Could albums recorded digitally in the 80s and early 90s benefit with a modern stereo remix as much as ones recorded in analogue?

[barfle]

I have a handful,of LPs that say they had a digital step in the process of going from studio tp vinyl. They sound fine - nothing to write home about.

There’s no mention of clock rate or bit depth or exactly where in the process they went digital and when they went back to analog. I suspect that the digital recordings were uncompressed, because it just wasn’t being done in those days, but again, no mention.

I know that any manipulation of a digital signal will usually render the two or three least-significant bits useless, but again, there’s no mention of just what was digitized and what digital processing was done to those recordings. Pretty frustrating.

So, could they be “improved?” I suppose a modern DAC would be an improvement, but I wonder if the “digital” files could be released as WAV or FLAC, we might find out a few things.

 

[DuncanS]

The all digital 'medium' was new back in the late 70s early 80s and it was very easy to get 'hard' clipping rather than the 'softer' clipping of analogue tape which handled the peaks rather less harshly. Having said that I remember putting on Stevie Wonder's 1980 "Hotter In July" LP and being surprised at the quality of the sound - it was recorded on a Sony Digital machine. I do wonder if some of the earlier CD releases had a bit of treble boost added at the mastering stage. One of the best all digital recordings on CD is Ry Cooder's 1979 album "Bop Till You Drop", the recording engineer really got it right (it was recorded on a 3M multi-track tape machine at 50kHz sample rate).

 

[fetchmybeer]

Switching out the drum sounds would take more than just a remix.

Maybe, maybe not. I think a lot of those snare drum sounds were supplemented with drum machine snare hits. Others were gated half to death. Assuming the original tracks exist, I would think that on a great deal of them the original drum tracks lie intact underneath all that stuff that was made to make them sound more "of the time." Not in all cases, though. Perhaps not even in most.

Somebody mentioned Momentary Lapse of Reason earlier, where the drums were basically replayed. I really don't like that they did that because I think the rest of the tracks-- particularly Gilmour's guitars-- are very 80s. So merely subbing in some dry drums doesn't really work for me-- round peg into a square hole type of deal. Plus I don't like adding new stuff after the fact, especially 30 years after the fact. I would rather they kept the drums as is or attempted to de-verb them a bit with technology.

 

[key_wiz]

Maybe, maybe not. I think a lot of those snare drum sounds were supplemented with drum machine snare hits. Others were gated half to death. Assuming the original tracks exist, I would think that on a great deal of them the original drum tracks lie intact underneath all that stuff that was made to make them sound more "of the time." Not in all cases, though. Perhaps not even in most.

Somebody mentioned Momentary Lapse of Reason earlier, where the drums were basically replayed. I really don't like that they did that because I think the rest of the tracks-- particularly Gilmour's guitars-- are very 80s. So merely subbing in some dry drums doesn't really work for me-- round peg into a square hole type of deal. Plus I don't like adding new stuff after the fact, especially 30 years after the fact. I would rather they kept the drums as is or attempted to de-verb them a bit with technology.

would certainly depend on how they were originally recorded, of course.

But I recorded a lot of big gated, reverbed snares in the 80s. Others may have done it differently, but everything I did was done prior to it being put to tape. The gating would happen during the recording of the multi-tracks. Not added later during mixdown. But I suppose that could have been what happened in some cases.

Personally, I don't need old recordings made to sound different just because of changing times. I thought I would like the new drums on "Momentary" better, but I actually don't. I agree with you, it doesn't really work.

 

[jimfisheye]

Replacing drums is a very tall order! Unless the music is just click track bingo, there's a world of subtle timing nuance between the drums and all the instruments. Things get exposed and awkward. And then you know, some drummers are apparently super human machines and nail things you just couldn't imagine! Usually a very tall order though.

One thing that's changed with digital recording is the ability to record raw mic signals. This went from zero to 100. Try to record a raw unproduced (no compression, no nothing) to tape and the result is study of tape hiss. You had to produce live and take chances. Sometimes things didn't go perfect, but they went well enough and here we are with that mix.

Today you can take chances with no risk! That leads to some really accomplished mixes. And you can use 300 tracks on a digital mixer to let you grab at mix elements easily with no penalty of 300 tracks of preamp hiss. Surround sound mixes are another level of complexity. Doing that back then... This thought really puts the modern novelty masters to shame!

This of course leads to a conversation about capturing the moment vs beating something to death. Someone will have examples of an analog 4 track recording that wipes the floor with someone's modern rework attempt.

 

[jaybird100]

It shouldn't matter whether the album was recorded digitally or in analogue; if the sound is less than stellar, and if the remix can correct the problems, DO IT!