Remasters - are they better? What exactly is it?

@geoffkait  good examples. I do prefer the original Bowie CD releases,  though pricey to obtain.

@select-hifi agree with the Japan Sanyo release, I paid top dollar for mine. Love how Gold Dust Woman preserves the original screams at the end.

You can pretty much tell what decade something was recording by the quality of the recording.

Nonsense. Like many things in life, recording quality is a bell curve.

a flat transfer of the original analogue master tapes is best, nothing added and nothing taken away

a flat transfer does not exist. Tape machines have EQ curves aligned at 3 points: 100Hz, 1KHz and 10KHz. If the original was recorded on an ATR-102 and the copy is made on a pair of Otari / Studer / MCI, the sound will change - sometimes drastically.

When I was a recording engineer, if I wanted a ’faithful copy’, I schlepped my 2T to the studio and made a ’master’ off the 2T buss.

There can be differences between CDs that are not remasters, but just later pressings. Someone decides the recording needs a little ’help’ and messes about. See an example from Fagan’s Nightfly track I.G.Y. see http://ielogical.com/Audio/#ReIssues

The recent remastering of The Beatles album Abbey Road is a good example of a clear improvement in sound

Crime of the Century is killer on vinyl.

That probably depends on what ’original’ you had. see http://ielogical.com/Audio/#Origins

@ieales  No it's nonsense to say you cannot tell around what decade a recording is from.  Old recordings just sound different.  They generally sound like they're being played through an old hifi system or they literally sound like a recording of an LP.  There's very little slam, lots of noise, sounds like AM radio bascially.

That's NOT to say there aren't some good sounding older albums.  I get that.  But there's a clear difference..

It sounds like the difference is two things:

1. Older recordings were meant for "lesser" hifi systems or mediums that couldn't produce much bass or crystal clear highs so they didn't push it.  

2. Remasters can be better or worse depending.. Kinda what I figured.  

Again, go take any old Elvis album and see if you're shaking the rafters in your house.  Then take any album of almost any genre recorded post 2000 and you'll find much more "richness" to the sound.  As if everything in the recording path is just better.. Better mics, cables, mixing equipment, and MUCH better hifi systems.

I'm just not sure how someone can disagree that there's not a huge difference in the sound of older stuff vs newer stuff..  Maybe you like that old nostalgic sound.. If you do, I'd say save your money on great audio equipment though because it matters much less.

@dtximages

I have records and CDs that are 30 or more years old that do have lots of slam, very little noise, and definitely don’t sound like AM radio.

Not sure why you take exception to everyone who has a different opinion, including someone who claims to be a sound engineer and others whose opinions are pretty well regarded here.

Meanwhile the artists you mentioned for the most part have very compressed recordings, so it might be said that you as well could enjoy those with less than great equipment or at least don’t have to be great at handling dynamic swings. Some people like this effect, most audiophiles do not.

Maybe if you told us your equipment we would have a better understanding of your position.

To address the original question, here are some comments.

1. First, remasters are a marketing tool by the record companies to sell more copies of mature material that has fallen off the radar. By having a well known mastering engineer put out a new version the record company gets to highlight the old record and many of us will by the same album again - maybe many times over. I have at least 6 versions of CSN's first album on vinyl and CD. I don't even know how many versions I have of DSOTM.

2. For vinyl, remastering can allow the final master (please don't use the word, "mixed" - that is a completely different step) to have deeper bass and greater dynamics that can take advantage of state of the art vinyl pressing equipment and electronics. Many vinyl reissues are pressed on 180 gram vinyl and the stampers are used on fewer copies for a higher quality transfer. Several companies are also making 45 rpm lps of classic albums which allow for significantly higher dynamic range. It also takes advantage of modern high quality tonearms and cartridges. 40 years ago a cheap cartridge and tonearm wouldn't track a record with lots of bass - it would literally jump out of the groove.

3. For CDs there are several steps in the process where you can get an improvement with a new master. The first one involves the A/D converters that turn the analog master tape into a digital file. If the original CD was made decades ago you can bet that modern converters sound better. The old version may have been converted at 16/44.1 but the new version can be digitized at 24/192 or even higher - offering the opportunity to sell the record as a high resolution download. Second, the new mastering process may use a better sounding tape deck and electronics than the original version. Third, the mastering engineer may alter the gain, EQ, compression and limiting using the final mixdown tape from the recording studio. He/she can also utilize processors to manipulate things like stereo processing (sound stage width, etc.) and soft clipping of extreme transients. The goal is that hopefully the new version will sound better than the old one.

Of course, the question is whether or not the new version is actually better. Unfortunately many remasters are more heavily compressed (by using a limiter) to make them sound "modern." You may like this or you may not. For me a heavily compressed, limited recording almost always sounds worse. Limiting will likely overwhelm all of the other positive factors of remastering and make the version worse than the original.

Because of the above, buying remastered versions of older popular music is a bit of a hobby in itself. I usually check on the Steve Hoffman forum to see if the remaster has been reviewed by the members and I check the Dynamic Range (DR) database to see how compressed it is. Many vintage recordings are available in a surprising number of versions and some of them are collector's items going for collector prices. You can see this on Discogs. I fully admit that I'm a version geek and for me it's a fun part of my audiophile obsession.

Sorry for the long answer but I did try to keep it under 10 pages.