Policy on "remastering"

[New Homebrew]

I don't see any explicit policy on seeding "adjusted" recordings. Most of what people call remastered really isn't, if you know what I mean. I am not very keen to download a CoolEditPro-ified version of a show, no matter how good someone's intentions are. My personal feeling is that:

...if you don't own/transfer the master source, only very limited modifications are acceptable:
-speed/pitch correction
-maybe gain adjustment assuming original recording is not clipped
-maybe balance adjustment
-dc offset correction (hi Rider!)

ie No EQ, no NR. Just don't do it.

[RainDawg]

I stronly disagree....there are quite a few people here who know what the hell they're doing. I could give you a dose of some the work Five or I have done on old analog stuff with NR, EQ, and Hiss Reduction and you'd be hooked for life. It's a very valuable tool when used correctly. 90% of the time, I can tell from someone's info file if they know what they are doing or if they're faking it.

On this topic, however, I should note that DC offset correction is fine, but must be done as a complete set. I will NOT endorse any audio editing done with EAC as it's just not practical to done track-at-a-time fixed for audio.

We are planning on endorsing personal remasters heavily provided that full information as to what was done is included. Again, you can usually tell when someone has done it right....

[New Homebrew]

Well, I passed on that Rush source, but we all have our own ideas about what constitutes a desirable rendering of a particular recording. Of course, it is your site, so set the rules - that is why I asked.

Believe what you want about DC offset, correcting it is a part of converting analog sources and something that I routinely do on my A>D transfers. I put it in the list of what I consider safe and harmless changes to a source based on my experience in using it. You are invited to download the shows I share and assess the effects. What's up with the "personal" tone of your post? It would seem I am trying to work together and contribute by the posts I have made in this section. Do you want to be the sole voice of technical opinion?

[Five]

most certainly not. around the time STG went down I was just getting to know you, let's just start fresh and discuss issues as they come up, okay?

[RainDawg]

Sorry man....no personal tone intended. I just remember a shitstorm that arose as a result of DC offset correction and wanted to nip it in the bud. I absolutely agree that DC offset correction is an essential part of mastering a recording, provided that it's done right and that it's done on a whole-set basis instead of track-by-track.

One of the goals Five and I had at STG before it finally went down was to make a good archive of remastering techniques and how to do them right. I have a few of the simpler ones that I'm putting the finishing touches on, including a DC offset on a complete-set basis one. So much work getting this site up that I've not had time to get those down yet.....

Listen, no personal offense taken. I post my opinions here, so let's not start to take disagreement personally. I think there are good ways to use every tool provided in the audio editing suites, and my goal at this site is to direct people to the safest and most effective way to do them, not elevate myself to position of sole arbiter of what's good.

Let's resume discussing this matter in a friendly way....

[RainDawg]

By the way, this technical discussion really belongs in the technobabble forum....

[ssamadhi97]

most certainly not. around the time STG went down I was just getting to know you, let's just start fresh and discuss issues as they come up, okay?
I'd rather see such matters set in stone and out of the way beforehand.. otherwise chances are we'll end up discussing them over and over again, like on STG.

To match this site's "high quality only" approach, I wonder whether we could establish some kind of quality control for remasters.. like, people are required to submit clips of the unprocessed and the mastered source, and a group of mods does a quality check to ensure that the remaster lives up to this site's standards.

Basically a pain in the ass, sure, but I think this kind of process will do good on several levels: It might scare off at least some of the people who just warezed a copy of Izotope Ozone and think they're great mastering engineers now; it'll ensure that no recordings that have just been eq'd to shit are going to be seeded; it'll allow aspiring mastering hobbyists to gather valuable feedback from people who know what they're doing, thus getting a reality check on their skills..

..and finally I think that anyone who takes pride in his skills and the time and effort he puts into (re)mastering a recording would be more than glad to comply with such requirements.


Thoughts?

[Rider]

I'd rather see such matters set in stone and out of the way beforehand.. otherwise chances are we'll end up discussing them over and over again, like on STG.

To match this site's "high quality only" approach, I wonder whether we could establish some kind of quality control for remasters.. like, people are required to submit clips of the unprocessed and the mastered source, and a group of mods does a quality check to ensure that the remaster lives up to this site's standards.

Basically a pain in the ass, sure, but I think this kind of process will do good on several levels: It might scare off at least some of the people who just warezed a copy of Izotope Ozone and think they're great mastering engineers now; it'll ensure that no recordings that have just been eq'd to shit are going to be seeded; it'll allow aspiring mastering hobbyists to gather valuable feedback from people who know what they're doing, thus getting a reality check on their skills..

..and finally I think that anyone who takes pride in his skills and the time and effort he puts into (re)mastering a recording would be more than glad to comply with such requirements.


Thoughts?


Are you volunterring to be one of the mods?

[ssamadhi97]

Sure, I could do that.. as long as I don't end up just being "the mod" ;) (it would require a whole bunch of people to ensure some basic level of "objectivity" anyway)

PS: no need to full-quote the previous post - keep the clutter down! :p

[Five]

it wouldn't take that long to listen to the clips. think of the fights that would break out, tho... maybe they could provide the clip and if it sucks then nobody would d/l the piece of s**t if it's banned or not

[Rider]

I wanted to do something like this al ong time ago. If you make people submit things to commity they will run and be very pissed about it.

[RainDawg]

To match this site's "high quality only" approach, I wonder whether we could establish some kind of quality control for remasters.. like, people are required to submit clips of the unprocessed and the mastered source, and a group of mods does a quality check to ensure that the remaster lives up to this site's standards.
One of my ideas when we were playing throwing out features for this site was to have a special forum for "remasters" where just this kind of thing would happen....people could post before and after samples, get feedback from fellow audio tinkering geeks, and refine their remaster before seeding it. Five seemed big on the idea but a few others thought it might be more work than it's worth.

I agree completely that this would be a great way to coerce people into providing information as to what they did, and would eliminate the "i cleaned the hiss with wavclean" kind of remasters we see.

Perhaps a subforum to technobabble where were could just have an "audio remastering" forum. Then, one a remaster has been fine-tuned, post it in the regular audio forum...people who don't want to see the remastering discussion won't have to.

Would you be willing to help mod such a subforum? I know I would put my name in there and Five will likely do so too. I'll bring this up again if we have the manpower to run it.

[Five]

even at it's peak the remastering thread only had about 10 devoted followers, maybe three of which were doing more than blowing hot air about some plugin they had read the ad for or maybe tried out but never used. Or people would post about some technique and I would say, oh, could I see a before and after of that and never hear from them again. I'm genuinely interested in this stuff but I wonder if ppl just talk about it or what.

[RainDawg]

I know....which is why Lynne and the other shied away from giving it a separate subforum before : fear that not enough people would use it. I still think it would be a good idea for anyone who really wants to post a remaster, but at the least they'd better give their method before we'll approve it.

[Five]

well, it should be in the lineage anyways. they usually don't leave it out completely. I passed on a recent show on another site because it said something like "I ran it thru and eq and now it sounds much better" but if they had've said something more descriptive I would have been right on it.

[ssamadhi97]

General question first: I guess all torrents will have to be approved by a moderator first? Screened submissions might be a nice means to keep uninteresting things off the site.. or how exactly are you going to handle this?
it wouldn't take that long to listen to the clips. think of the fights that would break out, tho...Well as far as I can tell the people who are both moderators and actually into this kind of stuff are sufficiently level-headed to discuss this in a serious manner.
I wanted to do something like this al ong time ago. If you make people submit things to commity they will run and be very pissed about it.Kind of related to what I mentioned before - if someone isn't proud enough of his work to subject it to a screening process, it's probably not worth it anyway...?
Perhaps a subforum to technobabble where were could just have an "audio remastering" forum. Then, one a remaster has been fine-tuned, post it in the regular audio forum...people who don't want to see the remastering discussion won't have to.

Would you be willing to help mod such a subforum? I know I would put my name in there and Five will likely do so too. I'll bring this up again if we have the manpower to run it.I'd totally be up for this.

[RainDawg]

I would think if people are not willing to submit their seeds for a peer-review that we could do without it here. I'll bring this up again, and if everyone agrees that a remastering subforum is in order, I'll try get it going.

We probably wouldn't want to get into it too deep until site launch, which is still 5 days away.....

[Rider]

I would think if people are not willing to submit their seeds for a peer-review that we could do without it here. I'll bring this up again, and if everyone agrees that a remastering subforum is in order, I'll try get it going.

We probably wouldn't want to get into it too deep until site launch, which is still 5 days away.....

Ummm no offense but one of the people who seeded a very nice master here already is one of the people who fliped out on me when I tried this with the TSP comunnity. They have really big egos and know what they are doing and don't want to be treated like children. And yes these are the people we want here. These are the people who avoided seeding on the groove. They are exactly who this site was made for. I've already seen more then one big name taper who never used the groove pass through here to check it out. lets not chase them off.

[Ambys Shrink]

Just my $0.02... NR is pretty risky and gives me the creeps. Even in studios, they don't really have that down yet. I'd definitely vote no NR of any sort.

[RainDawg]

Well, Rider, I think we can all usually tell the difference between people who know what they are doing and those who don't. I don't want to see CDR > Soundforge > FLAC without any notes as to what was done.

If someone is seeding their own masters or remasters where they give us the courtesy of telling us what the changed, that's fine. I have a hard time just trusting someone I don't know to the music as I've gotten too many ruined recordings.

So, would the mystery person be willing to share his process with us? No one is going to force them to upload before/after stuff if they've got well-detailed notes.

[RainDawg]

Just my $0.02... NR is pretty risky and gives me the creeps. Even in studios, they don't really have that down yet. I'd definitely vote no NR of any sort.
NR can yield great results if used sparingly...it is somewhat of a black art, but I've had some pretty amazing results with it in the past.

[wazoo2u]

Well, Rider, I think we can all usually tell the difference between people who know what they are doing and those who don't. I don't want to see CDR > Soundforge > FLAC without any notes as to what was done.

If someone is seeding their own masters or remasters where they give us the courtesy of telling us what the changed, that's fine. I have a hard time just trusting someone I don't know to the music as I've gotten too many ruined recordings.

So, would the mystery person be willing to share his process with us? No one is going to force them to upload before/after stuff if they've got well-detailed notes.

:thumbsup: :clap: Totally agree with this requirement. Either document it, or leave it alone. Hopefully, people who will take the time to document their procedures will also be capable of handling the software properly.

It's been pretty hysterical to view some of the waveforms of shows I grab and audition. When I hear one of these "WTF is that" tracks, I'll usually run it thru spectrum to see what it looks like. It's amazing sometimes to see the falloffs, notches and spikes that some people consider to be "good audio".

There have been a LOT of times that downloads get deleted because they're simply too painful to listen to. (I know I'm preaching to the choir here....)

[Karst]

There have been a LOT of times that downloads get deleted because they're simply too painful to listen to. (I know I'm preaching to the choir here....)

There never is any guarantee with these things. (Hello everyone btw.) Got the 'Ballroom Blitz' by Led Zeppelin (London Lyceum) and the volume was clearly pulled heavily from the original recording to distortion level. I 'repaired' it for myself by dropping the right volume down, adding some bass resonance and putting up the loudness slightly to compensate. Still, one of the issues with this is that I'm doing this for myself and so not really intend to put it up in the trading pool. There already is a much better version from Empress circulating and adding another version is rather pointless IMHO. This is one of the main issues with remastering (which most of the time is a poignant term as it goes through a 16 bit format). There is not much point following through with something like this when amends have already been made somewhere along the line or if an original is still available.

[realgone]

New Here, but I think the idea of sharing the dark arts of mastering are great. I have a nice setup and can help with some of the tweaks and some education as far as compression, eq, etc. I have done over 500 shows so far and just got high speed and will be seeding once I figure out what my isp has to say about it. My background is in FOH and Mastering/Post Production.......But my setup is

Cubase SX 2.0
Waves Diamond Bundle
Waves IR-1
PSP Vintage Warmer
T-Racks 24
Nomad Factory Blue Tubes
Ozone 3

I mostly use waves, I have used it for a number of years and have good results, great noise reduction with x-noise, and x-crackle. So I can help there or in any way I can. But for the shows I try to be as sparing as possible, less is more I always learned. And anything I seed will have what I used and how I used it. That may be sacrelidge for a mastering person but I have bands that I master that pay the bills this is fun.......

SO lets rock it........

[RainDawg]

:thumbsup realgone. Sounds great, and please do let us know what your process was. I'm here to get music, but also to learn what kinds of techniques there are out there.

I hope to see some of your seeds in the future :).