[78-L] Remastering

[Graham Newton]

DAVID BURNHAM wrote to the 78-L list:

> I don't know who in the business earns a six figure salary, but it is true
> that many remastering engineers don't recognize when to stop.  Obviously, 
> if you have a CEDAR system with all the bells and whistles, you sometimes 
> feel that the only way to justify having it is to ring every bell and blow
> every whistle.

Being one restoration person who has a CEDAR Cambridge system with most of the 
major conventional audio processes, I disagree.

For those who have spent the significant sums of money on CEDAR's flagship 
Cambridge processes, we have also spent a great deal of time to know where to 
stop to prevent over processing which introduces undesirable artifacts to the 
result.  This usually leaves some remnants of the noise we sought to remove, 
because you often CAN'T remove it all without generating undesirable artifacts!

The major problem is the producer who the ultimate work is being done for... 
they often repeatedly complain "there's too much hiss" and "take out more hiss" 
and other requests which are incompatible with doing the best job with the 
source material at hand.  There is simply no magic wand to be waved!

Another problem is the older CEDAR processes are not able to do what the new 
ones can.  The old CEDAR for Windows and the original stand alone series 2 rack 
mounted CEDAR equipment use algorithms that have been superseded by the new 
Cambridge processes which are updated on a continuing basis by CEDAR.

Unfortunately the old processes and equipment CAN'T be updated due to hardware 
limitations, and if you use the old equipment, you must settle for their 
limitations.  They were exceptional for their time, but progress has 
considerably outstripped what they could do successfully.




... Graham Newton

-- 
Audio Restoration by Graham Newton, http://www.audio-restoration.com
World class professional services applied to tape or phonograph records for
consumers and re-releases, featuring CEDAR's CAMBRIDGE processes.