Hi All
I must have too much time on my hands but Ive been practicing mastering with Ozone 7 from Izotope.This was me just messing around so its not scientific at all .Here is what I did:
I took tracks from ABBA and remastered them as best I could.I was surprized by a few things and here is what I found
1:What was going on at the sides of the stereo field.The things they put in that weren't obvious when listening to the complete track.Like harmonies,strumming etc.
You could listen to their panning fairly clearly.
2:How much you could improve what was mastered perfectly at the time.
It was like taking a layer of dust of a record ,sound wise.I'd be interested if anyone has done the same with other artists CDS.
3:The problem that arizes is that the wavs are so Compressed fully. So what I ended up was not using the Maximizer Compressor to compress and turning off the highest band on the Dynamics module as that High band seemed to be adding alot of noise and lowering the quality.The less compressed the song the more improvement you could make ,for instance Dancing Queen was compressed to the last and the improvement was less.
4:The loudness was already in the song anyway so I only compressed the individual bands lightly but by working on the sides you could bring out all those lovely sounds and the Transient Shaper module really worked well also.

Anyway my definition of improvement was that the tracks had more clarity and you could bring out the more hidden aspects and Izotope Ozone definitely does that.The increase clarity wasnt small either it was quite alot,If anyone has done this Id be interested in what ur process was etc ,urs Hugh

I've done this with many of my vinyl items and other songs I wanted to clean up. From my old jazz collection to older CDs even.

With judicious use of the Exciter and the Spatial (sides) tool, you can indeed make less noticeable parts more noticeable. Add in EQ, the Multiband Compressor, etc and there is lots to play with.


Then again I think my monitoring system is much better than what I had in the 70s or early 80s. So that likely makes a difference also.

Add in that we can now look at a track, see any phasing issues etc, and easily adjust much more accurately and much easier than the old days.
I remember working with tape and have no desire to return.
We live in a really cool time for having fun like this.

Hi Rharv,
Yeah its really cool to play around with these great songs and feel like you are actually making it sound greater,Hugh

Well, it's really hard to go wrong because if it sounds better to you then, well, it is better. This entire mixing/mastering thing is one of the strangest mashups of art and science that I've ever encountered. With few rules and zillions of generalities I find that, as oft said, the process is never finished...just abandoned. A mastering that sounded good to me a year ago may today sound even better or fill me with "what the hell was I thinking" when I did that!

J&B

I'd wager you made the ABBA recordings different and not better. Especially because "better" is completely subjective. Maybe the recordings you started with were exactly how the engineers designed them and in that case you would only be changing them to suit your own preferences.

I do understand that with old vinyl and lower quality recordings there might be an improvement opportunity but even there I find my personal preference is the music as it was created and originally released. I do not even care for the remastering stuff many bands do to cash in on their old records and they have the raw tapes to work with!

Hi J n B,
I love that "just abandoned" spot on.I suppose our hearing changes as well over time.

Hi John,
Yeah John I said the exact thing to myself when I started is this better or am I only reinventing the wheel.So I said whats better in my eyes and what can we do now that they couldnt do then.
And I think that they couldnt process the sides of the recordings in particular and if the producer could he certainly would have mastered it with that in mind.
I took in mind that the ABBA songs were basey and that I shouldnt mess with that kind of thing.The original recordings to me were perfect.
I would think but again I dont know that if you took the Pepsi Challenge the Izotope Mastered version would be prefered not because they are louder but because they have more clarity,
Thanks Guys Hugh