Why do I keep torturing myself with remasters?

While the quality of some (most?) of the early digital recordings were limited by the equipment available at the time, it is very easy now for a modern digital (DSD) recording to match (or, in some cases, exceed) vinyl in terms of frequency response. Admittedly, this has no bearing on whether or not you prefer the sound of vinyl over digital. The fidelity of one's playback system exerts a large influence in this as well.

But recordings stored on analog tape are subject to degradation due to how the recording was made in the first place (i.e. magnetism). The longer an analog tape is stored, the more 'bleed through' of the signal to adjacent parts of the tape you get (unless you take proactive measures from the beginning).

Alan Shaw (of Harbeth speakers in the UK) did interesting experiment. Here's a link to it: http://www.harbeth.co.uk/usergroup/showthread.php?1477-Early-analogue-recordings-amp-an-evaluation-of-analogue-technology. He analyzed 30 year old tape recordings spectrally and found instances of pre and post echoes in quiet parts of the tape (i.e. where you'd normally expect silence). This was unnoticeable in the busier passages but it was still there.

So remastered recordings that use the original master analog tape will have some unwanted signal introduced into the new recording. Removing it can contribute to a degradation of the original recording. 

Direct-to-disk recordings would obviously not have to deal with this issue.

Removing unwanted signal is futile because to remove that extra signal needs digital processing and it always just lessens sound quality.
I personally don´t want any kind of digital processing to the original information. I´m not excited about analog either but can accept in certain cases.

Not another analog digital debate, please..
not the topic


A friend of mine received some pristine 1950s and 60s jazz from a friend who’s dad had passed away. He knew a few of the names but had no idea what he was holding. Treasure troves like some small label Duke Ellington.

As I was updating him on what he had I told him this would be a flash forward to some music lover picking through our extensive collections


Really put it in perspective

I agree ehto
    I lost thousand of albums to a house fire ,replacing them is virtually impossible.I shop in the obvious places and see something I had used for 50 bks to hundreds .That puts alot in prospective for me ,I think to myself  "if i could just shop from my old collection i would be stoked"
     Unforntunatley i was bit like many in the early 90s to let the lp12 sit and start collecting the ultimate sound! compact discs lol (many thousands were lost).
       I am rebuilding my collection again and I don't think i've bought 10 cd (used at that),and hundreds and hundreds of albums,That said i do have probly 10,000 albums in mp3 :(
      I still say original and japanese if i can get it. I just popped open a sealed Steely Dan Aja tonight lmtd original ,it was warped pretty bad when playing on bside even with my clamp.I shot the guy an email (ebay purchase) he told me to keep the album and he refunded my money back to paypal.I thought that was pretty cool because it was sealed and that can be a gamble sometimes because of age yannow