by Fred Taghon » Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:10 am
I've been backing up my entire music collection onto DVDR's and when I did the Pet Shop Boys recently, I had a good listen to the 2001 remasters and I have to say, the sound quality on the album discs (Disc 1 of each set) was a little disappointing. I even remember buying them at the time and being frustrated that I had to mess with my sound system's equalizer on all of the Disc 1's to be happy with the sound. The low end was nicely amped up, but for some reason the high end frequencies were subdued significantly from the original CD releases. Also, especially on "Behaviour", if you turn it up real loud at the end of many tracks, you can hear a sort of "ghost" audio of most of the tracks (check out the end of "How Can You Expect..."). There also seems to be more "tape hiss" compared to the original CD releases which just doesn't make sense (listen to the beginning and end of "Only The Wind" where it's particularly noticeable - the 1990 release is crystal clear). I just thought that was kind of odd, as the original discs actually sounded amazing in their day, though definitely lacking in low end "oomph".
So naturally, I took up the better part of a day off working on the "Please" through "Behaviour" remasters to make my own "versions", adjusting the EQ of each track to enhance the high end to more closely match the original CD's. Also, the "Please" remaster is actually kind of hollow and needed to have the mid-range signal reduced a bit to sound warmer and more natural to my ears. With "Only The Wind", I even ended up cutting-and-pasting the intro and outro from the 1990 CD (matching EQ and volume to my newly re-EQ'd 2001 version) because the remastered version was just unacceptable now that I KNEW how inferior it sounded compared to the 1990 disc. I'm now finally very happy listening to these remastered albums. Funny enough, all the "Further Listening" discs sound fine, with plenty of punch in both the low and high ends.
I never bought any of the remasters beyond "Behaviour" basically because when I compared downloaded versions of them to the original CD's I thought they sounded comparable, maybe just mastered a bit "louder". And I already owned 99% of the tracks from the "Further Listening" discs as well. Oh, and I never really cared much for "Bilingual" or "Nightlife" so...there was that.
So I'm curious if these upcoming re-releases of the first 6 albums will be the same 2001 remasters, or will they be completely new 2017 remasters??? Heaven knows each one could easily be expanded with a 3rd disc of remixes that were not included on the current "Further Listening" discs.
"Release" is the album that started to pull me back to the Pet Shop Boys after 9yrs of casual dabbling in an occasional single that caught my attention (though of course, as a fan, I still bought the albums anyway). "Fundamental" and "Yes" brought me back into the fold completely. But again, I've collected all the associated releases so faithfully, I don't know that I'd find the need to get the new remasters. I guess I'll just have to see what they put on 'em. I do very much enjoy all the booklets with interviews, commentaries and photos though. Hmmmm.
In the meantime, I do hope someone points out that some of the artwork samples in the photo Neil posted have flipped the positions of "Pet Shop Boys" and album titles ("Yes" and "Introspective")!
UPDATE: On a whim I just looked at my "Introspective" 2001 packaging and it DOES have the band and title positions swapped compared to the other albums. How did I never notice such a drastic error before?!? Or perhaps they did it for aesthetic reasons?!? I simply won't be able to sleep until I have answers!!!
LOL
Good cripe, I need a life!!