U2 Wins Battle in ‘The Loudness War’ With Boy, October, War
We spend a lot of time discussing mastering, remastering, vinyl, CD, and digital. We do it because I think it’s interesting and so do a few of my regulars around here. We’ve talked about The Loudness War and how it seems to get worse with each new record and especially on remasters.
There are exceptions, and U2 seems to be one of them. Sort of. At least they are when it comes to the remastering of their back catalog. Where so many remasters of older albums are exercises in bass boosting and compression, The Edge has personally overseen a beautiful excavation of the band’s older albums.
They started with last year’s re-release of The Joshua Tree, which was exquisitely restored without distorting or ruining the depth of the songs as originally recorded and presented. I haven’t gotten to listen to every note of every song from the three deluxe editions of Boy, October, and War, but what I’ve heard thus far reminds me of the loving care put into The Joshua Tree. You may not want the deluxe editions, but if you’ve ever loved any of these four records you owe it to yourself to buy one of these new re-issues. You’ll fall in love with the music all over again.
Filed under: Tags: U2
Dude, hush. Don’t make me regret having to sit here at work for another 90 minutes while those things likely sit on my doorstep at home.
Priorities, man. You can’t let music like that sit, smoldering, waiting to be unwrapped and heard!
Luckily they weren’t smoldering - UPS was late and arrived 30 minutes or so after I got home. Man, these are some hefty little packages.
Well . . . I hate to say it, but these didn’t quite win the battle. They’ve been compressed. They’re not terrible - there are certainly much worse examples of compression in remasters out there, but they’ve definitely had some squishin’ done to them. I just don’t know why, unless they were pressured to do something to make them sound significantly different to the originals (unlike The Joshua Tree, which is only a minimal improvement - as it should be.)
For an example, take a listen to the original version of “I Will Follow” compared to the remaster. Once the volume is equaled out, the original has significantly stronger, deeper bass and smoother highs. What sucks is that the remaster cleans up the general sound, which seemed a little hollow on all three. It’s a toss-up - do you stick with the originals for being true to the recorded/mixed sound, or the remasters for some cleaning up at the expense of dynamics? (There is, of course, no question about the bonus disc or packaging - these are necessities. If you didn’t have this stuff before, you gotta have these.)
They’re certainly listenable and enjoyable, but if anyone is looking for something that is true to the original releases, these are not for them. As I posted last night, remasters that significantly alter the original sound are not always bad.
I guess that’s the thing… remasters are going to be different from the original or you don’t bother doing it. In most current instances, different means louder with more bass EQ. In the case of these three U2 releases, I think the remasters sound really good without having sacrificed much from the original. I don’t think a lot of dynamic was lost in the process of cleaning up the sound. They’re an improvement.
I’ve got some more thoughts on this that I posted last night, so I won’t expound too much here for fear of repeating myself, but MoFi and others like them never use compression and generally shy away from drastic EQing, relying more on quality source material and an exquisitely detailed audio ripping system to extract every bit of sound from the masters. So it is a disappointment after they used such a light touch, in the spirit of MoFi, etc., on The Joshua Tree, to find these three bearing the marks of a typical remaster - ie, if you turn them up, they start to sound a bit harsh, whereas the originals sound incredible loud. But there are far worse remasters out there, and there are improvements in some areas that make it impossible to dislike them. So I’m very torn, but I’m likely to keep my originals - I can’t see not listening to those again.
I don’t believe any compression has been applied to last week’s re-masters.
I also have the MoFi release of WAR, and the new re-master sounds way better to me. I’m hearing extended highs and lows, in addition to some extra clarity and detail. It is subtle, as it should be. Looking at the waveforms, I don’t see compressed or limited LOUD waveforms, but rather a recording that has lots of dynamics — definitely not a victim of any wars, loudness or otherwise. They all 3 sound fantastic compared to the originals on my pretty good quality home system.