It terms of audio quality what CD is the best mastered? What CD makes you marvel at the clarity and the quality of the sounds?

sro100 said:

You should change the title to "Best Mixed Album".

Mastering is the icing on the cake and if an album is brilliantly mixed it doesn't even need mastering. If an album sounds technically awesome, it's mostly because great work was done by the recording engineer (who places the mics and actually records the sounds), and the mixing engineer. A mastering engineer cannot turn an average sounding recording into a great one (it's far too late at that stage), but a mixing engineer possibly could.

One can also not forget the producer and instrumentalist/players roles in a technically great sounding recording.

That being said, a mastering engineer can fk up the sound of a recording too so having a good mastering engineer is imperative too. It's just that their role is far less significant.

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I would say "Thriller" is a technically great sounding album. I know your thread title is CD's but I'll also mention I have Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" on vinyl which I bought brand new a few months ago and it's a marvelous recording. I've not listened on CD so I'm not sure how it differs.


If I were to break it down to the importance of the roles percentage wise, in making "Thriller" a technically great sounding album I would go with:


40% Intrumentalists/Players - When you have guys of this calibre playing you're getting great tones right out of the instruments and this is fundamental!

15% Producer - Advice on arrangements and how the parts fit together plays a big role in clarity.

15% Recording Engineer - Obviously you must capture these great performances sweetly!

29% Mixing Engineer - It's no coincidence when Bruce Swediens name pops up on a nice sounding record.

1% Mastering Engineer - The music lives and breathes in itself and this guy let it be. Haven't heard the Remaster so I'm commenting on the original. I wouldn't be surprised if the engineer who done the remaster has fkd it up a bit by adding too much sizzly high frequencies and limiting to make it sound "modern". This seems to be happening often on remasters these days to my dismay.

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[Edited 3/7/08 23:51pm]

To understand the technical roles a bit better, the amount of time spent is on average like this:

Recording: From days, to weeks to months depending on how much needs to be recorded, re-recorded, changed etc...

Mixing:
Top mix engineers working on big budget albums usually spend 1-2 days mixing each song. Sometimes they will remix a single song several times (each remix taking 1-2 days often), getting slightly differing versions and then they will pick the one which feels the best!
I read somewhere that one of the songs on Thriller (may have been Billie Jean) was remixed dozens of times and they ended using the very first mix.

Mastering:
A whole album is usually mastered in 2-4 hours.

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