An Audiophile’s Guide To Mastering & Remastered Albums

In PartTimeAudiophile’s most recent podcast, they dive into the vast realm of music mastering, and how it impacts sonic enthusiasts and their purchase decisions for album reissues. It is a topic that might be near and dear to the vinyl enthusiast, as much of the current inventory on the market offers small changes in one for or another as they are transferred from the original copies.

The interview draws heavily on the experience of Dave McNair, a full time mastering engineer with piles of expertise in the field. Along with producer and engineer Grover Neville, the duo drop into quite a few production topics highly relative to audiophiles. Both gentlemen have attended multiple audio shows and even comment on some of their listening sessions from across the aisle.

So if you have ever wondered, what is mastering exactly? What happens to an album when it is remastered? Are remasters even worth the extra investment? These questions and more get addressed in this season opener of The Occasional Podcast. Some of the answers might surprise you, but switching the vantage point from consuming to producing music always seems to shed extra light on the subject as a whole. The gear for music production has a different set of needs, but hopefully the goal of better sound is the same finish line for everyone.

The Occasional Podcast is now gently gliding into their 4th season, with interviews from Sonus Faber, Joseph Audio, ZMF Headphones, and Dan D’Agostino providing interesting highlights from season 3 and a peek behind the backdrop of high end audio and hifi in general. One can still check out last season’s educational drop with TOP’s Beginners Primer To Reel-To-Reel.

Options to stream: direct from the embed below or subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform including iTunes, Android, Google, Deezer, Spotify, iHeartRadio and more.