NB. This article originally featured on my website samplenerd.co remasters

Remastered albums have become a staple of our musical culture. And it was not all that long ago that the first remastered albums appeared. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Beatles were the first group to receive this studio treatment in 1987 and 1988.

Queens back catalogue comprising of 15 albums were remastered in 1991 – a fitting tribute after the passing of their lead singer Freddie Mercury.  And the non-arch symphonic pop  duo Pet Shop Boys completed the release of their remastered catalogue only last year. 

Remastering follows some general principles:

• Removing any flaws from the recording, such as bad edits, microphone noises, and hiss.
• Applying new mastering processing to the previously released piece of music.
• Using standard mastering tools, like EQ, compression, and limiting, as well as specialized restoration tools, like RX.
• Editing minor flaws.
• Applying noise reduction to eliminate clicks, dropouts, hum and hiss.
• Adjusting stereo width.
• Adding ambience.
• Equalizing audio across tracks for the purpose of optimized frequency distribution.
• Adjusting volume.
• Dynamic range compression or expansion.
• Peak limit.

If you’d like to dig into this subject further, quality software developers iZotope go into greater detail in What is remastering?  How to remaster an old recording