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I was listening to Low Life today. I couldn't get over how brilliant it is, and how shitty it sounds. The production may have been fine for 1985, but it's in desperate need of a remaster, as well as the whole catalogue, at least up to and including Republic (maybe a remaster will bring out some more hidden Hooky bass)......We as fans need to vocal about a remaster in order for it to happen.
J
Low-life and Brotherhood both need remastering but, pleeeeaaaaase, decent remastering! When I listen to the sound quality of WFTSC, which is compressed like hell, I really fear that they would just increase the loudness of the old recordings rather than try to get the best from them. 
They definitely should hire the guy who remastered Depeches's back catalogue.
I was going to make this topic myself, but figured it has already been posted many times before. I want remasters more than anything, of all of them, in 5.1 surround sound, with the extended vrsions included (especially the 9 minute long Perfect Kiss, and 17 minute Eleiga).
They have been (and still are) working on the JD ones, once those are out and hopefully a success NO will be considered.
Ricky Silahua wrote: I was going to make this topic myself, but figured it has already been posted many times before. I want remasters more than anything, of all of them, in 5.1 surround sound, with the extended vrsions included (especially the 9 minute long Perfect Kiss, and 17 minute Eleiga).
Not gonna happen. You need to re-MIX to go into 5:1, you'd need the original 2" 24track tapes, which unless they've been stored in a tape vault (errrrm how many tapes has Hooky pulled from skips (dumpsters)), they'll be an audio mess of print-through (where the magnetic signature on one lap of the reel "prints through" to the next....you hear it sometimes on cassettes that have been left spooled a long time, as a sort of "pre-echo" before a track. Not only that, the glues will be breaking down, and the tape will degrade measurably with each playback, and fuck the tape machine up a treat in the process.
Remastering is simply a matter of bashing the final album through this year's hot multiband compressor, a touch of NR and maybe just MAYBE, a teeny bit of psychoaccoustic widening of the stereo field. Done well, it can sound very nice.
Done badly (singles), you would get better results just playing it through the sort of optimizer that FM radio stations use....honestly you would, cos they are set up by smart men. Pin it to 0db and flatten the spectrum.....job done....and NO sound like Beonce!
Are we SURE the master sucks BTW? I can't remeber what the cassette and CD sound like, but the vinyl of LL is fucking SHOCKING, worst cut I've ever...actually...no, not even close, but it licks puss anyway. I have a UK Bhood and it's just as bad (fuckin record bends like a flexi), but I also have a US Qwest one that's a totally different and much better and deeper cut. Just as a good cutting engineer (add that to that list of jobs that'll be gone in 10 years) can make a weak track rock, a bell-end-ytp-idiot could easily turn BM into megadrive music.[1]
[1] BM oddly enough is a stupendously good cut.
