Remasters vs. Originals? Remasters worth it?

Freebase Dali · 06-10-2011, 07:03 PM

Yea, making releases louder doesn't harm anything if the extent of it is bringing up the volume as a whole and maybe putting a brickwall limiter on the master channel with no actual compression so that any errant peaks don't surpass 0db. But that's literally like turning up the volume on your speakers but without the peak limiting.
In some cases, that isn't enough, and compression is actually needed to bring the lowest parts up without having the highest parts go over the 0db threshold... and that's when you're sacrificing dynamics for volume.

If the original mix had elements that were simply mixed far too low in context with the rest of the mix, the decision has to be made whether those elements are critical enough that the dynamics between them and the loudest parts can be lessened without any ill effects. It's really a matter of circumstance.
With that said, some songs could benefit from it, while others simply can't, without making that dynamics sacrifice. I think that's where some remasters go wrong, in that, in a lot of cases, loudness is put before dynamics simply because of the way a lot of music is mixed now days. Those are usually the cases where remasters of this nature go wrong.

06-10-2011, 07:03 PM	#13 (permalink)
Freebase Dali Partying on the inside Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 5,584	Yea, making releases louder doesn't harm anything if the extent of it is bringing up the volume as a whole and maybe putting a brickwall limiter on the master channel with no actual compression so that any errant peaks don't surpass 0db. But that's literally like turning up the volume on your speakers but without the peak limiting. In some cases, that isn't enough, and compression is actually needed to bring the lowest parts up without having the highest parts go over the 0db threshold... and that's when you're sacrificing dynamics for volume. If the original mix had elements that were simply mixed far too low in context with the rest of the mix, the decision has to be made whether those elements are critical enough that the dynamics between them and the loudest parts can be lessened without any ill effects. It's really a matter of circumstance. With that said, some songs could benefit from it, while others simply can't, without making that dynamics sacrifice. I think that's where some remasters go wrong, in that, in a lot of cases, loudness is put before dynamics simply because of the way a lot of music is mixed now days. Those are usually the cases where remasters of this nature go wrong.