Remastering; yeah right.

... use your ears!

Pete.

Even when it explicity says remastered from the original tapes it's often still crap, it is a bit of a lottery.

"All systems are perfectly designed to get the results they get."

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Originally posted by Paul A B:

Never tried that before - from now on I will read the packaging with my ears. Thanks for the tip.

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So if it says it's great on the box, it'll be great, right?

The package is the music. If the music sucks, take it back and change it for something else.

Pete.

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If the music sucks, take it back and change it for something else.

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Can you Brits return a CD on the basis of "The recording quality is not quite up to my standards"? If you tried that here in Germany, a pitying smile is all you'd get.

Imagine doing that at Waterstone's ... "Excuse me, I bought Auster's new novel here last month ... I find the plot structure is really quite abysmal, nothing like his older stuff. Could I exchange it for something else instead, please?"

Thomas

Mastering is something that happens after the mix. It's the job of making all of album's mixed tracks sound good together. This is almost always done somewhat independantly of the people who created the recording and mixdown. The clear set of ears is supposed to be objective about what needs to be done to the tracks to make them sound "good" for the expected audience.

Various tools can come into play during this phase: compression, EQ, harmonic excitation, reverb, dithering, etc. The end result can often make a particular track sound much different than its original mixdown, just for the sake of making it sound like it "fits" with the rest of the tracks on the album.

The mastering engineer makes many decisions as to what's "good" and what "fits". Sometimes he does very little to get it to work, and sometimes the changes can be dramatic.

There is also the job of creating the "copy master", which comes after the above stage. It involves getting the master onto an original, to be used during the manufacturing process. Often this is done by the same person (and during the same phase) as above, but not always.

I mention all of this, because there are many things that can occur during "mastering", and you never know whether the end result will be as good as you expect.

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

I received in the post today two cds purchased off Ebay - namely, the 'audiophile' remasters of Frank Zappa's "Apostrophe" and "One Size Fits All" - both sourced from the actual masters. It's a surprising improvement over the conventional cd releases that I also have - especially in the solidity of the bass. It also sounds a bit 'darker' in the cymbals - much less 'digital' and therefore much more pleasant.

I only wish the whole back catalogue was available in this manner (i.e. lovingly remastered from original analogue tapes).

Well worth the, urm, £30 I paid... oops, I did it again...

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

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Originally posted by Thomas K:

Can you Brits return a CD on the basis of "The recording quality is not quite up to my standards"? If you tried that here in Germany, a pitying smile is all you'd get.

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The local record shop I generally patronise is a branch of Fopp. All I have to do to change a CD there is go back with my disc and receipt and say, "I didn't like this".

FWIW I wouldn't anticipate any trouble changing a book at Waterstones either, as long as I had the receipt and the book was not damaged at all.

Pete.

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£30 for a CD - ridiculous!!! In my day you could buy a house with that and still have enough change left over to have a slap-up meal.

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That was for two cds, bought from the states and that price includes the Priority Mail postage from there to Scotland.

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

One alarming fuck up is the hot rats remaster, and I refer to the original CD, its completly different to the original, and ZF approved it, I think he had to much coca cola that day.

Also found One Size Fits All a few months back on record fantastic in every way I enjoy music.

Next on the hit list, Shut up and play yer guitar, although this would appear to be like rocking horse shit.

Sorry can't agree with you on the Zappa remasters, they are hugely different to the originals (in some cases extra instrumentation has been added)IMHO they should have been left alone.
Regards
Jim

You don't happen to be called Fred do you - I once knew a guy who had a Zappa-mad friend called Fred in Dundee... just kinda thought it mighta been one of those weird coincidences that happen from time to time...

Anyway, re: the masters. Some of the masters (e.g. Man From Utopia) really are very different, but the Au20 Ryko releases I'm listening to are pretty close to my original vinyls (I'm a bit of a sad completist, working my way to get a full set of the original vinyl - though a lot of it isn't as mint as I'd like).

Anyway, I digress. My TT is in storage at the moment (as I'm between homes) so it's difficult for me to compare directly, but the presentation of OSFA on Au20 is much more like the original vinyl as far as I can tell. Apostrophe likewise, but the beginning of Excentrifugal Forz (with the twangy guitar) really sounds very different to my 80's Apostrophe/OS combo cd mix.

Good to meet another Zappa fan on this forum...

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

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they are hugely different to the originals (in some cases extra instrumentation has been added)

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It sounds like they remixed *and* remasterered. Of course, this is what they'll have to do to all of the old recordings to make it compatible with those newfangled, 17-channel SS receivers.

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

I'm not a completist by any stretch so this may have a few holes in it.

FZ tinkered around with most/all of his stuff when he originally remastered to CD in the late 80s or early 90s. This in some extreme examples resulted in completely new instrumentation being added (I'm thinking Ruben & the Jets with new drums and bass). The remastering was VERY bright, seemingly because FZ's hearing was knackered and he needed a fair amount of treble boost to get what he felt was a decent balance.

Any reissues since his death will presumably have had someone remaster-out the brightness to give a more "appropriate" or "acceptable" amount of CD harshness, when compared to the originals.

Or am I talking garbage here?

Regards,
Ed.

p.s. I do find it very reassuring that no matter how inane my posting, I always get a message from Naim thanking me for my contribution

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OSFA on Au20 is much more like the original vinyl as far as I can tell.

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Which vinyl? The UK and US ones are rather different to one another..It just gets more and more complex!

Anyway, the 'silver' OFSA now available uses the same tape as the Gold version. In other words, its a fantastic CD.

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Apostrophe likewise, but the beginning of Excentrifugal Forz (with the twangy guitar) really sounds very different to my 80's Apostrophe/OS combo cd mix.

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The standard silver CDs of Apostrophe were all mastered from a stereo mix-down of the Apostrophe Quadrphonic release with a bit of digital reverb thrown in for luck. Its musically a bit different too. The gold CD is made from the original stereo master and is superb IMO.

I really don't see the need, all the zappa I have on record sounds better than any of the double ups I have on CD.

So get the records, they can still be found.

Mind you found Lathur the other week but on CD (Yea like I'll ever find an original) a ripper of an album, usual zappa excellence.

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Originally posted by garyi:

Mind you found Lathur the other week but on CD (Yea like I'll ever find an original) a ripper of an album, usual zappa excellence.

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Gary,

This is relatively recent, I believe it was released around 1997. I do not believe it was ever available on vinyl.

Peter

Lather was available on vinyl, but only as a 'high quality bootleg'. The story behind Lather is well known (in short, that it was broadcast live on radio with some warning for true fans to prepare themselves to record it) and as a consequence some high quality bootlegs were made via this means - not as high quality as the subsequent cd release IMHO, but better than a lot of the vinyl boots at the time.

The keyword here is 'unofficial' - Lather did exist as a quadruple (or was it triple) vinyl LP, and I actually had one in my possession for a while (though it was only on loan so that I could make a tape of it - this was circa 1988 or so), but the chances of finding it now are slim. I've seen it pop up on Ebay, but it's rare.

Getting into Zappa bootlegs became easier after a fashion - I think YCDTOSA volumes 1..6 started a trend, and the Zappa archive contained a lot of interesting live material, which was officially released in the early-mid nineties. However, before this point, it was a case of delving into the deepest and darkest world of shady dealings with sandaled ex-hippies for the illicit black stuff, and often at painful cost...

So, whatever happened to Fred Thomsett of T'Mershi Duween? I used to love that mag, but I'm not entirely sure if it's still going. Does anyone have any of these? I'd love to fill in the gaps...

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

I saw a vinyl box set version of the 1997 Lather on ebay about a year ago. I think it was a Japanese import and was going for a fair bit of cash. They are out there though.

Good news for Gary, the Shut Up box set crops up all the time. One went on ebay last week in what was described as near mint condition for little over a tenner!

It's the Lumpy Gravy original pressing that needs a second mortgage.

Another fantastic thing I found on ebay was a snow storm ornament, you know the things that you shake that are made out of plastic and have a low budget Christmas scene going on? Well this one was a "Dont eat the yellow snow" ornament with Nanook the naughty eskimo etc! Problem is that this auction thing is addictive. I've even developed a tolerance to David Dickinson.

Arf!

Mike, interested by your comment I looked on Amazon, and lo and behold shut up and play yer guitar was going second hand for 19 quid.

suffice to say its been snapped up.