

During mastering, we listened to the issued Greatest Hits disk and to me it sounded bright, edgy, compressed to pain and downright unmusical. I thought with a sinking feeling that perhaps HEART wanted it to sound like that. Maybe they liked it like that. Well, we didn't. Immediately we vowed to add no compression, no weird bright EQ and we set out to add BODY back to the compilation, to add, well, heart to HEART.

The opening song on the issued CD sounds really digital and bad, no bass, ear bleeding sonics and it obscured the fact to me that it's really a nice song. But, when we heard the master takes (six of them to choose from), wow, what a difference. With a little massaging, we created a nice opener for the Gold CD. Wait until you compare with the issued version. You'll start to like the song much better when you hear ours.

Stephen Marsh grew up on HEART and had a great suggestion regarding the pacing of the songs. We spread them out a bit to give the silence in between a little chance to let our ears get ready for the next song.

Capitol Records kindly helped us out with the DREAMBOAT ANNIE, etc. stuff so we pretty much used every original mix that still exists on these songs.

We used vacuum tubes galore to get some BODY into this solid state world of HEART and you will probably notice that everything sounds much more well-rounded now (no chick pun intended). The bass notes have depth and weight, not just one note plops. The acoustic guitars shimmer but do not overbear. The vocals sound more lifelike. All in all, you can crank this one way up there and it will just sound better and better the louder it gets. Dynamic range has been restored.

Typing these thoughts out is making me want to play our final test disk again and enjoy these songs again. I predict you will dig this!

1."Strong, Strong Wind" (Warren) - 4:28
2."Magic Man" (Wilson, Wilson) - 5:28
3."Crazy on You" (Wilson, Wilson) - 4:54
4."Dreamboat Annie" (Wilson, Wilson) - 3:50
5."Barracuda" (DeRosier, Ennis, Fisher, Wilson, Wilson) - 4:21
6."Little Queen" (DeRosier, Fisher, Fossen, Leese, Wilson, Wilson) - 5:10
7."Kick It Out" (Wilson, A.) - 2:45
8."Love Alive" (Fisher, Wilson, Wilson) - 4:23
9."Heartless" (Wilson, Wilson) - 5:00
10."Straight On" (Ennis, Wilson, Wilson) - 5:09
11."Dog and Butterfly" (Ennis, Wilson, Wilson) - 5:22
12."Even It Up" (Ennis, Wilson, Wilson) - 5:10
13."Bebe le Strange" (Ennis, Fisher, Wilson, Wilson) - 3:40
14."Tell It Like It Is" (Davis, Diamond) - 4:28
15."This Man Is Mine" (Ennis, Wilson, Wilson) - 3:08
16."How Can I Refuse" (Andes, Carmassi, Ennis, Wilson, Wilson) - 3:56
17."Rock and Roll" (Live) (Bonham, Jones, Page, Plant) - 6:10

 

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