i think i have run accross a badley masterd CD... or CDs...

i have just bout the ELO boxed 3 disc set called "flashback"...

upon ripping the songs to computer as wav files and campairing the sound qualety to my the DLed mp3 vershions of the songs, i noteced that the song "dont bring me down" sounds muffled , lack of bass/ lack of depth and just sound like its playing on a cheep mono radio or phone hold music compaird to the 222kb/s MP3 wich sounds much better and was suposedley made from a differant album called "pure 70s" . i thot maybe i ripped the song badley so i burned my mp3 vershon to cdrw and compaired my burnt mp3 to the origanal pressed vershion i just bout...same story...i think the CD is poorly mastered.

am i right and dose anyone els have this boxed set and can you hear what im talking about?

has anyone els ever run into a pooly mastered CD???

or could the master tapes have degraded so bad that that is all the better it can sound now?

this ones a head scratcher...

CRT

As it happens, I was talking to a friend yesterday about poorly made CDs. You see, the original master tapes are constantly deteriorating, and the speed of deterioration is dependant on how well the tapes are stored.

So, unless the master tapes are re-mastered and or digitised before pressing new CDs you will hear the diminished sound quality on new pressings.



UK Bob

umm... pure 70s was relesed in 1999....and the boxed set flashback was relesed in 2000....

how can a tape (im assuming a much more heavy duty tape than home cassets/VHS tape) degrade that much over the corce of one year?

could it just have been mixed badly and not the master tape that has degraded?

i dont see how tapes can degrade that badly...we have cassett tapes that are 30 YO and sound perfect when played (exsept for the normal HISSSSS that comes with all analog low bias tapes)and VHS tapes that are going on 20yo and seem to look just as good as when they were new.

you would think that the thicker wider tapes used by bands such as ELO would be verry durable...i think they did have metal partical and maybe even digital master tapes in the 70s....but not shur...
hmmm... :/

Am i allowed to guess?
The 1999 release will probably have been copies from the earlier digitised versions on CD. Whereas the 2000 version might have been from the original analogue recordings.

However, the question is whether there was any remastering of the 1999 recordings since the early released CD's were directly from anologue sources & thus the freqency response is different to the original (ie: sounds a little trebly.) Anybody who bought the very early CD's that were converted from analogue sources would know what I mean. The original analogue recordings were better. So really, for the 2000 version, they should have mastered from the earlier digitised versions & not the original analogue version. (That's if the original source is now in such poor condition.)

it just sounds like the high and low frequencies were cut off or muffled leaving only the midrange ones strong and thus making it sound like its being played on a cheep portable radio or in a padded room...