REMASTERED
Or, how many times we want to buy the same music and why.

⌈ REMASTER is a change in the sound or image quality of previously created forms of media, whether audiophonic, cinematic, or videographic. The resulting product is said to be remastered. • Entry ‘Remaster’ in Wikipedia, → en.WIKIPEDIA.org, accessed: 24.03.2025. ⌋

IT ALL STARTED INNOCENTLY, with a graphic on the internet where I saw three LINKIN PARK albums in the One-Step version. Let me explain – it was a clash between two, as I thought, incompatible worlds: the noble, expensive process of pressing a One-Step vinyl record (which would be sacrum) and the musical material that was prepared in this way, the albums of an American rock and metal band, i.e. material that is absolutely not audiophile and does not belong to the rock canon (and that would be profanum).

⸜ Three Linkin Park albums in One-step versions • photo press release Warner Records

Let us recall that the One-step process was originally developed by Japanese record labels and was first used in the West by the American pressing plant Record Technology, Inc. (RTI). The first title released in this format was Santana's album Abraxas, produced by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab in 2016; more about this technology can be found in the review of Patricia Barber's album Café Blue → HERE. Currently, several labels are releasing records of this type, each with a slightly different name: 1STEP (Impex), 1-Step (Audio Nautes Recordings), UltraDisc One-Step (MFSL), Small Batch (Craft Recordings), Because Sound Matters One-Step (Warner Records).

These two things juxtaposed somehow didn't fit in my head, so I quickly wrote to Tomek, the host of the Krakow Sonic Society meetings, to share this discovery with him. In some kind of frenzy, we started ranting about the moral decline, I threw in something about an ideal that had hit rock bottom (or maybe I just thought it – you understand: frenzy...), and Tomek responded to my post with a tears-of-joy emoticon. In a word, I behaved like a typical troll.

And we could end the story here, try to forget about it, if it weren't for a memory that started to bother me, quite recent one that originated from a KSS chat group. At some point, another announcement about the 150th reissue of one of the popular jazz albums brought out deep frustration in me. I wrote then that it was high time to think about other titles, non-audiophile ones, which were really worth some good treatment and which should become the object of interest of the most important audiophile publishers. And also that I was fed up with the same old “coltrane” crowd.

My favorites included George Michael, Jean-Michele Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Led Zeppelin, Burdon, Slayer, Kraftwerk, and Queen, not to mention Depeche Mode. Some of the above-mentioned artists had already been “honored” because Mobile Fidelity released albums by Jarre, Led Zeppelin, and Queen at one point. But that was a long time ago, and it was still a drop in the bucket of releases that would be nice to have in good sound quality. Instead, we get another version of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue or something like that. For example, the aforementioned John Coltrane's A Love Supreme.

The clash between my reaction to Linkin Park, prepared by Warner Records in the new series “Because Sound Matters One-Step,” and the angry expectations expressed by others proved sobering. This wake-up call was all the more powerful because I had just finished reviewing the next three reissues of Three Blind Mice albums, with another five reissues from the “Polskie Nagrania Catalogue Selections” series waiting. So I actually had accepted this “game”; more → HERE ˻PL˺.

⸜ Patricia Barber’s album entitled Café Blue was the first album released by Impex using One-step

On the one hand, I enthusiastically and attentively review new masterings of important works of popular and classical music, on the other hand, I am repulsed by reissues of “absolutely non-audiophile” titles, and on the third hand, I would like to see as many releases of this type as possible. So what is it with me? Where does this split personality come from? What is it with remasters? Do we really need so many of them, or is someone trying to convince us that we do? And if we don't need them, why are they being released at all? In other words, who cares about them?

The obvious and simplest answer to the last of these questions is: publishers. New versions of older albums are needed first and foremost by record labels. In this way, they once again monetize, to use a popular term, material that has long since paid for itself. This makes sense, as that is what companies do – they make money. In this case, it is all the easier because the costs associated with preparing a given title have already been incurred, as has the second item on the cost list, promotion.

That is why remastered albums are most often released by well-known, popular, liked, and respected artists. In their case, promotion is limited to stirring up nostalgia in potential customers, encouraging them to return to their youth or the times that are most fondly remembered. You can also release such an album in color, because it's trendy right now. When it comes to audiophiles, you need to add some element of exclusivity, such as numbering, and convince them that the sound of the new remaster will be better than the previous one.

I've been thinking about it, but it seems to me that the target audience for new versions of albums are not young people, but older people, more boomers than millennials, not to mention Gen Z. If anything, they reach for old releases in second-hand vinyl stores, and for them, a “new version” has no sentimental value, it doesn't evoke anything, it doesn't refer to anything. An album, if anything, has value for them as a cultural object, not necessarily as a medium for music as such, which they consume via streaming services. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it works differently, but here and now, this is how it looks to me.

So, the publisher is the main beneficiary of new album releases. For this operation, i.e. selling the same music again (and again, and again, ad infinitum), to be successful, it must attract the audience. When it comes to the general public, he resorts to clichés from the past, which is also a good way to remind people of the performers themselves, who can appear on breakfast shows and in cultural magazines. He is thus following the script described by Simon Reynolds in his book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past.

⸜ Polskie Nagrania SACDs are an example of how older recordings can be revived, brought back into the spotlight, and offered in a format that sounds better than the original vinyl.

This activity can be viewed solely from the perspective of greed, and there would be a lot of truth in that. On the other hand, however, and this seems more important to me, we must remember what I said earlier: a company is supposed to make money, otherwise it is not fulfilling its basic role. And the resumption of music releases, sometimes linked to the return of a popularity of particular artist, means additional income for artists. And there is a third element to this puzzle, which I would call culture-making.

While earning money for its owner, remastering older material not only reminds us of the artist, often bringing them back from obscurity and keeping them in the cultural mainstream, but also protects their legacy from physical destruction. After all, material recorded on magnetic tape degrades. Recordings on modern media, especially hard drives (the most fragile way to store information), degrade even faster. Each time you access them and make a copy, you protect cultural heritage.

Do you remember the fire at the Impulse! Records archives? The title of the article on Reddit dedicated to this event leaves no doubt as to the tragedy that befell us at that time: The New York Times reporting that most of John Coltrane's masters in the Impulse Records collection were lost in a 2008 fire; full article → HERE. The most important titles survived, because they were in the mastering studios where their reissues were being prepared. More importantly, the recordings that were destroyed by the fire also survived, thanks to digital copies made for earlier reissues.

The remaster therefore literally preserves the music, both incidental and intentional ones. All the more so because each of them aims, at least intentionally, to present the same material in a better way, with better sound. This is what interests us, audiophiles, most of all. For the rest of music lovers, this may be one of the arguments for buying the new version, but it doesn't have to be. They could just as well reach for such a title simply because it has been reissued. For us perfectionists, however, sound quality is paramount.

A good example are the new reissues of Polskie Nagrania albums, prepared by Damian Lipiński. The vast majority of them are their best versions, available for the first time on SACD, and therefore in high resolution. But even the remasters of the Polish Jazz series, produced by Jacek Gawłowski and released on classic CDs, were a revelation. Both perspectives are valuable, as each of these mastering engineers has developed their own approach to the musical material, presenting the music in a slightly different light.

⸜ John Coltrane’s Blue Train is one of the most frequently reissued jazz albums in versions intended for audiophiles; more → HERE

Because that, in my opinion, is the most important role of reissues – looking at the same material from a different angle. It's a bit like reissues of literary works. They may differ only in their graphic design, which is already a significant change, they may differ in their editing, but also in their translation, if we are talking about foreign literature. And each time we get a different work of art.

A good example of a reissue that interferes with the original as little as possible is Henryk Sienkiewicz's Latarnik (The Light-House Keeper). Originally published in serial form in 1898, in February this year it received a completely new graphic design, which is excellent, and the afterword was written by Baba od Polskiego, aka Aneta Korycińska, a popular online teacher; the book was published by Wydawnictwo Powergraph. And so? – This old chestnut, which had been scaring students for decades, turned out to be an amazing story. What's more, it was a good read, also due to the way it was published.

Interestingly, unlike us audiophiles, literary scholars consider the last version published during the author's lifetime to be the most important. But this is not always the case, and it does change. When new translations of Raymond Chandler's novels were published by Karakter, the publisher wrote about a completely new literature. The translator, Bartosz Czartoryski, did an amazing job, and I devoured all the books in the series. The same goes for the new translations of William Faulkner, I might add. While waiting for the new versions – because that's how it should be understood – of books by Joseph Conrad and Ernest Hemingway, we could read:

Reading „Lord Jim” or „The Secret Agent” was exhausting, not because of the content – these are wonderful novels – but because of the mannered language and awkward syntax of the translation. Fortunately, Conrad has been given new translations: „Heart of Darkness” and numerous short stories have been translated into Polish by Magdalena Heydel, „The Secret Agent” by Maciej Świerkocki, and „Lord Jim” by Michał Kłobukowski, which often allow the rest of us to understand what the author of „Almayer's Folly” was actually getting at in his literature.

When it comes to Hemingway, the word “revision” has a double meaning. We are talking about a writer who, for some reason, has become outdated, consigned to the dustbin of history, a writer whose macho posturing seems as much cabaret as it does amusing; a writer who, in essence, did not survive the counter-cultural, postmodern, and feminist revolutions.

→ PIOTR KOFTA , W cieniu góry lodowej, czyli Hemingway po nowemu, kultura.DZIENNIK.pl, 23 April 2022, accessed: 24.03.2025.

You remember what I said about “restoring” music to the culture and reinterpreting it, right? As you can see, this applies not only to music, but to cultural works in general. It's a never-ending task. And it has a deep meaning. I myself buy and read new translations with excitement, even though I already knew most of these books from high school and college. To tell the truth, I read them as if I were seeing them for the first time in my life.

⸜ Three Blind Mice albums are among the most frequently reissued, in every available format and variation; more → HERE

Music listeners, collectors, and audiophiles have adopted a different perspective on the work – for them, the most important thing is the first release, the premiere release. It is supposed to be the best in every respect. All subsequent releases are, from this point of view, secondary to the musical legacy. It must be said that there is a lot of truth in this. Let us remember that vinyl records were pressed from new tapes, which degrade over time. Each subsequent recording is therefore a copy of slightly different material.

The problem is that original releases are expensive and will become increasingly so. They are usually owned by collectors who are not necessarily interested in the music or sound itself. In this case, reissues would therefore be a factor in democratizing access to culture. After all, not everyone can afford originals by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, or even less popular bands—originals in good condition, of course. And even if it is a copy, it can be a high-quality copy.

Besides, some of the reissued albums seem better than the originals to me. I'm not trying to be rebellious or heretical, I'm just reporting my experiences. And they clearly say that many titles released in recent years sound better than the originals. This applies primarily to the Japanese versions, as well as albums released by Analogue Productions and Mobile Fidelity – in the case of the latter, even if they use digital copies. This would also be true for almost all One-step records, not only by those labels, but also by Craft Recordings and, as in the case of Linkin Park, Warner Records. This is also the case for most of the albums in the “Polskie Nagrania Catalogue Selections” series.

The answer to the question of who needs remasters is therefore complex. And it is not clear-cut, nor can it be. However, I can say quite simply what I think about it. I believe that they are essential for maintaining knowledge about music as such, but also about its creators. This would be an educational function. It is also necessary for archival purposes, as a way of physically preserving this legacy. But what I wrote in the context of literature seems equally important to me – each time we encounter a given album, we are dealing with a new interpretation. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always different.

⸜ An audiophile hit, and much more, is coming out soon: Brothers In Arms (40th Anniversary Edition) will be available on vinyl (1 LP), as well as extended editions – 5 LP Deluxe and 3 CD Deluxe, and in Japan on SHM-CD (I've already ordered it...)

Obviously, we don't have to have all the releases and all the reissues. However, it is worth getting the most important ones. Seen in this light, the three Linkin Park albums we started this article with are no longer just a publisher's invention, a cash grab. It's not immediately obvious, and even I had to write this article to sort it out and understand my reaction.

After all, the immediate impulse was me getting excited when I expressed my frustration at the dozens of new versions coming out of Japan. And that was my attitude when I sat down to write this article—I wanted to finally say, “What do I really think about this?” And I said it, but not what I had intended, but what was stayed with with me after thinking it over.

Therefore, as an audiophile struck by the incongruity of the means – “proprietary,” “audiophile” technology – to “ordinary” music, I must admit that the three albums in question are exactly what we should get. And perhaps they will pave the way for other titles. Why not Adele? Or Annie Lennox? Maybe Eminem? Or even AC/DC? Can you imagine Back in Black on a 45 rpm One-step record?

And even though the news about the anniversary release of Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms on three CDs or five LPs was interesting to me, especially since they will also be available in Japan on SHM-CD (for example, at → CD JAPAN), the decision by Warner Records seems all the more important. On the one hand, it's obvious, as this is a well-known band, but on the other hand, it's a bold move, as this is not an “audiophile” title.

That is why my righteous indignation, which I poured out on the forum of the Krakow Sonic Society, seems to me unjustified and premature. My personal frustration, resulting from the excess of reissues, became conflated in my mind with remasters as a phenomenon. Not all of them make sense, and not all of them are necessary. Some of them sound worse than earlier releases. This makes it all the more important to reach for titles that have never before received a decent release and have finally been released as they should be. ●

WOJCIECH PACUŁA
Chief editor

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