Remaster

Remaster (and its derivations, frequently found in the phrases digitally remastered or digital remastering) is a word and concept ushered into the mass consciousness via the digital age, although it had existed before then. 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 upgrade to a previous, existing product (frequently designed to encourage people to part with their money for 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 hot sellers. 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

To properly understand what is meant by the idea of remastering, it is helpful to quickly explain the meaning of the core word, mastering. In this particular case, the audio version of mastering will be explored, but the video/film paradigm is quite similar.

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A master is the entity which is duplicated to make a product. Problematically, several different levels of "masters" often exist for any one release. Let's examine the way a typical album from the 1960s might have been created. Musicians and vocalists are recorded on multi-track tape. This tape is mixed down to a two channel (stereo) or one channel (mono) master. A further master tape would then likely be created from each, consisting of EQ and other adjustments to the tape. More masters would then likely be duplicated for regional copying purposes. Pressing masters and others might be created. As one can see, master is a fairly loose term, one that can be used in many stages of the recording process. In the end, however, all records pressed from this album would derive from one or more of the steps in the above process.

Related Topics:
Mixed - EQ

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Mastering, then, 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.

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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). Now, masters could be created and duplicated in the digital domain without incurring the usual generational loss. As CDs were a digital format, masters copied to digital tape became a necessity.

Related Topics:
Digital - Analogue - Signal to noise ratio - Tape hiss - CDs

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