I was wondering, what do people prefer,an album released in it's original form on CD (no remastering, direct from the original master), or when they are digitally remastered?. As I know some remasters are lazy & just the original volume bumped up (or brickwalled) to sound 'improved'. There's an article about it here

Neither. Vinyl. And not that new overpriced hipster vinyl. MP3 files sound better.

It depends, with someone like BILLY JOEL that older catalog needed it cause it all sounded so low and weak, and unclear, since alot of his cds came out straight when cds first came out.

Prince, god so much needs it, Sign o the times needs alot of work.

Harry Chapin, love his albums but holy shit i can hear anything on the discs, nothing has been done suprisingly with his catalog since the family owns alot of it.

There are others but these are standout ones for me.

Also with Remasters i like the album left the way it was, bonus tracks and demos tacked on, i get it, alot of albums were just 40 minutes (the way they should be) and they want to fill up a disc, but in this day and age when shit isnt selling anyway BUT catalogs, there is no reason a double disc cant be priced as one, if you can sell a new MP3 for 5bucks you can sell a double cd for 8 or 9.

I mostly just buy remasters if they contain extra songs. I'll get them if I don't have the original record or it's some kind of rare singles compilation like Numero Records. A lot of acts and labels from decades ago never released albums. If I just want to hear the song louder I have a volume knob and bass/treble knobs if I want that. Even pre-CDs, different albums/singles had various sound levels and sound quality from each other. That's partly based on the quality of the recording equipment, the engineering, and the material used for the records. Then there were half-speed, quadraphonic, Mobile Fidelity mixes, dolby cassettes, etc. In some cases the remasters do sound better like the recent ones for The Beatles.

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I have the Genesis Box sets from a few years ago, which the albums are remixed as well as remastered. It also has DVDs for each album which has video footage from the era the albums orginally came out, plus B-sides and then newly filmed interviews done in 2007. There's 2 different mixes of each album, one in stereo and the other in surround sound.

Remasters have turned out to be bullshit in so many cases.

I remember when the first batch of David Bowie remasters came out in the late 90s, everybody was going crazy because they supposedly sounded so great. Well, some of them sounded so different from the originals that they should have been called remixes. But it was a new thing back then and everyone thought it must be an improvement because it had the novelty factor associated with it. Up to that point people had been used to advances in digital technology resulting in improvements and very few were even aware of the chances that the sound engineers might end up overusing their tools. Bowie himself was wise enough to have another batch of remasters produced of his work soon enough. But, yeah, in '99 that stuff supposedly sounded just great to so many ears. I stuck with the older Rykodisc releases myself.

If you get a remaster that's done between, say, 1995-2005, the chances are the processing is completely overdone. People were just in denial about that thing, because they were operating under that "newer is better" fallacy.

Remaster + expanded booklet? hell yeah

Remix + remaster ?? hell no

Personally, I like remasters if the sound has definitely been remastered (ie not just 'brickwalled') and done with care. I also like if they include bonus tracks like outtakes, b-sides & such.

Yep I find a lot of Prince's 80's albums sound better on cassette. I think it's the limitations of the time with CD where some albums were directly transferred from an analog source onto compact disc. Also if you compare the sound volume of an original CD then usually the sound itself is so low that you have to turn up the volume high just to hear it. I have to do that with Stevie's In Square Circle album on CD.

I usually avoid remasters because of the brickwalling. Lately, I mostly listen to records.

Originals usually sound better, occaisionally remasters sound better, best just to research it first, see what others have said about the product...eg on Amazon the new Oasis remasters are meant to sound dreadful, so i avoided them.

SuperFurryAnimal said:

Vinyl sounds better. 24bit. CD is 16. Vinyl is sound wave and digital is a snap shot of that soundwave. The hdaudio now at ponos sounds good. Remasters are great if done right. The 4 done on vinyl sound good. After 30 years the folk that did the transfer learned a lot. That being said the original vinyl of Purple Rain sounds awesome and can be found cheap n plenty. I still buy CDs just for the car.

What do you mean by "Vinyl sounds better. 24bit."?

Vinyl doesn't have bits at all, as it's analog. You give an explanation of the differences between vinyl and digital audio that is correct and you seem to have an understanding what the differences are - but "24bit" doesn't correlate with the idea of a continuous sound wave. You can't define an analog medium like vinyl as being of any amount of bits.

I suppose a lot of vinyl releases that come out these days have been transferred to vinyl from 24 bit digital files. I also know many people make FLAC / WAV rips of their vinyl records and use 24 bit files for the purpose, which might be what you've gotten the idea from? Or just the talk behind the Pono stuff? The files sold for Pono use a very high resolution, but it's still not "the same" as vinyl.

Yeah, "Purple Rain" sounds just fine on vinyl as it is and the CD isn't the worst sounding of Prince's CD releases either. However, the original CD releases of Parade, SOTT and The Black Album should be just forgotten if we ever get decent remasters for those.

Toofunkyinhere said:

Originals usually sound better, occaisionally remasters sound better, best just to research it first, see what others have said about the product...eg on Amazon the new Oasis remasters are meant to sound dreadful, so i avoided them.

I read the same about Soundgarden's Superunknown remaster. Most say it's terrible so I'll keep my original CD pressing.

I would get a remaster of anything released in the 80s up until 1991, and that includes reissues of music from decades prior. They tend to be too quiet.

But I find it rather ridiculous when you have remasters of mid 90s albums, like, those never sounded bad in the first place.

When remasters are done right,the results can be incredible.I hear things in the music that I never noticed before.

Cinny said:

I would get a remaster of anything released in the 80s up until 1991, and that includes reissues of music from decades prior. They tend to be too quiet.

But I find it rather ridiculous when you have remasters of mid 90s albums, like, those never sounded bad in the first place.

excellent post

It always depends. CDs can sound sound better than vinyl. Vinyl can sound better than CD. It mostly depends on who is doing the production & mastering of the particular reissue.

This goes all the way up to 24 bit FLAC files, they CAN sound noticeably better than CD if mastered carefully. They don't always.

There are definitely snake oil salesmen out there in regard to audio format and sound quality right now. Trust your own ears.

IMO Prince's 80s catalog all needs to be remastered... desperately. The CD runs made in the 80s are not good. Just compare the tracks on The Hits And The B-Sides to the CDs of the actual albums and it is obvious.

Cinny said:

I would get a remaster of anything released in the 80s up until 1991, and that includes reissues of music from decades prior. They tend to be too quiet.

But I find it rather ridiculous when you have remasters of mid 90s albums, like, those never sounded bad in the first place.

That's a pretty good rule. 1992 was when I first started to notice that CDs really were starting to sound good. I didn't like them in the 80s at all.

bobzilla77 said:

It always depends. CDs can sound sound better than vinyl. Vinyl can sound better than CD. It mostly depends on who is doing the production & mastering of the particular reissue.

This goes all the way up to 24 bit FLAC files, they CAN sound noticeably better than CD if mastered carefully. They don't always.

There are definitely snake oil salesmen out there in regard to audio format and sound quality right now. Trust your own ears.

IMO Prince's 80s catalog all needs to be remastered... desperately. The CD runs made in the 80s are not good. Just compare the tracks on The Hits And The B-Sides to the CDs of the actual albums and it is obvious.

Eh, I only have The Hits on tapes myself.

Does a song like "I Could Never The Place Of Your Man" sound a lot better on the CD version of The Hits 1 release? Because on the CD version of SOTT the drums sound sort of hilarious. I'm wondering if they'll even get tracks like that right for the first round of remasters (if those will get released at all).

I remember SOTT sounded just fine on my old, rather cheap stereos from the 1980s. Doesn't sound the same at all on any modern playback equipment. It sounds dreadful on the studio monitors that I mainly use these days. I've suspected the album has just been "optimized" for the playback equipment of its time and it sounds "off" due to some lame EQ boosts that didn't sound so bad on the typical stereos that were around then.

[Edited 3/11/15 11:57am]

CDs suck! period...

bobzilla77 said:

Just compare the tracks on The Hits And The B-Sides to the CDs of the actual albums and it is obvious.

You know, I never made a comparison. Thought they would be about the same, but then again they were often edited versions.

I remember reading one time that in Japan, the original mix of Michael Jackson's Off The Wall album was put on CD at one time. The original Off The Wall vinyl copies had the orange Epic label, instead of the dark one that it changed to around that time.

Do any of you buy those Japanese CDs that are packaged like mini-LPs? They are expensive,but the sound quality is FANTASTIC!! The sound is dynamic....much better than the CDs manufactured in America.I highly recommend them.I'm currently in the process of collecting all of the Santana ones.I also got this Donna Summer album and it sounds incredible!!

I'll take an original, if it's really rare and out of print, and not been re-issued. Many of the Warner Bros. cds first issued, are what music heads call "target-style" cds, which have a colored label side with a "scope-like" design, resembling a target. Word on the street is these pressings were processed straight from the masters and have a distinctly genuine sound, not like the later over-processed pressings. I have a few, and they sound great. I need to get my hands on a 1999 target cd.

Here's a link about those cds, if interested. Really good site.

http://www.keithhirsch.com/target-cds

to answer the OP question,I prefer remastered CDs.Once a CD is remastered,I ususally get rid of the original copy.

MotorBootyAffair said:

I'll take an original, if it's really rare and out of print, and not been re-issued. Many of the Warner Bros. cds first issued, are what music heads call "target-style" cds, which have a colored label side with a "scope-like" design, resembling a target. Word on the street is these pressings were processed straight from the masters and have a distinctly genuine sound, not like the later over-processed pressings. I have a few, and they sound great. I need to get my hands on a 1999 target cd.

Here's a link about those cds, if interested. Really good site.

http://www.keithhirsch.com/target-cds

I have a few target euro pressings for other artists but not Prince.

SoulAlive said:

Do any of you buy those Japanese CDs that are packaged like mini-LPs? They are expensive,but the sound quality is FANTASTIC!! The sound is dynamic....much better than the CDs manufactured in America.I highly recommend them.I'm currently in the process of collecting all of the Santana ones.I also got this Donna Summer album and it sounds incredible!!

When I win the lottery, I'll look for the SHM CDs of Prince's For You to Lovesexy albums.

who wouldnt want bonus tracks + remaster?

Bad Company is releasing 2 Cd editions of their first 2 lps

sexton said:

SoulAlive said:

Do any of you buy those Japanese CDs that are packaged like mini-LPs? They are expensive,but the sound quality is FANTASTIC!! The sound is dynamic....much better than the CDs manufactured in America.I highly recommend them.I'm currently in the process of collecting all of the Santana ones.I also got this Donna Summer album and it sounds incredible!!

When I win the lottery, I'll look for the SHM CDs of Prince's For You to Lovesexy albums.

SoulAlive said:

Do any of you buy those Japanese CDs that are packaged like mini-LPs? They are expensive,but the sound quality is FANTASTIC!! The sound is dynamic....much better than the CDs manufactured in America.I highly recommend them.I'm currently in the process of collecting all of the Santana ones.I also got this Donna Summer album and it sounds incredible!!

i love those Mini LP CDs. But, I will only buy them if the original CD was mastered poorly. For example, when the Rufus and Chaka catalog was reissued in this format some years ago, I repurchased those titles because the American reissues sounded horrible. The one thing I don't like about these Mini LP releases is I've never seen one that included bonus tracks.