the original "Boston" album remastered by Scholz- picked up a copy

I had to buy three of the original album 'cause I flattened two from over playing them...

I gotta say, all of Boston's albums, sound quality wise, sucked. I don't see how remastering them could help. A bad recording is a bad recording if you know what I mean.

If I remember correctly, they did their own recording, mixing, and mastering in the basement of one of the guys in the band.

I seem to remember a story about the original multitrack tapes getting sticky before they finished one of their albums and they had to pour silicon lube on the tape as it was playing to allow the reels to spin.

bitflipper

[in analog] the phase hasn't been all screwed up by the A/D conversion, and the high end isn't all messed up trying to fit a 16-kHz tone into three pieces of a 44-Hz sampling rate. 

Eh?

One of several "Eh's" in that article.  Interesting, but what do you expect from someone who doesn't eat meat? (  )

"the original, quarter-inch-tape stereo masters"

I gotta say, all of Boston's albums, sound quality wise, sucked. I don't see how remastering them could help. A bad recording is a bad recording if you know what I mean. If I remember correctly, they did their own recording, mixing, and mastering in the basement of one of the guys in the band. I seem to remember a story about the original multitrack tapes getting sticky before they finished one of their albums and they had to pour silicon lube on the tape as it was playing to allow the reels to spin.

NO, THAT'S NOT QUITE THE STORY.

We've got more DAW power on our smart phones, than Boston had in their basement..  Its only the tiny little screen, and still limited software choice..  but wi-fi(smarphone) monitor setups are not far, and windows 8, runs the desktop programs..

so??   strange times for music production, and more innovation lies ahead

batsbrew

Linear Phase


Well..  I kinda want to hear the music now.  My guess is, "his remasters sound worse, not better."   Getting big bass today, actually starts with...  "the recording, or the sound design."   You can't up the eq on bass and get a great sound...   You have to process all this stuff from the ground up...   Like, "breaking benjamin," or whatever..   That bass sound, starts long before the eq...

ONE of the best bass tones i heard from that time period and genre.....
i'd say scholz knows what he's talking about.




give the new one a spin.
i'm quite impressed with it.

Oh..  You've heard it..  Ok, I check it out sometime..  sounds good

ONE of the best bass tones i heard from that time period and genre..... i'd say scholz knows what he's talking about

i bought a Tom Scholz Rockman when i was on the road in Phoenix Az in the late 80`s-wore it on one hip with my Sony Discman on the other.
the tone and ability to mix between the two blew me out and i practised on it and warmed up for years-people thought i was a bit insular walking around with a bass and cans on but i was in my own little world.
thanks Tom  

I forgot that this is about the release from 2006 - which means I DO already have it and am listening to it again now (albeit on crappier speakers/subwoofer than I used to have).

[sarcasm]
Yeah, it sucks.
[/sarcasm]

Jonbouy

i'd say scholz knows what he's talking about.

 
He might know something about making the sounds, but his ignorance of digital audio is really quite staggering if those are his actual words, and not something an editor did his best to make out from a tape based dictaphone recording of them.

you have to trust your ears.


my guess is, scholz's ears, are better than yours.


and that opinion is based on nothing but pure music sales.




;)

Linear Phase

batsbrew

We've got more DAW power on our smart phones, than Boston had in their basement..

Linear Phase

and yet, it doesn't sound as good.


hehe

Well remember like, "film."  and how drop dead beautiful a movie as recent as say, "1985," looked...    Just think back to the last days of beautiful film, and compare in how such a short time all the warmth, depth, and organic dirt/grime, was taken away and replaced by discrete math...

Glory, The Three Amigos, A View To A Kill, Batman ( With Micheal Keaton ), The Shawshank Redemption, Boys In The Hood...  These are not from, "ten years ago," but about 20 years ago, and they are all warm, and beatuiful and um....  "analog."

I dunno..   I see all these digital photos, and they lack the sheer smell of a Polaroid Capture..  Can you remember how Polaroids smelled, or crinkled, or looked...

You can buy Polaroid photo paper and print a digital photo out on that, and it will have the same smell/crinkle. 
Hell you can even buy a digital Polaroid camera these days which spits out the prints. 


I think digital photography has surpassed film photography to be honest. It's certainly more versatile. If you want a pin sharp image with impossible amounts of detail, you can get that (provided your camera is good enough). If you want your photo to look like it was taken in 1976, you can get that too. You can simulate virtually every kind of film, and apply all kinds of aging effects. 

I think when people say they don't like digital photography as much, they're usually basing their opinion on the fact that they prefer to look at a real print than a computer screen. And let's face it, a good quality digital print today is every bit as good as a film print. As for motion pictures, well there is no reason why they can't make films which look every bit as "warm" and vintage as the movies you mentioned. But consumer taste has changed - people want slick, pin sharp, high definition. Whether or not that's just because they've had it shoved in front of their faces, is another matter. Look at modern animation in movies. Everything now has to be generic 3D computer animation. I hate how it's all in the same style, and the characters have less character and life in them than the old hand drawn cartoons. But the kids want vivid high contrast 3D images and so that's that. 

Same as the quality of recordings these days, and the "loudness wars." There's no reason why you can't make warm, dynamic recordings on digital equipment and in fact some people do. But the mass market demands sterile and overcompressed crap. 

batsbrew

Jonbouy

i'd say scholz knows what he's talking about.

He might know something about making the sounds, but his ignorance of digital audio is really quite staggering if those are his actual words, and not something an editor did his best to make out from a tape based dictaphone recording of them.

you have to trust your ears.


my guess is, scholz's ears, are better than yours.


and that opinion is based on nothing but pure music sales.




;)

 
Nothing wrong with my ears, I'd know if I'd made a million selling album...
 
My lack is somewhere other than that.
 
It does go to prove though you don't have to be 'an actual audio engineer' to make a blockbusting album and why much of the discussion about what I like to call 'fart-skinning', the finite differences between bit depths and sample rates and such like are largely irrelevent to making popular music.
 
He enjoys the sound of tape, I understand that and it has some basis as far as preference goes.  I've always enjoyed the inherent limitations that tape imposes myself.
 
I'd like to be able to test him on whether he could hear the difference between the original vs, 16 bit audio and 24 bit audio after it has been re-recorded to tape though using todays converters rather than those used 30 years ago.
 
I can understand why Sony were reluctant let him at it after reading his interview, after all they have 'actual audio engineers' working for them.

well, it's interesting, after doing the 'math' on the files (i used "peace of mind" from both sources)most of the peaks were the same level (he didn't brickwall limit to bring up the overall volume) but most of the changes were EQ changes, where the overall power level of certain frequencies were tweaked, which overall, made it more transparent, punchier and deeper all at the same time.to be sure, this guy scholz worked with a pro mastering engineer... i'm sure that scholz simply was allowed to guide the actual engineers to the sound he wanted.

here are the stats:

Remastered (2006) by Tom Scholz, Bill Ryan and Toby Mountain at Northeastern Digital, Southborough, MAHideaway Studio II

Analog to Digital transfer by Tom "Curly" Ruff  (works for Sony)

chuckebaby

it wasnt his basement,it was a rehearsal space in cambridge..

I was just reading their official web site. They have it locked so I can't copy/paste text.

Foreplay was recorded in his basement on a tape machine he made himself. It goes on to say other things were recorded there and at professional studios.

If you go to the site, turn your monitor volume down. It's loud ... and does it every time you click on something.

http://www.bandboston.com/flashsite7_6_12.html

I tried to link directly to the page where I read it, but they got that locked down too ... you have to go to the main page first ...

Bub

So basically he was the annoying AV Club kid in the room who thought he was in control of everything but really did nothing? LOL!

Yeah, or mebee 'an actual audio engineer'.