Fresher Fresh Blood: the joys of remastering music
I have to confess that I don't totally 'get' the fascination of some for old vinyl records - of course, the huge cardboard area for artwork and lyrics is enviable and I loved this too in the 1970s. But the sound quality, in terms of scratches and rumble and constant wear and tear every time the vinyl is played had me running for CDs when the format came in, in the 1980s. So, forty years later, surely I'm sorted in terms of all my favourite albums? Well, not really. Not 100%. You see, first vinyl, then cassettes, then CDs were all produced from imperfect workflows in one way or another. Regardless of being produced from original studio master tapes. Vinyl would have been stamped from a gold master, itself created from a stereo mix of the original audio, itself often 'bounced around' within the studio track/tape system. And then each copy degrades, as I said just now. Ditto cassettes, though with at least one extra copying step, added to all the fragility and (aga