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Topic: Anyone else think it sounds worse on the remaster?, Oh God. Not again...< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
AwayWeGo Offline




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Posted: Aug. 22 2015, 15:18

It sounds pretty clean and sparkly in some places, but that doesn't do any good if you squash the dynamics down. I always hear people make this mistake with modern remasters, and now it seems to have affected Mike Oldfield of all people. Music NEEDS more dynamics. I am grateful for the remastering process and new technologies. I just wish it sounded more open and dynamic.

I'm actually quite angry about this for a few reasons. The first is that I shelled out about twenty-two dollars (about £14) for these discs. The second is that the remaster was unavailable to buy or even stream via the internet, so I had to buy it blindly, without first sampling it, mistakenly assuming it would be as good as the remaster of Crises or practically any other release (save maybe Ommadawn). I didn't realize just how much the sound had changed until I had already ripped the disc into my music library. The third reason is that the whole dynamic compression thing is TOTALLY unnecessary. He could have kept the loud bits loud and the quiet bits quiet, but instead he had to change it and make it, in my opinion, far less enjoyable.

I have included a graphic below of the volume levels of an older remaster of "Taurus II" compared to the new one. The first two channels are from the 2000 remaster. The last two represent the 2013 remaster. You can see that the dynamic range has been reduced, and that the ending looks like a ridiculous blob of sound.

Mr. Oldfield, why? I would return this for a full refund if I could. But sadly, I can't. Looks like I'll have to try to hunt down the 2000 remaster or an earlier pressing so I can have this record (the way I originally fell in love with it) on CD. But because of all the NEW pressings, that's now gonna be near impossible for a reasonable price. Thanks.
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ESentinel Offline




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Posted: Aug. 24 2015, 19:34

Pretty much agree on this but,

What do you have against the 2010 Ommadawn CD?
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AwayWeGo Offline




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Posted: Aug. 25 2015, 03:27

Quote (ESentinel @ Aug. 24 2015, 19:34)
Pretty much agree on this but,

What do you have against the 2010 Ommadawn CD?

Oh, yes. The Ommadawn comment I made. I really should have clarified. I didn't for brevity's sake though.

Basically, I think the 2010 remix is inferior at the ending of part one, and with dynamics overall. I had always had sort of a dislike for the mix because my first listen of Ommadawn was with the 2010 remaster (I'm rather young) and I found the record to be boring. Then, months later, I had a chance to listen through the '75 mix and was blown away. It seemed better in every way, and made me feel as though I was listening to Ommadawn for the first time.

Now, this isn't to say that I don't like the 2010 mix. In fact, it has grown on me and now it's the version I usually listen to. I was just saying that the new Ommadawn remaster/mix is one of the re-releases that I consider to have distracting dynamic changes from the original. I still enjoy it though (: Thanks for replying!
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JTI Offline




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Posted: Feb. 13 2016, 16:46

AwayWeGo - thanks for the post. This is good to know. I feel less bad in not buying the 2013 remaster now after hearing what you found.

Like you, I am in the US, and discovered back in Sept 2013, when Universal released this for downloading and streaming worldwide, they chose not to do so in the US and CA. Oddly enough, same day (or that same week) they had released Crises for download/streaming everywhere, including the US and CA, which I'm glad they did because that was great to have, but not FMO. Unfortunately this policy has continued into this year, I see that they have done the same thing with 2016 Discovery and Killing Field remasters.

I really don't understand why Universal is not making these available in the US and CA for downloading and streaming. They control the rights world-wide. Can't be costing them more to include these two countries and it would have given them (and Mike) the extra revenue from people buying them here. I think there are a lot of people here in North America who enjoy Mike's music and would have liked to have bought these.

I had waited 6 months in case Universal discovered their mistake but to no avail, so I wound up buying the 2000 remaster, which I did not already have and which fortunately is still available for downloading and streaming from iTunes, Amazon and 7Digital.

After experiencing this, when Discovery and Killing Fields came out a few weeks ago, I only bothered to wait a couple of weeks to see if they would come out here. When they didn't, I said screw and then just went out and bought the 2000 remasters (which like FMO I did not already have). 7Digital in particular is a good source for these three 2000 remasters; within the last year or so they have made them available in 16-bit/44.1KHz FLAC files.  They can be reached in the US at us.7digital.com. Their home site is in the UK - www.7digital.com.  (WARNING - from what I can see, the 2000 remasters appear to only be available in countries where the post-2009 remasters have not been released.)

It is too bad that whoever made the final call chose to use Hard Limiting on this record - the only saving grace is that the hard limiting could have been worse. Looks like they only cropped off at pretty close to the tippity-top of the loudest parts of the wave. I've seen worse where they chopped off well below the top (5-6dB or more from the top of the wave). They also appeared to have done this on Man on the Rocks, but again from looking at the wave, it doesn't seem to be quite as bad as other victims of the Loudness Wars.

Not quite sure what the benefit of this is other than making it louder and distorting the original sound in the process. On most of the ones I've seen this done on, It has added a disproportionate amount of bass beyond the original recording. I love bass, don't get me wrong, but it needs to be in its proper proportion to everything else. I would rather be able to use my EQ to add the extra bass than to have it imposed from without. Hard Limiting does have its place and can be useful on recordings that are totally out of control volume-wise to reduce some of the variances, but needs to be used VERY, VERY SELECTIVELY and VERY, VERY CAREFULLY.........


One more thing I will say about FMO -  and I have a feeling I might be alone on this - "Ireland's Eye" section at the end of Orabidoo, a beautiful piece, with just Mike on his guitar and Maggie singing, is a bit too low volume-wise in my opinion. Not sure if this has been changed in the 2013 version, but in the 2000 and I suspect earlier ones, it is very far down in the mud.  I suspect Mike's intent was that this would be like a lullaby, much like "Molly" on QE2, another beautiful piece that too is very low volume-wise. I wound up using a sound editing tool and boosted these just a few decibels (but don't worry, NOT to Loudness War levels)...... :O :)
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First_Excursion Offline




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Posted: Feb. 15 2016, 01:52

Quote (JTI @ Feb. 13 2016, 16:46)
"Ireland's Eye" section at the end of Orabidoo, a beautiful piece, with just Mike on his guitar and Maggie singing, is a bit too low volume-wise in my opinion. Not sure if this has been changed in the 2013 version, but in the 2000 and I suspect earlier ones, it is very far down in the mud.  I suspect Mike's intent was that this would be like a lullaby, much like "Molly" on QE2, another beautiful piece that too is very low volume-wise.

I agree they are particularly low. Although I listen to FMO on a reasonably low-earth orbit; it came out long before my experience in sound engineering so it never really occurred to me that those sections might benefit from getting a little clearer of the noise floor. Possibly the mud just inadvertently became part of what I grew to love about it.  

Incidentally, and I hope not to hijack the thread with this but do we know if Mike actually played guitar on the Ireland's Eye section? I wouldn't be surprised to hear it was Rick Fenn.
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JTI Offline




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Posted: Feb. 21 2016, 18:17

Good question, First_Excursion! I always assumed it was Mike, but you never know. Rick did take part (like everyone else) in the writing of that piece, so it is possible.....

Side note - looks like iTunes and 7Digital both released the 2016 versions of Discovery and KF in the US and CA after all (iTunes only has Deluxe version of Discovery though while 7Digital has both Standard and Deluxe). From what I could tell of the samples, not much difference other than differences in volume. If you boost the softer one, then they seem indistinguishable to me. I'm glad they're out there though, because now I can buy some of the bonus tracks off of Discovery (B-sides and extendeds, I'll probably skip most of the 1984 suite)....
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