Noise reduction, or NR, surgically removes hums and sibilance. He uses equalization, or EQ, to emphasize or reduce certain audio frequencies. McMaster has a custom valve-driven analog compressor welded into his mixing board, which he uses to balance the overall volume on a track. "It's a rarefied skill." And as with any skill, there are tools. "In the music industry, mastering is referred to as a dark art," says Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever. In the case of A Love Supreme, remastering was essential to even out differences in volume between the original record and the new tracks. The remaster is conspicuously clearer, revealing a healthy bottom end that adds rhythmic urgency. Engineer Robert Vosgien, who works with artists like James Taylor and Elvis Costello, demonstrates by playing Bob Seger's original song "Beautiful Loser" alongside the version he remastered. But loving remasters exist, and their practitioners work magic to deliver the musicians' intent. Worse, to work with cheap earbuds, many engineers simply copy an album and make it louder, obscuring nuances. Some labels use the term "remastered" to resell music indistinguishable from previous recordings. Rather than just digitize the original tapes, he is editing the songs to create a new, sonically immaculate recording of Coltrane's masterpiece. McMaster is working on the vinyl version, which is being released this month. Verve Music Group, Capitol's co-subsidiary at Universal, released it on CD and in digital format late last year to mark the recording's 50th anniversary. The mistake stays.Īt Capitol Records in Los Angeles, McMaster is remastering A Love Supreme, John Coltrane's genre-defining 1965 jazz album. "When you hear things like that, it's like you're in the recording session as it's going down." On a vintage mixing console studded with flickering meters, he turns a knob to set the fade-in.
"This kind of false start is something you want to keep," mastering engineer Ron McMaster (yes, that's his real name) explains. There's silence before the groove begins again.