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> An album is only mixed for whatever technology is available at the time. Audio recordings are mastered for whatever distribution technology is available at t
by rectang 5y ago
> An album is only mixed for whatever technology is available at the time.
Audio recordings are mastered for whatever distribution technology is available at the time.
Mixing, as an extension of creative production (Sgt. Peppers is a landmark work for this trend in pop music), is less commonly redone.
- TylerE 5y agoRemasters almost always invoke a remix, wether they advertise it or not.
- rectang 5y agoThat's just not accurate. Most mastering starts from finished mixes, not multitrack masters. (Source: I'm a former mastering engineer.)
- coldtea 5y agoMost mastering yes. Remastering less so.
- rectang 5y agoI mean, I did a bunch of remastering back in the day — generally old stuff being re-released on new media. It was always from the finished original mixes (or copies if using the originals was impractical). There's a vast quantity of stuff out there getting remastered constantly through the ages. For vinyl, for cassette, for CD, for streaming, for whatever. Or multiple times for the same medium, because the old masters wore out, were damaged or lost... And sure, sometimes remastering is done for aesthetic reasons, but it's not common. I guess if you're going to limit your definition of "remastered" to "the stuff that gets marketed as 'remastered'" then there are going to be more releases in there where remixing was done. But remixing (unless the goal is DJ-style remixing) is difficult, because reproducing the original mix environment is a huge challenge. In theory it's become more feasible in recent years if the mixing is done totally inside a DAW, but it's still hard to guarantee that the system can be rebooted (so people save "stems"). Long-term archival is a hard problem, even if your goal is just to preserve linear PCM sound files!