What Does Remastered Mean: Remastered Song vs. Original

Remastered music goes through the remastering process. It updates songs to make them sound better. It’s like polishing a gem to expose its maximum potential.

What Does Remastered Mean in Songs?

Remastered in songs means the song went through the remastering process of improving and correcting the audio quality.

The remastered version of a song is a better version recorded according to the latest standards with modern technology.

The main purpose of remastering a song is to make it clearer, more detailed, and more fun to listen to. It’s a refining process that takes the original recording and brings the best out of it with modern technology.

In the past, song recording was done by analog technology.

Song recording and remastering were done with analog technology. Later, with the advent of digital technology, mastering became digital.

The first commercial digital recordings were released in 1971. Before that (and later), music recordings were analog.

What’s the key difference between an original and a remastered song?

The key difference between an original and a remastered song is that the latter often has improved audio quality, less distortion, crisper sound, and a more balanced mix that sounds good on modern audio systems.

In short, remastering a song breathes new life into it. It makes it stand the test of time and ready for the next decade.

What Is Remastered Music?

Remastered music is an improved version of the original music.

How do remastering engineers do the magic trick?

Here’s basically what they do:

Audio definition increase

An audio engineer carefully analyzes the original recording and makes specific changes so improve details and clarity.

They edit things like:

• Hissing sound
• Ticks and pops (like you hear listening to vinyl)
• Improve frequency and audio resolution

Dynamic range adjustment

The dynamic range is the difference between the loudest and the softest parts of a song (also called dynamics). The goal is to balance the dynamic range to fix distortion and improve details while keeping the song’s emotional impact.

Noise reduction

Many older recordings have unwanted noise. The beloved hisses and pops on vinyl records are an example of that.

An audio engineer uses the latest noise-reduction techniques to remove unwanted noise without changing the character of the music.

Equalization

Older recordings are often recorded in sub-optimal conditions. Such recordings are emphasized in one section of the frequency spectrum and recessed in another. This results in an out-of-balance sound signature that doesn’t sound the best.

Reestablishing a balance between frequencies improves a song’s sound quality.

It’s a similar process to equalizing headphones on a music app but more sophisticated.

Do all music albums get remastered?

The majority of the older popular music albums have been remastered. And new remastered versions are coming out each year. More popular albums have a higher chance of getting remastered.

Here are some of the top remastered reissues of older albums.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Remaster Music

Remastered music has advantages and disadvantages (like any other thing).

Advantages of remastered music

Disadvantages of remastered music

Similar complaints to the one below are common:

In short, remastering music is a complicated and sensitive process that is necessary if we want to preserve old music, but it often results in dissatisfying results.

Remastering Music and Headphones

If you want to enjoy remastered music, you need high-quality headphones that can expose the intricacies and details.

Thankfully, you don’t need any special headphones to enjoy remastered music.

Quality wired and wireless headphones will do the job. Also, modern wireless headphones are usually good enough to listen to remasters.

Here are the best models to look at:

• Best headphones under $200
• Top wireless headphones under $100
• Best-sounding Bluetooth earbuds under $100

Good headphones for remastering

If you want to do a remaster yourself, you need headphones with the following features:

• Neutral, balanced sound that won’t colorize the remaster
• High-resolution sound so you can hear the details and nuance

Colored headphones have a heavy emphasis on specific frequencies. This impacts your perception of sound when remastering.

Remaster with neutral-sounding studio headphones for the remaster to sound exactly how you want it.

If you remaster with colored headphones, the remastered song will sound good to you once you’re finished. But when you swap to other headphones, the remaster will sound different. And most often in a bad way.

This means your remaster will sound much different to others than to you, which you want to avoid.

For good remastering results, look at the best mixing headphones. And look for audio neutrality over other features.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions About Remastering

Conclusion

The remastering process changes older audio recordings into better-sounding modern songs. It keeps older music timeless and serves it in a modernized format that the modern audience can enjoy.

Now while there is no unanimous belief that remastered music sounds better, it plays a vital role.

We can thank remastered music for increased interest in classics and older music and genres, as well as preserving our musical inheritance.

What’s your opinion? Do you prefer remastered songs or the originals?

Let us know in the comment below.

Matija Ferjan

Matija Ferjan is a seasoned audio enthusiast reviewing headphones since 2015. He has personally tested hundreds of headphones and earbuds. He’s an active member of the Headphone Audio community and a true nitpicker, always looking for the “best-value-for-money” headphones.