what CDs are most in need of remastering?


A number of threads discuss merits of various remastered albums. I'm generally a fan of remastering. After many years of colleting dust (the CD, not me) I hauled out Genesis's "Invisible Touch" yesterday... yecchh! Talk about a CD in desperate need of remaster, there you go. It's mastered onto the CD at relatively low level even though it uses a tremendous amount of compression to give extremely poor dynamics. Santana's "Supernatural" suffers the same way -- sounds great on a boombox, lousy on a high rez system. The problem is too much compression. Instead of natural excitement from the dynamics, the sound is constantly "in your face", because one of the effects of compression is to increase perceived loudness. Ditto for Paul McCartney's latest, "Back in the US Live 2002". I couldn't stand it after 5 minutes and had to eject the disk. Maybe compression had a place when we all listened to Top 40 on AM radio, but it has no place in modern digital recording. Give us full resolution disks! (Here's a shudder: why would you use compression in mastering an SACD disk? The horror... the horror...) If need be, boombox makers can add a digital compression circuit that is effective during playback, making their boxes sound better.

But I digress. Which disks do you nominate as most in need of remastering?
1439bhr

Showing 1 response by jdlepera