eli5 why do some songs say “Remastered”?
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The instruments for many old recordings were recorded on analog tape, and then mixed and mastered using more analog tape. Because of how analog tape works, every time a copy is made there is a slight degradation of the sound. The first generation – directly recorded from the instrument – sounds the best, and the later generations – copies – don’t sound as good.
Most remastering is done by taking those original analog tapes and converting them to digital format, and then recreating the original song using that digital copy. The digital mixing does not degrade the recording, so the final output of the process is better than the original recording.
Remastered recordings may have additional effects applied to them, and sometimes the original artists are involved.
Doing remastering requires both effort and expertise, and the result depends on the effort that is invested and the quality of the original recordings. Sometimes, the whole process is redone well, sometimes only some of the process is done and it’s done poorly.
Some remasters are wonderful – to pick a couple, Rumours by Fleetwood and the first album by The Cars have remasters that are breathtakingly better than the originals.
And there are others that are just “meh”.
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