Popular Post The Computer Audiophile Posted June 11, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted June 11, 2019 This is a great article about all the masters that were destroyed in the Universal fire. The author really gets it and talks about sound quality and the importance of masters. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html Here's a quote: It is sonic fidelity, first and foremost, that defines the importance of masters. “A master is the truest capture of a piece of recorded music,” said Adam Block, the former president of Legacy Recordings, Sony Music Entertainment’s catalog arm. “Sonically, masters can be stunning in their capturing of an event in time. Every copy thereafter is a sonic step away.” This is not an academic point. The recording industry is a business of copies; often as not, it’s a business of copies of copies of copies. A Spotify listener who clicks on a favorite old song may hear a file in a compressed audio format called Ogg Vorbis. That file was probably created by converting an MP3, which may have been ripped years earlier from a CD, which itself may have been created from a suboptimal “safety copy” of the LP master — or even from a dubbed duplicate of that dubbed duplicate. Audiophiles complain that the digital era, with its rampant copy-paste ethos and jumble of old and new formats, is an age of debased sound: lossy audio files created from nth-generation transfers; cheap vinyl reissues, marketed to analog-fetishists but pressed up from sludgy non-analog sources. “It’s the audio equivalent of the game of ‘Telephone,’ ” says Henry Sapoznik, a celebrated producer of historical compilation albums. “Who really would be satisfied with the sixth message in?” jabbr, Josh Mound, asdf1000 and 4 others 4 3 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
Popular Post The Computer Audiophile Posted June 12, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 12, 2019 1 hour ago, esldude said: Safety masters or 1st gen master copies. Or like RT66 mentioned providence is hard to come by often. I read about various re-masterings in detail, and the new mastering guru can't determine exactly whether the record company really sent the masters or copies of the masters. Often the record company isn't sure itself. Sometimes they find more than one version of what is supposed to be a master. Music remastering is as bad as the sausage factory. You really don't want to know what goes into your sausage or what goes on there. Everyone I’ve ever talked to in the music business has said this as well. One recording engineer told me he was handed some tape to record over and found unreleased masters from “Little Stevie Wonder” on that tape. These cultural treasures are treated like easily replaceable commodities. It’s crazy. I also was present when an audiophile record label received the “master” of Getz / Gilberto for a special remaster. It was sent on a burned CD and sounded no different from the last CD rip. esldude, Jud, Currawong and 1 other 2 2 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted June 12, 2019 Author Share Posted June 12, 2019 I wonder if there is a major difference between labels that are / aren't public companies that need to hit quarterly numbers for shareholders. Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted June 12, 2019 Author Share Posted June 12, 2019 I can only imagine the global outcry if the Louvre housed its collection in a tin shed and it burned down. The UMG fire destroyed several Mona Lisas and virtually "nobody" knows or cares. Jud 1 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted June 12, 2019 Author Share Posted June 12, 2019 4 minutes ago, Em2016 said: A look at the Universal Music vault at Iron Mountain (Boyers, Pa) and general facility tour. So cool. asdf1000 1 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
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