CD sound quality: original pressings vs regular remaster vs MFSL, etc

THe original CD master of "The Present" CD by The Moody Blues is particularly bad.    The remaster fixes that.  Night and Day.

I recently found there is a disc from Japan called Blu-spec and Blu-spec2.  Both produce redbook CD using Sony blue-ray production equipment and have been available since 2008.  The process was improved in 2012.  As an experiment I purchased the same most recent  remastered version on regular CD and Blu-spec2 of Blizzard of Oz by Ozzy Osbourne.  The regular CD new was $7 and the Blu-spec was $23.  The difference was night and day.  Like Tommy Lee Jones said about the disc in the original Men in Black movie "Oh well, I'm going to have to buy the White Album again".

THe original CD master of "The Present" CD by The Moody Blues is particularly bad.   The remaster fixes that. Night and Day.

Mapman I haven't got this at all and there were only two, but I find it hard to believe it after seeing how compressed the remaster is.

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Moody+Blues&album=The+Present

Cheers George

I like both Blue-spec and MoFi ok, as a rule. I tried comparing the Blue-spec and Mofi versions of Billy Joel's Turnstiles CD.

The Blue-spec was Wayy open sounding...like way more than most. The vocals sounded ok, but not like the original vinyl back in the day. A sort of nice, if over-hyped, uber-detailed kind of sound overall.

But, the Mofi was comparatively more closed in sounding, almost comparatively plain sounding at first. No uber detail. But, it sorta took me awhile to understand what it was I had in front of me, exactly, by way of the comparison, since the two masterings were so plainly different in character.

After a few listens, I could tell that the Mofi version was vastly more in line with what I could recall from the LP. If anything, the Mofi was faintly more closed-in than the LP, but that might be the only difference other than a slight improvement to everything overall (my tt setup back in the day was modest).

By comparison I had to conclude that the Blue-spec mastering was Way off, so much that it seemed tonally 'stretched' somehow so that the vocals were no longer accurate. It seemed to have slightly more dynamics to the vocals, that uber detail and "air" and "space" in spades. But, having heard the original vinyl before, I could tell that the sound was all 'spaced out' just too bizzarely to be the real thing. I know for one thing, that whatever studio sound Joel was aiming for, it probably was Not something as hyper-real or as somehow psychedelic as the Blue-spec edition. Not for this material. Nor in the rest of his albums.

But, I can almost see someone being tricked into thinking that that version of the album was superior, since some of its sound characteristics are seemingly better in the head-to-head. But, I'm glad in this case I'd already heard the vinyl, otherwise the comparison, with no guide, might have had me confused for some time.

But, like others, I just don't put much stock in the recording-house/label technologies - it may be nice, but none of that matters if the mastering/remastering is no good.

I suspect what the mastering/remastering issue comes down to is not so much a technical decision as it is a business decision. Like the way Rhino seems to treat the Stevie Nicks catalog, for example. Lots of earlier issues of SN or Fleetwood Mac by them are of quite good sound quality. As well as are their more recent reissues of the same material. But, they know there’s a certain segment of the market that is hounding them for more releases. But, a new remastering of one of the heretofore unreleased titles in that catalog would be just as expensive as one of the original titles they had already released and they could be afraid that the end sales would not justify the expense. I expect that’s because no matter what technology is used, it still takes a guiding engineering "ear" throughout the process in order to come up with a winner of a mastering/remaster. That process simply demands time, knowhow and care, period. And time, certainly in this case, equals money. So, maybe it’s no real surprise that a lot of the more recent SN catalog has all suffered the same sort of audible affliction, that characteristic "Rhino"-type of hardness that on some titles can border on brittleness, for example. As if they were released "down-n-dirty" style just to make a quick buck without risking a loss. It’s a bit like it’s not whether they Can do a good job, but whether they Want to take the time (money) to do a good job versus how much financial gain they can see coming from it. Note that if we’re talking about, say, the Beatles catalog, by way of Apple releases anyway, they are clearly such a perennial favorite and can be thought of in such a financially profitable promotional light, that’s it’s very unlikely that Apple would knowingly take the chance on releasing a dud. With such a potential cash cow as that, they may simply be unwilling to Not do a good job.

Not that any of this is earthshaking news exactly, I just think any technical considerations are thought of within the music industry as simply interchangeable with financial considerations (profit vs loss).