I dunno. From what I'd read, each album that gets remastered goes through a process where they master several different versions, including Hi-Res, vinyl, CD, mp3, etc. Is like FLAC or ALAC a downsample of that original remaster?
The terminology gets a bit messed up here, due to what exactly is meant by “master” or “remaster” and the fact that the audiophile world often doesn’t fully understand what these professional terms mean and commonly comes up with it’s own meaning/definition, which can be somewhat different to the actual meaning. For example, “remasters” are commonly actually “remixes” rather than just remasters. As a general rule, there is just one version of a master (or remaster), which is then down-sampled to the different distribution formats, Hires, CD, MP3, etc. As mentioned though, sometimes the CD (and/or lossy format) is actually a different version of that master/remaster because it may have had additional compression/limiting applied. A vinyl “version” may also actually be a different version. The vinyl is often just cut from the same digital master but sometimes it requires specific processing (for example, mono’ing the bass, some additional compression or the RIAA EQ curve applied), because vinyl has certain technical issues/limitations that don’t apply to CD (and other digital formats).
Yeah to me, there's no audible difference b/t FLAC/ALAC and MP4/AAC, but there def is vs. mp3. Esp sub-256 kbps mp3, where it just sounds rough, the cymbals when hit sound artificial and "wet", etc.
With MP3, artefacts may become audible below around 180kbps, exactly what kbps depends on the specific encoder employed. At 320kbps (or 256VBR), MP3 is always audibly transparent assuming a very old (>20 years) encoder hasn’t been used.
I've listened to some CDs that were labeled by some as "brickwalled", and to me yeah they're louder but it was like overwhelming (like WOOSHH, or in your face lol) vs. like a later Hi-Res version that clearly sounded more balanced and easier to listen to in terms of hearing all the various details of the instruments, vocals, etc.
“Brickwalled” is another example of what I mentioned above. Brickwall limiting has been applied to pretty much all analogue and digital recordings during the mastering process for around 70 years. There are exceptions but they’re not common and typically only found on some digital recordings of some acoustic music genres, some classical pieces for example.
In the audiophile world, “brickwalled” appears to refer to the specific condition where numerous layers of heavy compression and limiting have been applied (with make-up gain), to the point that when zoomed out, the waveform display appears to show little or no dynamic variability and therefore looks somewhat like a “brick”. Such extreme compression/limiting mainly stems from around the mid/late 1990’s when computer based limiters became available, although the music engineering community was raising serious concerns about the excessive use of compression/limiting several years earlier, even before the computer based limiter were available. This extreme compression/limiting only really affects popular music genres and of course is designed to be audible, otherwise there’d be no point in taking the time applying it. Whether it sounds better or worse depends on your listening environment, the individual piece of music and exactly how extreme the compression/limiting. As a general rule, such extreme compression/limiting will sound significantly worse on a good/decent system in a decent (relatively quiet) listening environment. This is also why *some* hires recordings sound better than the CD (or lossy) versions of the same master. For ~25 years, hires versions were limited to at least decent systems in decent listening environments, while CDs and lossy versions were commonly played on poor equipment/environments; when working out, driving/travelling, playing back on laptop speakers, etc., conditions where higher amounts of compression/limiting would sound better and was therefore sometimes applied to those formats likely to be used under these conditions.
So, it’s got nothing intrinsically to do with hires vs CD/lossy, there’s no audible difference between them. On those occasions when there actually is an audible difference, it’s because the recording rights holder (usually the record label) has requested the mastering engineer apply more compression/limiting to the formats typically used in sub-optimal listening circumstances.
G
