RE: Remasters

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

> Part of the problem here may be letting The Who handle their own remaster
> program.  They tend to be more interested in performance rather than
> preservation.  Plus, they've all got awful hearing.

I'd say this is pretty accurate, Keets. Everyone blames Astley but I don't.
If I might use a very inappropriate analogy, it's like blaming the Holocaust
on Himmler. Pete Townshend is the person in charge of the reissue program. I
think he's the one who's been calling the shots. And we all know how weird
Pete can be about The Who!

Having studied the reissues at length for my Internet liner notes I think I
found the source of the problems with the reissues. Apparently someone
(probably Pete) said at the beginning of the remastering/remixing program,
"God listen to all these hissy old tapes! Get the hiss out of these, no
matter what it takes!" In a lot of cases it worked without damaging the
original material but there are some notable examples where it did damage
them. Baba O'Riley had a lot of hiss throughout the song introduced by
Pete's backing track. To get rid of it, they ran the entire song through a
lot of noise reduction which got rid of the hiss but completely distorted
the sound of Keith's cymbals which now sound like white noise machines
rather than cymbals. Another technique that got them into trouble was, while
remixing multitracks, to leave down tracks that were introducing hiss, then
manually raising the level just before that track's material began.
Unfortunately there are some notable examples where they missed and that's
why things you've always known and loved in the originals are missing in the
reissue versions. The Real Me is missing part of Roger's vocal and Trick Of
The Light even has one where Roger is brought up IN MID WORD! Another good
example is that one of Pete's power chords is missing in the instrumental
break in the middle of Pinball Wizard.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm