Pet Shop Boys Community

I've just read about 'loudness war' and 'remastering' on Wikipedia and it's awful what they've been doing with some tracks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remaster

here's also visual presentation of 'loudness war' on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

since I don't have original albums by PSB (I only bought re-issues), can you notice the difference
did they improve the sound on re-issues or ruin it?
personally, I think PSB are flawless when it comes to sound quality, production and releasing of their stuff, am I wrong?

I haven't noticed any loudness problems, but there were several spots where they screwed up tracks via editting. The long version of "Don Juan", and one of the mixes of "Opportunities" come to mind.

Some of the "Further Listening" tracks were mixed in ways which made them slightly different to the original versions.

As far as the actual album tracks, I think they're all the same... just more defined, and without any excessive loudness.

Compression has been around for YEARS and I can think of very few professional artists whose music does not utilise compression. The only ones at the moment are Belle And Sebastian and Ballboy.

Retro.

dannii wrote:I've just read about 'loudness war' and 'remastering' on Wikipedia and it's awful what they've been doing with some tracks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remaster

here's also visual presentation of 'loudness war' on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

since I don't have original albums by PSB (I only bought re-issues), can you notice the difference
did they improve the sound on re-issues or ruin it?
personally, I think PSB are flawless when it comes to sound quality, production and releasing of their stuff, am I wrong?

Thanks for the info about "loudness war". Never heard the term before, but now I really understand why I often think that remasters sound crap...

I want to give you one example of bad remastering: "Money for nothing" by Dire Straits. Listen to the original Brothers in Arms LP, and then put on the remastered CD of the same album. Note the difference in the introduction of the song, the part with the heavy drumming before the guitar riff starts. I can't explain what exactly it is, but it's something with the level of volume of the drums and the dynamic range when it goes into the guitar. It sounds much better on the original LP! When I played the CD remaster I was disappointed that it didn't sound the way I was used to, at least when it comes to that part of the song.
(If you don't have the LP, you can listen to the single edit of the song, available on for example the compilation bearing its name. It seems mixed like the original.)

Another interesting read on this matter.

http://www.austin360.com/arts/conten...9/28cover.html

Unfortunately I don't have any of the original CDs (I'm simply too young), but I took a look at the waveform of Heart from the remastered CD and compared it to a song from the last Weezer record, of which I know that it's terribly compressed and full of clipping. I'm really not an expert, but if I compare this to what I read and saw in that little video, I'd say whoever remastered the PSB record did not push it too far.
PSB - Heart:

Weezer - Perfect Situation:

The PSB remasters sound fine to my ears. But I totally agree on the uselessness of the loudness wars.

I prefer the sound of remastered albums but, not being an expert, I'm not really able to tell why. It's true that remastered CDs are louder than older CDs, for example the original CD of 'Please' compared to its 2001 re-issue. I think it's mostly down to advances in CD mastering.

I don't know how the re-issue's sound would compare to the original LP though. 'Relentless' is very quiet on CD, and I almost considered buying the LPs for better sound quality. Would that have been stupid?

Harry

The remastered versions are louder than previous CD releases but, to my untrained ear, they haven't suffered excessive compression -- in fact, more of the richness of the production comes through on the remasters.

The big screw up on the remasters of the original albums is on the Behavior disc, where the track change in the segue between "Nervously" and "The End of the World" has been put in the wrong place.

As others have mentioned, the 12" "Opportunities" on the Please Further listening disc is edited different from the original 12" extended version, and there's an actual sound flaw -- a skip or hiccough -- in the extended "Don Juan" whiich wasn't there on the CD single version of the song.

(Sorry, this was a double post.)

Propertius wrote:(Sorry, this was a double post.)

No worries with all the remasters we got the albums double (Or triple) aswel.

Heavy loudness has been a trend since the 90s. I think remastering Nightlife or Release wouldn't make much of a difference to the original albums - and why should it?

But you can hear a striking difference between early PSB albums and Discography. Just compare Rent on the original Actually to Rent on Discography. I think this is all ok with the music PSB make. Heavy loudness would be bad for classical music which depends on a wide dynamic range for expressiveness.

Marcus wrote:Heavy loudness has been a trend since the 90s. I think remastering Nightlife or Release wouldn't make much of a difference to the original albums - and why should it?

But you can hear a striking difference between early PSB albums and Discography. Just compare Rent on the original Actually to Rent on Discography. I think this is all ok with the music PSB make. Heavy loudness would be bad for classical music which depends on a wide dynamic range for expressiveness.

Rent on Actually is 5mins 08secs long
Rent on Discography is 3mins 33 secs long.

The Discography Version is the Single Version which sounds a bit poppier than the actually version. I love the keyboard sounds at the beginning.

on the actually version you only hear the soft "drum"-sounds at the beginning.

the first three albums sound more dnyamic remastered. but behaviour sounds crap remastered because they took away the whole warmth of the overall sound. it does sound too harsh and low on the bass. but as far as very and bilingual are concerned i didn't notice any differences.