|
|
|
June 01, 2007
I was re-listening to some albums from the late 80s recently, for example Pet Shop Boys Actually and Elton John Sleeping with the Past. Although I could write an entire post about how Sleeping with the Past is probably the best album Elton John did in the entirety of the 80s and 90s, I will instead focus on technical issues involved in these mid- to late 80s major label all-digital recordings. They have a unique sound--sort of clipped, tinny, with a pretty bad frequency curve. As many of the elements were digital themselves (DX7s and drum machines) there was a perfect storm of digitality that has led to these early CDs making a bad name for the format up until this very day, even though now CDs sound fine. Most of the problem came from early analog-to-digital conversion, which was notoriously inaccurate especially in high frequencies.
So I got to thinking about how exactly these CDs were made, and how they have been recently remastered. There were not a whole lot of choices for multi-track digital recordings in the mid 80s, probably the Sony 3324 (which recorded at 44.1 or 48 kHz at 16 bits) was the most ubiquitous. CDs were delivered to the pressing plant on a Sony 1610 or 1630, which were devices that put digital stereo audio onto Betamax tapes. Digital stereo recordings could be delivered on Sony DASH machines or Mitsubishi ProDigi tapes; DAT and ADAT were still a few years off. The question I really have is, what is the advantage of remastering this material, considering that it was recorded in 16-bit with bad converters in the first place? That is, if these albums were recorded with old technology, don't the quiet, tinny CDs represent the original intent a bit better? And if they were unable to play back or locate the original, unmastered digital stereo tapes from the studio, what are they using to remaster anyway? I posted a topic on hydrogenaudio forums but haven't gotten any real answers yet. One possibility is that the remastering is being done from analog tape copies made at the time of the recordings, which is possibly a better-sounding source than the original CD under the theory that the CD would have gone through another round of old, inadequate analog-to-digital conversion, when that stereo master was put on CD at the mastering house. |