[78-L] Remastering

[David Lennick]

Graham Newton wrote:
> 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 mounted CEDAR equipment use algorithms that have been superseded by the new 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
> 

I still remember "NoNoise" and still shudder at the disasters it wreaked. Or to 
be more accurate, the disasters wreaked by the engineers who turned it on full 
blast and left it running overnight and issued the results on unlistenable MCA 
and Philips CDs in the mid 80s.

dl