Remastering started with good intentions - make older music sound a little more modern - and has come full circle today to the point that it's now taking awful sounding modern releases and making them sound like the old vinyl masters that remastering was meant to improve. Case in point: Ben Folds' recent Way To Normal, which is a good album that unfortunately sounds awful. It is a flat, lifeless mess of sound. Buried in there is a pile of good songs, I know it, but enjoying them is made all the more difficult by the fact that digital frequency range compression has squashed everything down to nearly mono. And if you know anything about mono, you know that it takes a special ear and talent to produce a good mono mix. This is not a good mono mix, even if that was the intent (it wasn't.)
Sadly, Folds gave in to the trend of making a "loud" album - the same digital compression that made Metallica's Death Magnetic sound as if someone had tuned a radio to static in the background while they were recording also plagued Folds' new material. And fans complained. Luckily Folds was paying attention, unlike Metallica, who acted like their fans were idiots, deaf, or "too old to rock!" if they couldn't appreciate a "modern recording." He relented with this newly released, retitled version - Stems And Seeds.
So what do we get? Under the bland, yet ugly new cover, we get the full album in resequenced order, seemingly suffering not a whit from the evils of compression, and it sounds wonderful. The drums have actual tone, Ben's piano sounds alive and sparkles, and those great harmony vocals sprinkled throughout the album practically sound like they're right in the room. It almost makes me question the need for high resolution, surround sound audio. If you ever wondered why people pay good money for those gold, Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs discs, this is why - and you're paying a lot less for this.
![Mudcrutch [Vinyl]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ldGltM2gL._SL120_.jpg)
![Mudcrutch Extended Play Live EP [Vinyl LP with bonus CD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ly3HqnwTL._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - Scott Deitche
Rush are rematsering two of their songs from their 2002 cd, Vapor Trails. While it featured some of their best songwriting, Vapor Trails was a super-compressed mess a wall of sounds lacking any fidelity. Same story for the above-mentioned Metallica, and the latest release by Evergrey.
I love Ben Folds, but had not yet purchased Way to Normal. I'll skip it and head for this.
2 - Tom Johnson
Scott, you'd be fine skipping WtN. You're not missing anything and gaining a whole lot with S&S.
And Vapor Trails is a personal favorite - BIG Rush fan here! The two tracks from Vapor Trails that are on next week's Retrospective 3 are actually completely remixed by Rich Chyki, not just remastered. You can hear very muddy mp3 clips at Barnes & Noble right now, in fact. It's too hard to say if it's a huge improvement in sound quality, but it is definitely different. I'm actually anxious to get a best-of just to hear two songs that I already own . . . that seems sad, but in this case it's justified.