The Petra Zone

I was just thinking about a great Petra project....How's this....Have the entire Petra catalog (excluding compilation albums) (Petra through Farewell) re-mastered. I can imagine how the older albums would sound like using today's technology. I bet the albums would sound great. Opinions?

Remastering does not change the crappy guitar, bass and drums, or fix the dated mixes. All mastering does is dink with the stereo width via phase manipulation, the EQ, compression, limiting, etc. A bad sound is still a bad sound. You can't fix bad sound in the mix. That is done at tracking. Now, how about retracking the entire catalog, with the exception of the vocals. Problem is, the multi track tapes are usually retained by the studios and 99% of the studios used are long gone. Remastering does nothing for me because the original production masters for Petra are not available for every album. There are copies of copies, and that is it for some.

Your team did well this year....

Foreigner recently remixed their greatest hits. SOmewhere in the liner notes they talked about how some of the masters weren't recorded as well and on thoise songs the differences were minimal. However, on many of the songs there is a considerable difference, a real treat for fans of the songs. It would be great if the masters were still available for Petra, but aside from the last couple of albums I think they are gone.

Personally, I'm good with everything from On Fire on forward, but the albums before that could really stand to be reworked. Now to some extent the Volz era stuff is getting redone, but it would sure be nice to see BTTS and TMW reworked.

I would like to hear BTS completely redone, with the exception of GGRARTY.

Here is a quick example of what can be done:
http://boray.wontek.net/petra/secondwindremaster.mp3

The "remastering" kicks in at 0:08. It's EQ, 4-band compression and a limiter... Done in 10 minutes from a 192 kbps mp3 so expect it to sound better when done for real by a pro.

Mastering has become another person interpreting what sounds good and messing with the sound. I hate that. That is not what mastering is. If a mastering engineer has to do something to the music, the mix is flawed and the mix engineer should try again. This happens all the time.

Mastering is to make the music work for the medium, and make the songs flow together as an album. TV, Radio, Tape, Vinyl, CD, HDCD, DVD, DVD-A, Lossy Codecs, etc all have different abilities, requirements, and sounds. The mastering process is not for merely changing what the artist or label originally intended wanted, when it was mixed. If I wanted the mastering guys opinion, I would hire him to mix. I don't, so I pick guys who do damage control and formatting and that is it.

Some artists use specific mixing engineers for specific genres, and certain combinations of mixing and mastering engineers, because they know each other's processes/results, and communicate well. The mix and mastering engineer should be communicating, sending a couple of files back and forth, so that little, if anything has to be done in mastering. EQ for example in a mix session can be extreme for creative reasons, but drastic EQ in mastering can be .25dB to 1dB increments, not 3, 6 or 10dB increments. Mastering consoles are much higher and finer precision than production EQs. The concept is to have a transparent character, which is the polar opposite of production EQ, which is like choosing colors, paint brushes and techniques of a painting.

Boray wrote:Here is a quick example of what can be done:
http://boray.wontek.net/petra/secondwindremaster.mp3

The "remastering" kicks in at 0:08. It's EQ, 4-band compression and a limiter... Done in 10 minutes from a 192 kbps mp3 so expect it to sound better when done for real by a pro.

No comments... So I guess nobody was impressed...

I'ma have to

Boray wrote:

Boray wrote:Here is a quick example of what can be done:
http://boray.wontek.net/petra/secondwindremaster.mp3

The "remastering" kicks in at 0:08. It's EQ, 4-band compression and a limiter... Done in 10 minutes from a 192 kbps mp3 so expect it to sound better when done for real by a pro.

No comments... So I guess nobody was impressed...

I'll have to download it and put it on a...

Haha! Can I use that picture? I mean on my homepage or facebook or something like that...?

All yours, my brother.

*I* was impressed! You can hear the difference immediately.

I obviously know nothing about the mechanics of mixing/mastering, but find it all very interesting.

Thanks! And Thanks!