Remastered CD database?
 

Just wondering if anyone knows of a site which has a difinitive listing of wether a cd has been remastered or not? It'd also be nice to have pretty informative news about upcoming remasters. A lot of times my friend and I go used cd shopping and sometimes we don't know if something's been remastered or not. Thanks for any help you can give.

I've never seen such a list, but a search of the forums at www.stevehoffman.tv by disc name may uncover that information. Careful though... you may find that many times the original disc sounds better than the remaster...

Considering today's mastering techniques, I would say MOST often the original will sound better. :)

I think it's 50/50. I 've been rebuying most of my cd collection and some of them are worth buying remasterd but then again there are some others that aren't worth buying over either. It's kind of a tricky situation that if you really want to take a chance on it i'd say give it a shot i've been very happy with alot of the ones that i've bought remasterd and they are worth it plus alot of them add extra songs to help out the sale, but then again, there are a few duds that i've bought also. I'd say take a chance on it.

What I can tell you is that I replaced my copy of Ice Cube's Death Certificate with the remaster and regretted it ever since. The dynamic range compression robbed the songs of all their personality. Furthermore, the version of "Veterans of the Psychic Wars" on The Essential Blue Oyster Cult actually sounds worse than the MP3 I bought it to replace, for the same reason.

Yes, that's my biggest complaint about most new remasters. They have no dynamics whatsoever. Just one long, uniformly loud stream of obnoxiousness. And even if they don't compress the music into a loud mess, you'll often find bad EQ choices (way too much treble, etc). I'd say that the ratio is probably closer to 20/80... 20% of new 'popular' (rock, pop, etc) remasters being worthwhile, and the other 80% being a waste of money. For new rock/pop albums just being released for the first time, it's probably closer to 10/90 or even worse.

My biggest complaint with remasters is changes made. Elton John's earlier work no has lots of obnoxious echo added to it, and there are actually a couple of changes to Billy Joel's stuff (most notably, the sax solo on "New York State Of Mind"). I've e-mailed and asked repeatedly around, but no one really has a definitive list on changes made which is a little annoying. That's why, with the exception of discs with bonus material, I've given up on remasters.

The best remasters used to come from Mobile Fidelity and Steve Hoffman's DCC label on those gold plated CDs back in the 90's. My comparison between the original and gold remaster of Metallica's Master of Puppets was night and day, clean bass, crisp drums, none of the muddy mess of the original.

OTOH, I remember buying the Scorpions remaster of "Love at First Sting". I wanted to see if the hiss I remembered during "Still Loving You" was cleaned up, but it was identical, actually everything on the album appeared identical. Then I looked at my original CD again and noticed it was "DDD", a digital recording, so I kind of slapped myself for wasting $11 for the digital remaster of a digital recording.

Some claim to be remastered, but I think are completely remixed! The Queers' "Love Songs For The Retarded" remaster is completely different than the original. Guitars are way louder, the vocals are way lower. As it should always be.

Alot of the Judas Priest remasters have been worthwile that i've bought. Also Lynyrd Skynyrd has been good also. Scorpions, I tried Lovedrive and it was a little bit better than the original but not a whole lot. Deep Purple Perfect Strangers, In Rock, Fireball were all good, but the other ones i'd stay away from. The ones that I was disapointed in were Bad Company- Run with the Pack and Straight Shooter. The debut Bad Company cd is so good that you don't even have to bother with a remaster. I also re bought my AC/DC collection remasterd from Epic that I really enjoyed and is very worth it if your'e looking to buy remasters for AC/DC. I wasn't happy at all with Megadeth's remasters, I got a few of them at Christmas. Iron Maiden remasters haven't been that good either. I bought Killers and Piece of Mind remasterd but wasn't happy with them, I want to get Powerslave remasterd but i'm a bit skeptical because the others haven't worked out. The James Gang remasters were good and the Boston debut cd I liked. Like I said before in my earlier post, it's a mixed bag. I tried some and won but I also lost a few to.

To each their own. These were some of the worst remasters I have heard. :)


Again, to each their own. I was thrilled with the Audio Fidelity (Steve Hoffman) remaster. The original wasn't even close. :)