ABOATES wrote:The original releases were "bassless" because that is how the album sounded and was recorded. They were not bassless at all of course, everything is well balanced. The emphasis on extreme bass and compression was not yet a common practice. If the reissues "add bass" I won't touch them. In my opinion, "remastered" should simply be flat transfers. The purpose is not to make the original recordings sound "different" or "better:. The purpose is to use today's modern technology to accurately portray what was on the master tapes. if bass oomph was not on the original, it should not be added. I can think of two horrid examples off the top of my head that soured me greatly on "remasters"...OMD Dazzle Ships remaster was unlistenable...that album is supposed to be a quaint, charming early synth experimental record but the remster added this huge bloated loud kick drum to it that completely ruined the mix. The The remasters...Dusk in particular was so brickwalled that it actually has distortion in parts. I am of the mindset these days that 98% of the time, the original release be it vinyl or CD sounds the best. On rare occasions to modern engineers get it right.
I disagree. The purpose of "Remastering" is to bring the best out, though that rarely happens these days. I'm a firm believer in giving an appropriate bass boost to thin, hollow sounding tracks. But it's tricky to get it right and you don't want it to sound boomy or thuddy. I've done these enhancement with most things I remaster, and in some cases it really brings out the life in a rather thin sounding song. I thought Dazzle Ships sounded quite nice. Telegraph is one of my favorite songs but it never had any bass, and desperately needed it. Many years ago, I had a remaster rejected because I removed technical glitches (static and distortions). The artist thought they added charm and wanted them in, so they stayed. I disagreed completely.
I was reading on the Steve Hoffman forum a question someone had asked him. They wanted to know if he masters things to sound good to him or what he thinks may sound good to others. He said he masters for his own ears. I agree. I've worked on songs that are originally little more than midrange with no bottom end. I will re-EQ it to give life to what sounded unfinished.