A KIND OF MAGIC

Remastering engineers specialise in revamping vintage recordings. Jim Allen wonders how they work their magic

- Jim Allen

If you can see into the record in a way that you hadn't before, that's a successful remastering,” affirms Steve Rosenthal, and he ought to know. The man who founded New York City’s revered Magic Shop studio (home to productions by everybody from David Bowie to The Arcade Fire) remastered albums that form the foundation of rock, country, soul, and much more, up to 2016.

“It’s a difficult situation,” he explains, “because people don't hear at the level of sophistication that they see. If you play somebody the MP3 of Beggars Banquet and then play them an SACD of a high-resolution presentation of it, some people will hear the difference, but nowhere near as many as see the difference between 4K and standard TV. It’s heartbreaking for a geek like me”.

Just as one of the first precepts of medicine is to “do no harm,” a remastering engineer's key responsibility is to respect the spirit of the original recording. “I always approach it as a preservationist, not a revisionist,” says Bob Irwin, founder/onetime remastering guru of the Sundazed label. “One thing that I believe strongly,” echoes Rosenthal, “is that you should leave the original timestamp of the recording in the final version that you're giving the public. You don't want to try to pretend that a record made in 1957 was made in 2024. That's a fool's errand. It must retain the personality and characteristics of the technology that was used when it was made, though it doesn't mean that it can’t have full bandwidth, too”.