The Beatles and Pink Floyd released high quality remasters. Who should be next? - Page 2

War:

All Day Music

The World is a Ghetto

Three Dog Night:

It Ain't easy

Naturally

Quote:

Originally Posted by baka1969 

The Janis Joplin and Hendrix output can certainly use an update.

Jimi's catalog has been released on CD 4 times that I know of. 

I'm not saying it still doesn't deserve and audiophile reissue, though. 
 

Cream.  Classic Bruce, Clapton and Baker bashing out the hits to the max!  

Great artists whose recordings I would love love love to see in high-quality versions:

Sly & The Family Stone

Aretha Franklin

Ray Charles

Jackson 5

Marvin Gaye

There are tons of less-famous musicians from years past that deserve better-sounding recordings, too, but that would require me to do even more wishing. Especially since a lot of their albums are out of print due as much to labels going under as to nobody really knowing who owns the masters any more.

I was going to say The Smiths, but a box set was released recently. I still need to pick up a copy

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 

The Beatles remasters were not necessarily better. They spent a lot of time cleaning up insignificant noise and added a little compression. It's like they worked on the tiny things and ignored the important things. The mono set sounds better than those tracks have sounded in the past, but for stereo, I prefer the older release.

 

Led Zeppelin's remasterings have been disasterous in the past. The CDs have none of the punch and presence of the original LPs. It's certainly possible to improve them, but I'm not convinced that the people in charge of the LZ masters have a clue about how to go about it.

A lot of remasterings through the the 1990s and 2000s were not to make the music sound better but to bring the sound levels in line with popular tastes of the time (compressed). I haven't heard the latest Beatles reissues but I wouldn't be surprised if the stereo set was Loudness War-ized and the mono set wasn't. The Wikipedia entry for Loudness War used to have an animated GIF showing how the SPL of a Beatles track got louder over time, but it's been removed.

Lately I've been increasingly interested in early CD releases. They're frequently cheap on Amazon and, despite what everybody thought at the time, they often sound good, especially compared to later versions. It's a bit of a minefield since the 80s brought us a lot of horrible CD versions of good albums too - arbitrarily dropped tracks or RIAA-EQ'd masters or worse - but not everything was bad. The sound quality on some classic albums seem to have benefited from their labels' indifference, in terms of sound quality, compared to when the label pays attention. The most desirable versions of Who's Next, for example, are a couple of bargain bin editions - most of the collectors' versions stuffed with extra tracks and outtakes and liner notes are also overcompressed or have noisy mixes.

What is the possibility that LZ's master tapes are just sloppily done enough to preclude a satisfactory transition to CD? That's been my hunch for a looong time.

The problem with Led Zeppelin is the second thought noodling that goes on in the remastering process. The original LPs sounded powerful and raw, but the sound keeps getting softer and thicker with each remaster. I guess some people think that's an improvement, but I don't.

^ Okay but until I hear otherwise I'll keep to my conspiracy theory, that a fubar-ed Jimmy Page got in there and went wild on the later albums.

Since we seem to be reaching into my childhood...

Parliament Funkadelic

Black Sabbath

and yes, Zappa (Joe's Garage Remastered would be great)