Altars+Blessed Remaster info?

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 20 Mar 2011, 23:55

I just read through my Altars and Blessed Remaster issues. Because I was searching for the person actually responsible for these remasters. But I can't find anything in the booklet or on the slipcase. For all I know, the original 2-track was put through a brick-wall limiter so the volume is as todays standarts. Listening to them, I can only come to the conclusion that they're louder than the originals, but not a "new mastered version" of both pieces.

If this is true, together with adding the videos, it would enforce the idea behind the re-release from an Earache economic point of view.

Anybody here have more information on this?

jawn galliano · Post by **jawn galliano** » 21 Mar 2011, 12:09

i could never tell much of a substantive difference between the original and remaster versions. unfortunately i have nothing substantive to add to this conversation outside of that

FUKKET · Post by **FUKKET** » 21 Mar 2011, 13:56

[quote name="Void"] For all I know, the original 2-track was put through a brick-wall limiter so the volume is as todays standarts. [/quote]

lame.... I bet that's what they did.

Remastering original tapes is $$$$ and Earache are cheapskates!

good topic & point Tom!

Mutilator · Post by **Mutilator** » 22 Mar 2011, 01:42

I think the remaster of Altars.. sounds not as good as the original. It lacks the 'biting crunch' and appears to me more 'civilized' :/

I hoped they would've done a different job.

lavaBorn · Post by **lavaBorn** » 22 Mar 2011, 01:57

i prefer original versions because of rawness

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 22 Mar 2011, 02:16

The apparent lacking of "rawness", as you called it, could be because of a digital remaster. Perhaps a simple brick-wall limiter plugin.

Don't believe this was done at Morrisound.

Uni777 · Post by **Uni777** » 22 Mar 2011, 14:07

[quote name="Void"]The apparent lacking of "rawness", as you called it, could be because of a digital remaster. Perhaps a simple brick-wall limiter plugin.

Don't believe this was done at Morrisound.[/quote]

It was not. In an interview with Trey there was metion it was done in the UK. Trey sounded as if he did not care that much abiout the remaster.

And to add to the money making idea: New Vinyl version, first remaster reissue and following that the remaster with DVD. All around the time Vincent came in the picture again...

jawn galliano · Post by **jawn galliano** » 23 Mar 2011, 03:54

yeah, it always seemed like a transparent money-grab. which i suppose just about any re-release/remaster is, especially when the original has basically never gone out of print, but at least you usually get something for your money.

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 23 Mar 2011, 06:59

Ok, here's a little research I quickly did this evening. To begin with, as far as audio quality/waveform quality goes, there could be minor differences since I imported the 320kbps MP3's I had in my iTunes playlist (ripped from my original CD's) instead of the WAV files I could've gotten from the CD's.

So next to many other factors, this test is not serious in any way.

Probably most of you won't be interested in this, but here it goes...

Just imported the original Fall From Grace and the remastered version into Pro Tools, to check out the waveforms.

Even the remastered version isn't mastered as a typical "2000" master, it still has pretty much headroom but I do hear that it misses some dynamics that the original has. Although the waveforms aren't getting "cut-off". Especially the original ones are remarkably "round" and complete. Must be caused by tracking to tape and a totally analog mastering, together with a low level mixdown to save that much headroom, so nothing has to be cut off.

Also funny to see how "small" the original mastered waveforms look compared to todays standarts. There's really A LOT of headroom and anyone could crank up their stereos at home without getting much distortion (depends on stereo system, speakers, blabla).

One clear spot to me, is the slow part after the short clean vocal part. The tom hits, especially the bigger toms and floor toms, sound almost a little distorted. In the original they have more air, because those tom tracks have a pretty big reverb, but gets cut off by the gate it's almost like a small gated-reverb, but without any predelay. Just a small tail that gets suddenly quickly cut off by it's envelope filter (ADSR/Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release). I notice that they lack a little of that air, or room, in the remaster. Which causes it to "choke" a little.

Another cool thing is that I actually hear a little "glitch" of where they cut the tape in the guitar track, it's very subtle and sounds a little strange, but it's there.

Right at the 2:21.790 mark.

Production thingy:

Almost every other sentence David sings is slightly panned. Sometimes it's every other word. For example, the first part of a sentence he sings is panned (my guess is 5-10%) to the Left, then the next word/sentence/part is panned 5-10% to the Right. All in all, some extremely creative recording went into the vocal sessions on this record.

Anyway, the only thing I can say by looking at it and listening to it, is that the Blessed remaster is only louder. No additional EQ, compression or other processing as far as I know. The original peaks at -3.0 dB and 0.0 dB (0.14 dB peak on one snare hit at the end), where the remastered version peaks at 0.74 dB.

Here are a few pictures to show you the audio waveforms of the original and the remastered version, and the TL Master Meter plugin I used to meter the max dB's:

Slightly zoomed-in:

Slightly zoomed-out/more overview:

TL Master Meter original track:

TL Master Meter remastered track:

So, I had a little crazy idea of trying to "remaster" the original track myself (In The Box that is, with just one simple plugin; L2 Limiter, which is a "brick-wall limiter").

My quick setting of the L2 (see Threshold at -5.0), which was purely a guess:

I know, the Quantizing should've been 16 bits instead of 24 bits since the CD is 44.1kHz samplerate, 16 bits bit depth. But no big deal!

And the waveform of MA's Remaster with underneath my "remaster":

How the L2 limits the signals is ofcourse different from what the real remaster was put through, so the waveforms aren't exactly identical, nor do they sound the same. Mine does come close, especially volume wise, but clearly this isn't the way to replicate anything like this. It was just in good fun.

If anyone wants me to quickly analyze a track from Altars like this, let me know.

Abzu · Post by **Abzu** » 23 Mar 2011, 08:12

jawn galliano · Post by **jawn galliano** » 23 Mar 2011, 09:04

any chance the waveform disparities could be caused by the lossy compression on the mp3 file? perceptually, you're not losing much if anything of course, but i have no idea if you'd see a dramatic difference (or any difference) in the visual representation compared to a raw wave file. do you think the results would've been more similar in an even comparison? after your experiments here, do you have any insights into the techniques and such they used on the remaster?

at any rate, great post, interesting stuff

FUKKET · Post by **FUKKET** » 23 Mar 2011, 14:24

well done Tom.

Love this shit!

FUKKET · Post by **FUKKET** » 23 Mar 2011, 14:25

[quote name="Void"]

Production thingy:

Almost every other sentence David sings is slightly panned. Sometimes it's every other word. For example, the first part of a sentence he sings is panned (my guess is 5-10%) to the Left, then the next word/sentence/part is panned 5-10% to the Right. All in all, some extremely creative recording went into the vocal sessions on this record.[/quote]

I noticed this when I first got BATS years ago.

It is a subtle but cool technique

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 23 Mar 2011, 15:23

[quote name="Derek Waters"]any chance the waveform disparities could be caused by the lossy compression on the mp3 file? perceptually, you're not losing much if anything of course, but i have no idea if you'd see a dramatic difference (or any difference) in the visual representation compared to a raw wave file. do you think the results would've been more similar in an even comparison? after your experiments here, do you have any insights into the techniques and such they used on the remaster?

at any rate, great post, interesting stuff

[/quote]

No, it won't have a significant change when importing the wav files. At 320 kb the compression is there of course, but I don't think Pro Tools will be able to show that difference.

The only thing I can say about how they remastered it, and that's a guess based on what I hear and see, is that it was a simple 2-bus limiter, perhaps an analog one instead of a plugin, to keep a little more dynamics. I don't think they would use a simple plugin (although the L2 belongs to the fucking expensive plugin bundle of Waves) on a remaster of Morbid Angel.

[quote name="FUKKET"]well done Tom.

Love this shit![/quote]

Thanks!

FUKKET · Post by **FUKKET** » 23 Mar 2011, 15:49

this all makes me think of this:

The trend of increasing loudness as shown by waveform images of "Something" by The Beatles mastered on CD four times since 1983.

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

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 23 Mar 2011, 16:13

Indeed.

There are several reasons why mastering needed to become more and more loud, and eventually totally against the 0.0 dB line. You can't go higher in the digital or analogue world (without clipping the shit out of it, which nobody wants).

A few reasons are that songs that are being played in the majority of peoples living rooms, is more or less "background music". The music needs to be audible with all the things that are making noise in your house. Blowdryers, computers, pets, dishwasher, laundry machine, and a million other things. Music shifted from being something you listen to in a secluded room, or atleast a quiet room, to totally experience the music, without any external influences - to something that's just playing in the background while you do your thing. Of course there are fans of music that still listen to their records in this fashion. But the majority will not. Especially with the birth of the MP3 player. You can listen to your music everywhere you go, so you need to be able to play it loud enough to hear it. Not only the maximum volume your iPod can handle but the "track-slamming" mastering also takes part in this.

One thing I do like nowadays, are the in-ear headphone plugs. It isolates you almost completely from your surroundings, but the best thing is that you don't need to turn up the volume as much. With a low dBSPL (Sound Pressure Level) you can hear everything clearly in the music, without destroying your hearing.

Another reason for the brick-wall limiting;

The radio stations were the first ones to have this kind of limiting at their disposal. They needed it to make every song they play, have the same volume as the other ones. This, of course, because every song has been mixed and mastered differently. You probably noticed this a long time ago with different albums being louder or softer than the other.

After some time music studios got their hands on this limiter and started using it when mixing down their songs; the Battle of Loudness commenced.

Back then, the louder you were, the more you were heard on the radio which eventually meant more radio playtime! Hurray for commerce...

Now we've gotten to the point of having no more dynamic range. We hit the limit as far as dynamic range goes. All in the name of commerce and loudness. Clearly, this has nothing to do with musicality anymore.

Anyway, I noticed that there is still a trend in mastering. It's still pretty loud but I think many engineers and bands want to get back to that "analogue feeling" of yesterdays.

All in all, the Morbid Angel remasters aren't truly remastered. They have a more agressive and modern limiting, nothing more. So you can't really say it's badly done because it's just a bit louder.

But IMO, the originals sound better because they were mixed and mastered in the right time setting, the right environment and with the right equipment. Which is also a sort of "ethic" thing to me, you know? You shouldn't touch something of that kind of art that has already been worked on to perfection.

Uni777 · Post by **Uni777** » 24 Mar 2011, 00:12

Spirits of the Deep Waters · 24 Mar 2011, 00:41

Never liked the sound of these reissues

Mutilator · Post by **Mutilator** » 24 Mar 2011, 05:30

So BATS is just put on disc just a bit louder, nothing more?

Very interesting about David's vocal recording!!!

I think that 's not the case with Altars, which seems to be more interesting for this experiment.

BTW, does anybody know what 'nodebliwith' means? (from Thy kingdome come)

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 24 Mar 2011, 05:37

I think that the remaster is just louder, yes. From what I've gathered by listening and looking at the waveforms, that is my conclusion.

I also doubt that Altars was remastered differently. It wouldn't make sense. I'll check it out later though.

About the word "nodebliwith", it could be an anagram.

http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagra ... ith&t=1000

Mutilator · Post by **Mutilator** » 24 Mar 2011, 05:50

Haha thank you for the anagram site. I was aware that Blessed are the sick has many word-play in the lyrics, but actually how much of it, I'm not sure about.

I agree that remastering Altars diferently won't make sense, but I sense a big difference in sound 'feelingwise' compared to the original, while with BATS I hear no difference.

Abzu · Post by **Abzu** » 24 Mar 2011, 07:47

It seems insane to me. I would prefer more dynamic range that compressed loudiness.

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 24 Mar 2011, 14:47

The "challenge" of modern mastering is getting it as loud as possible without losing much of the dynamic range within the mix and between the instruments.

It can be achieved.

Jackson · Post by **Jackson** » 24 Mar 2011, 16:04

[quote name="Maze"]Never liked the sound of these reissues[/quote]

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 24 Mar 2011, 18:11

Just did a test on "Blasphemy" from Altars.

I had to put the volume of the original up to +5.5 dB to get it to more or less the same level as the remastered version.

Again, same principle.

This time with the original's volume at +5.5 dB > L2 limiter with Threshold at 0.0 (instead of the previous -5.0 setting on Fall From Grace), and the Out Ceiling also at 0.0 dB. So, the L2 is only keeping the levels from clipping, nothing else. It's not compressing.

And this is the waveform that I got with my mix:

So my theory is the same as before. The original was simply mastered louder, or even put through a limiter at higher volume like I just did in Pro Tools.

There is one thing:

With the remaster I feel there's a little more punch in the lows/low-mids, but this could be caused by the higher volume. Higher amplitudes changes your perception of sound a lot, even if it's the same signal. So basically I think that's a mindfuck right there.

p.s.- the difference in the "Remix" tracks of Maze, Chapel and Blasphemy are more clearly audible on the remastered version than on the original CD. This can also be due to it's higher volume.

Uni777 · Post by **Uni777** » 24 Mar 2011, 23:07

[quote name="Mutilator"]So BATS is just put on disc just a bit louder, nothing more?

Very interesting about David's vocal recording!!!

I think that 's not the case with Altars, which seems to be more interesting for this experiment.

BTW, does anybody know what 'nodebliwith' means? (from Thy kingdome come)[/quote]

=Thy will be done... reversed & phonetically

bob_here · Post by **bob_here** » 24 Mar 2011, 23:30

If somebody could send me a re-mastered Blessed track I can test it to tell you what was done to the remaster. I only have the original disc. It must be a wave file however.

Unfortunately studying only the waveform is somewhat limited. You can't go completely on looks to know what was done. Case in point: there could be masters that

show cropped waveforms but sound excellent, and vice versa, tracks without any and sound not so good. There are too many psychoacoustic factors that go into it

and listening or audio testing [no surprise there] are th eonly ways to really confirm. It is informative as a quick reference though, as in the examples of predicting how

maximized a track is and comparing them to earlier industry standards.

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 24 Mar 2011, 23:39

Agreed, that's also kind of what I was trying to say with that my test wasn't very serious, just a quick check by somebody who's curious.

Of course I listened closely to the two versions, but didn't upload any of the sound files.

Love of Lava · Post by **Love of Lava** » 25 Mar 2011, 18:18

cool thread ! yeah i always wondered about this too.. i got the original first press on vinyl and the remastered on cd i agree with the loudness and to me the cd remstered version sounds kinda bolder...

i got bats on cd and picture vinyl but the thing with pictures is always that background noise coming from the print so i can't really tell if it is the remastered or the original

anybody knows this ? because i didnt heard the remastered version on cd yet.

bob_here · Post by **bob_here** » 27 Mar 2011, 23:29

So? Nobody wants to send me one of the blessed remastered tracks for testing?

vO)))id · Post by **vO)))id** » 28 Mar 2011, 02:16

I'll send u a WAV file tomorrow

bob_here · Post by **bob_here** » 28 Mar 2011, 09:01

bob_here · Post by **bob_here** » 28 Mar 2011, 22:24

Thanks to Void for the file...

I sample aligned the remaster and the original and then volume matched them to a tight tolerance. Some where of about -4.65 dB was the difference.

Then flipped the polarity of one track and upon listening you get a pretty low residual at around -56 or so or lower: this is the difference between the files. Now it sounds

almost as a full bandwidth difference not a big harmonic or frequency response difference. Which signifies, there probally was not much done to it other then

limiting. Aside from that, we can definitely say it was indeed limited/clipped to raise volume. We can hear limiting artifacts in the sound example I posted below, "MAtest".

So those are typical intersamples and transient distortions from using a limiter or clipping. It's common. If you raise your volume listening to this clip, you'll hear the low

residual as well. "MAtest2" is a loop I made between unmastered and mastered versions, switching back and forth of a small part of the song. Looping like this is fairly important as you can hear without any break or silence the true differences. In this case since really the only difference is the limiting, you can hear a slight dulling of transients in the mastered version. This too is common and this limiting job in this case isn't terrible at all in and of itself. The only thing I can see where people - some people - will have a problem with it is that there was not much "re-mastering" done here other than the loudness.

MAtest: http://www.mediafire.com/?rc6opiay9df58zi

MAtest2: http://www.mediafire.com/?cu61npm5b07dnu5

groomdedz · Post by **groomdedz** » 24 Oct 2013, 01:59

I still prefer the originals and those remasters are piercingly loud!

bob_here · Post by **bob_here** » 26 Oct 2013, 20:01

[quote name="groomdedz"]I still prefer the originals and those remasters are piercingly loud![/quote]

I'm with you. Most commercial releases will sound subtly or overtly worse than the original mix

once level matched at an RMS level. The punch, dynamism, warmth, and transient information,

i.e. all things that make music exciting to listen to, are compromised to bring up the overall

loudness. Completely idiotic, but standard practice.

Abzu · Post by **Abzu** » 26 Oct 2013, 20:59

Heeeey, Bob

bob_here · Post by **bob_here** » 26 Oct 2013, 22:16

what's good man

FUKKET · Post by **FUKKET** » 28 Oct 2013, 03:59

[quote name="TranscendingMusic"]
[quote name="groomdedz"]I still prefer the originals and those remasters are piercingly loud![/quote]

I'm with you. Most commercial releases will sound subtly or overtly worse than the original mix

once level matched at an RMS level. The punch, dynamism, warmth, and transient information,

i.e. all things that make music exciting to listen to, are compromised to bring up the overall

loudness. Completely idiotic, but standard practice.[/quote]

this

Altars+Blessed Remaster info?

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