Metal Sludge Gossip Board

Saw this as a new release today when I opened spotify.

Just what the world was clamouring for!!!

https://open.spotify.com/album/1TfI821 ... NvA4KNB0iA

Well - upon a quick scan it certainly does sound better, but I can't imagine this recouping any type of investment

I'm surprised it was mastered in the first place, let alone remastered.

Charles Bukaki wrote: ↑Fri Jun 20, 2025 6:56 am I'm surprised it was mastered in the first place, let alone remastered.

Didnt Iron Maiden's AMOLA go out without mastering?

That would be awesome if they had to qualify their update "2025 Remasters and initial master"

The idea of remastering an album and then listening on streaming platforms is funny. For those of you who don't know, mastering is the final sonics of the record where these days you can expand the dynamic range. Higher highs, lower lows, more wide sounding.

Then you transfer it to a squashed digital streaming platform with no dynamic range whatever except LOUD and BRIGHT.

I'm guilty of listening to Spotify and YouTube too but NOTHING compares to listening to an actual CD or at least a .wav file on my stereo with real wooden speakers on the left and right side of the room.

That's my "Get off my lawn" rant of the day.

To be fair, mastering works regardless of format, and each format should have separate mastering. It is mostly just EQing and compressing to whatever range is available to you in different formats.

Liiiiiiike with records, there was a lot of high-end loss, so you would boost that in mastering. Then CDs came out, and they reproduced high-end better than vinyl did, so CDs got a reputation for sounding harsh and shrill, when all they were doing was reproducing the original BETTER.

So then people started coming out with remasters that were optimized for CD.

There was also weird shit, like if you had too much low-end on a record, the needle could physically skip out of the groove, so you had to make sure it fell within those parameters.

In the seventies, I swear they were mastering for car stereos, as certain records had this amazing midrange that made the paper cones in a 1978 Chevette sound great.

You CAN master effectively for streaming, but people don't really think about what format they are mastering for, so loud and bright tend to be the default.

Sleek wrote: ↑Fri Jun 20, 2025 1:03 pm In the seventies, I swear they were mastering for car stereos, as certain records had this amazing midrange that made the paper cones in a 1978 Chevette sound great.

That was exactly the case at Motown - Barry Gordy's directive was to mix and master for car stereos.

I know that they had a car (I wanna say a '57 Chevy) in the parking lot of A&M studios in Hollywood that was wired into the control room so they could go out and listen to mixes.