Remaster

Remaster (and its derivations, frequently found in the phrases digitally remastered or digital remastering) is a word and concept that became most popular in digital audio age, although the "mastering" process has existed since recording began. The measure of it's success depends on only three things: 1. The skill and experience of the Mastering Engineer. 2. To a lesser extent, the tools used to do the job. 3. The quality of the orginal source material. Frequently trumpeted with regard to CD and DVD releases, remastering has become a powerful buzzword in multimedia industries, and it generally implies some sort of enhancement of sound and picture to a previous, existing product (frequently designed to encourage people to buy a new version of something they already own). For example, the reissue boom that began in the mid-nineties saw remastered versions of the back-catalogues of The Who, The Byrds and others, while remastered editions of first-generation DVD releases are similarly bestsellers. Despite its status as an industry buzzword, however, remastering actually refers to a fairly distinct process, one which does not inherently include the notion of a positive upgrade.

Mastering

Further information: Audio mastering

To properly understand what is meant by remastering, it is helpful to explain the meaning of mastering. Audio mastering will be explained, but video/film mastering is similar.

A master is the recording which is duplicated into other formats i.e. LP records, CDs, DVDs etc.. Problematically, several different levels of masters often exist for any one audio release. As an example, examine the way a typical music album from the 1960s was created. Musicians and vocalists were recorded on multi-track tape. This tape was mixed to create a stereo or monaural master. A further master tape would likely be created from this original master recording consisting of equalization and other adjustments to the audio. More master recordings would be duplicated from the equalized master for regional copying purposes. Pressing masters for vinyl recordings would be created. Obviously, master is a fairly loose term, one that can be used for many stages of the recording process, however, all vinyl records would derive from one of the master recordings.

Thus, mastering refers to the process of creating a master. This might be as simple as copying a tape for further duplication purposes, or might include the actual equalization and processing steps used to fine-tune material for release. The latter example usually requires the work of mastering engineers.

With the advent of digital recording in the late 1970s, many mastering ideas changed. Previously, creating new masters meant incurring an analogue generational loss; in other words, copying a tape to a tape meant reducing the signal-to-noise ratio, or how much "music" was on the tape versus how much "noise" (tape hiss, static, etc.) Although noise reduction techniques exist, they also increase other audio distortions such as azimuth shift, wow and flutter, print through and stereo image shift. With digital recording, masters could be created and duplicated without incurring the usual generational loss. As CDs were a digital format, digital masters created from original analog recordings became a necessity.

See also

• Special edition

External links

• Movie Review Query Engine Movie/DVD review meta-site
• Steve Hoffman's WebsiteWebsite about remastering engineer Steve Hoffman