Abbey Road engineer Simon Gibson on remastering Furtwangler

One of Abbey Road Studios' most experienced mastering engineers, Simon Gibson, talks us through the process of remastering Furtwangler.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Abbey
• Road
• Studios
• Furtwangler
• EMI
• Classics
• Simon
• Gibson
• remastering
• mastering

[qhubbles]

is the audio compressed??

[abbeyroad]

@qhubbles No.

[TheStockwell]

This is impressive. I was amazed when you brought out the tape and had it right there, in your hands. Does your work ever impress you? That is, to hold something like a Furtwangler master and think, "Actually, this - in a very real way - IS Furtwangler." I've done a documentary film about him and this sort of thing fascinates me. Thank you very much more sharing this with us!

[wozzwozz]

If the end product is for SACD (which uses the native DSD digital format), then clearly the optimal AD conversion is Analog -> DSD ... not Analog to 96 kHz 24bit.

[siegfriedYa]

For quality, best results would be to go: analogue master tapes direct to DSD. Seems a great pity that this was not adopted here. I don't really want anything removed ... I'd be happy with a perfect copy of the studio master tapes ... and direct to DSD is the closest we will get to that.

[gotham61]

@mozpiano2 Did you even watch the video? Listen again from 14.00, where he describes how the tape used for the reissue was NOT the edited and EQed tape used for disc cutting, but a second tape recorded simultaneously. Again, with these recordings there is no such thing as a separate "mixdown tape," even a mono one. Everything was mixed live during the performance and recorded onto a single track.

[mozpiano2]

@gotham61 Well I said "where possible" - of course Furtwängler is in mono. In this case you would use the mono mixdown tape that hasn't been processed for LP production.

[gotham61]

@mozpiano2 Good luck finding a "stereo" mixdown tape of anything Furtwangler recorded. Furtwangler was never recorded in stereo.

While monoed bass is a good argument for not using a disc cutting tape for a stereo release, it doesn't apply with a mono release.

[mozpiano2]

I'm sorry, but you do NOT use the LP cutting tape, but the stereo mixdown tape (ie a generation before LP cutting tape). In fact, ALL respectable remastering engineers use stereo mixdown tapes where possible (Steve Hoffman being an example) - no decent and experienced audio engineer would preference the LP tape over the stereo mixdown!!!!

[johnbshk]

Are you leo responsible for the remastering of the 100+ SACDs being released by EMI Japan in the next few months?

Thanks

[Johanneshouse]

so that's how EMI ruins the sound of the mastertapes!  the master sounds really good, listen at 6:54. Removing noise is removing ambience, hence dull and dead-sounding cds.

[MrArkienkeli]

@wozzwozz No so: it is not possible to manipulate, like EQ or do noise removal, a DSD file. Not even make edits. All digital manipulation must be done in PCM format. For that reason it would make no sense to transfer first to DSD, then convert to PCM for mastering.

[klassische]

I can see the second waveform has higher amplitude in the Tannhäuser overture