What does "remastering" mean?

[Simon75]

I've just read recently that Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan have remastered Mule Variations(1999) and a few other of their more recent albums. I own Mule Variations in both cd and lp formats and both already sound great. Which makes me wonder when a recording is remastered(particularly when that recording is fairly modern)what does it actually amount to?

[agk]

An excuse to sell a few more albums.

[walpurgis]

It can mean anything. What it was remastered from, with and turned into (if at all).

[Pete The Cat]

Not being lazy here but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering is a decent overview.

The success or failure of a remaster from a critical listening perspective comes under the "process" section which covers a multitude of factors. Too often with contemporary music a recording is messed with in order to, for example, suit the perceived needs of people listening on iPods while on trains.

Pete

[Yomanze]

Most of the time remastering means compressing the master and hyping it up with EQ, generally making the music hotter and louder, with digital artefacts from the EQ, and with less dynamic contrast. 90% of the time I prefer the originals, 10% if that are albums that were fixed after getting badly mastered in the first place.

[Macca]

Most of the time remastering means compressing the master and hyping it up with EQ, generally making the music hotter and louder, with digital artefacts from the EQ, and with less dynamic contrast. 90% of the time I prefer the originals, 10% if that are albums that were fixed after getting badly mastered in the first place.

Pretty much this although I'd say 10% is a little high unless we are counting those albums where the original release is heavily compressed. Mastering engineers know what they are doing, if it is compressed to death in mastering it is because that is how the client (which is not necessarily the artist) wanted it.

I agree with Andrew it is mainly a way to sell you again a recording you already bought, or in the case of high resolution releases to fool you into thinking that the difference in sound to the original release is due to the added 'high resolution' content when in reality it is because they have just taken the original recording, twiddled a few knobs and moved some sliders up and down.

[Rothchild]

It wasn't behind a log-in before (but it's a simple subscription) this is a long read but very interesting and well worth the time: http://tapeop.com/interviews/btg/63/george-massenburg-gml/ covering mastering and re-mastering by one of the (eh-hem) masters of the art.

It is easy to be cynical about the role of a Mastering Engineer and it's true that there have been some terrible hack-jobs that have made it out in the wild, but done well it can really help with the final gloss and glue that a record needs.