Achtung Baby/Zooropa remasters CONFIRMED for Fall 2011 by Rolling Stone

[canedge]

Maybe they were scoping out fan reaction and are going to change it?

 

[U2DMfan]

Maybe this has been mentioned. I admit I haven't been paying much attention but I went back and looked at a few pages and didn't notice anything...this is the 1 CD version:

Amazon.com: Achtung Baby: U2: Music

So $33 for a single, non-remastered CD that is already available?
Or is that extra money for crap like stickers and sunglasses?

I am cool with not messing with the sound, although I think a new mix wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. They'd still, I believe, have to master a new mix. So it would technically be remastered anyhow, and fucking with the mix would surely mean some compression which is the LAST thing Achtung but especially Zooropa needs. So maybe the decision was to just simply leave it alone? Then what is the point of the single CD version? Artwork and sticker bullshit?

 

[morgan1098]

That's From The Sky Down, the documentary.

By the way, GaleonGirl, after the ugly, ugly "is it or isn't it remastered?" drama that's been going on in here, I should apologize to you for arguing much earlier in the thread that "From the Sky Down" would NOT be included in the box set. I was convinced that it wouldn't be. You were absolutely right, and I was wrong. In this case, I'm happy to be wrong.

That said, I'm still 100 percent convinced this will be remastered...

 

[theedgeu2]

So is the Super Deluxe available for pre order in the US anywhere? It's saying to be notified on Amazon when it becomes available.

 

[canedge]

So $33 for a single, non-remastered CD that is already available?
Or is that extra money for crap like stickers and sunglasses?

I think that will be corrected and is probably a typo. Just be patient for the different parties to sort their shit out.

I wouldn't touch the original mix. Raw Power by Iggy and Stooges got remixed and fans got upset. The record company had to re-issue the original mix.

The previous U2 re-issues were done with class and I have full faith in U2 just like I had full faith in them in 2010 when they cancelled the tour. The Edge will put his foot down.

 

[Nick66]

Maybe this has been mentioned. I admit I haven't been paying much attention but I went back and looked at a few pages and didn't notice anything...this is the 1 CD version:

Amazon.com: Achtung Baby: U2: Music

So $33 for a single, non-remastered CD that is already available?
Or is that extra money for crap like stickers and sunglasses?

I am cool with not messing with the sound, although I think a new mix wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. They'd still, I believe, have to master a new mix. So it would technically be remastered anyhow, and fucking with the mix would surely mean some compression which is the LAST thing Achtung but especially Zooropa needs. So maybe the decision was to just simply leave it alone? Then what is the point of the single CD version? Artwork and sticker bullshit?

The single disc edition is listed at 10 GBP (16 USD) on the Universal UK site. Amazon is just calibrating their prices like they do for all new releases. The price will drop, and probably dramtically.

And it hardly bears repeating, but no official U2 source has ever said Achtung Baby has been remastered. Leaving the word "remaster" out of the all the press and marketing materials would be a pretty significant "typo". Now having said that, what they will likely do is make it louder, as is done with most new releases and reissues, which could result in the compression you're worried about (and I agree). But simply pumping up the volume would not be a true remaster (i.e. going back to the source tapes as they did with the previous reissued records).

In any event, even if this new edition becomes a victim of the loudness wars, we will always have the original, which was mastered beautifully in my opinion.

 

[digitize]

And it hardly bears repeating, but no official U2 source has ever said Achtung Baby has been remastered. Leaving the word "remaster" out of the all the press and marketing materials would be a pretty significant "typo". Now having said that, what they will likely do is make it louder, as is done with most new releases and reissues, which could result in the compression you're worried about (and I agree). But simply making it louder would not be a true remaster (i.e. going back to the source tapes as they did with the previous reissued records).

That would still be a remaster.

 

[Nick66]

That would still be a remaster.

Not necessarily. A true remaster involves actually going back to the "master" tapes (hence the word "remaster") and making a "new" master of the recording. Simply pumping up the volume is not what they did for the previous remasters, where they shouted to the heavens that those editions were remasters and meticulously supervised by The Edge. A real remaster is a big deal, especially for an album of this stature, and it takes time. We haven't gotten any word from U2 that's been done for this release.

 

[U2_Guy]

That would still be a remaster.

More like EQ'd.

 

[Nick66]

more like eq'd.

+1

 

[corianderstem]

In any event, even if this new edition becomes a victim of the loudness wars, we will always have the original, which was mastered beautifully in my opinion.

God, that would just be .... man. I'd cry.

But the other remasters didn't end up sounding like shit, so I can only hope that good musical sense will prevail.

 

[U2_Guy]

God, that would just be .... man. I'd cry.

But the other remasters didn't end up sounding like shit, so I can only hope that good musical sense will prevail.

At the same time it's easier to mess with Achtung... Very idiossincratic record with many little "noises" and layers...

 

[dan_smee]

The other remasters were excellent. If this isn't remastered, they deserve the outcome of no-one buying it, and someone putting all of the content on the net, then every hardcore fan just downloads it for free out of principle, and just to enrage McGuiness.

While I still think it is remastered, and on the balance of the evidence offered by both sides, I would say that it is more (predicatable!) oversight form U2.com, I find it odd, and slightly unnerving that after numerous queries on the u2.com message board, no-one has bothered to clarify. I would have thought they'd have jumped at the chance.

And before nick66 jumps up and down about that, I will say that I NEVER stated one way or another, and that my beef with him was his arrogance, and his definitive and authoritative statements, and not the message he was preaching.

 

[Nick66]

God, that would just be .... man. I'd cry.

But the other remasters didn't end up sounding like shit, so I can only hope that good musical sense will prevail.

Yeah. I'll tell you what I think happened, but the caveat is that this is just my opinion, and I'm not basing it on anything other than that.

I believe they looked at remastering Achtung Baby and probably experimented around with it a bit, but concluded that they really couldn't improve it. That album is noisy as it is, and I think it could be easy to really fuck up certain songs (Zoo Station, for example) with too much compression, etc. Would a "cleaned up" Actung Baby sound like Achtung Baby? I don't know. I really think the band is just pretty happy with the recording as it is. Again, I have nothing to base this on other than my own opinion and listening to the album (and of course the utter lack of any indication this is a remaster). Again, I do think it will be louder, unfortunately. But that's not something they'd advertise.

As far as I know the band has never expressed dissatisfaction with AB, or a desire to remaster it. Contrast this with what Paul McGuinness said when the JT remaster was announced:

"There has been continuous demand from U2 fans to have The Joshua Tree properly re-mastered. As always, the band had to make sure it was right, and now it is."

By contrast, here's the first thing McGuinness has been on record saying about the AB reissue, from the Rolling Stone article this thread title references. He doesn't mention the word "remaster" (and indeed the article uses "reissue"), but he did say this:

"There will be multiple formats. If you pile a lot of extra material and packaging and design work into a super-duper box set, there are people who will pay quite a lot for it, so you can budget it at a very high level and pump up the value."

I'll just let his words stand as they are without comment.

I could be wrong, but as we have no word from the band..nada, zilch, that AB has been remastered, I don't believe I am.

 

[dan_smee]

There is a lot of muddiness in AB (and I'm not talking about the intentional dark and 'industrial' sound). A lot of things could be fixed and the levels could stay very much the same. I think oftentimes people mistake cleaning of the sound as adding loudness. Yes, sometimes tracks get clipped etc because loudness is pumped up, but the previous remasters have all been excellently handled, with no loudness issues to speak of. Boy especially has been handled magnificently, cleaning up the minor tape noise, crackles, background 'garbage' that mics always pick up (shuffling feet etc). Those noises are less prominent on AB because of the layering, but they are still there. I would have loved them to clean up those aspects. I am most looking forward to heaing the drums in Acrobat, and the quiet songs like So Cruel and One where those noises are much easier to hear.

 

[U2_Guy]

There is a lot of muddiness in AB (and I'm not talking about the intentional dark and 'industrial' sound). A lot of things could be fixed and the levels could stay very much the same. I think oftentimes people mistake cleaning of the sound as adding loudness. Yes, sometimes tracks get clipped etc because loudness is pumped up, but the previous remasters have all been excellently handled, with no loudness issues to speak of. Boy especially has been handled magnificently, cleaning up the minor tape noise, crackles, background 'garbage' that mics always pick up (shuffling feet etc). Those noises are less prominent on AB because of the layering, but they are still there. I would have loved them to clean up those aspects. I am most looking forward to heaing the drums in Acrobat, and the quiet songs like So Cruel and One where those noises are much easier to hear.

No-noise or NR noise reduction is the worst nightmare of audiophiles.

 

[U2_Guy]

No-noise or NR noise reduction is the worst nightmare of audiophiles.

Perhaps the 2nd worst, after compression.

 

[dan_smee]

There is a lot of muddiness in AB (and I'm not talking about the intentional dark and 'industrial' sound). A lot of things could be fixed and the levels could stay very much the same. I think oftentimes people mistake cleaning of the sound as adding loudness. Yes, sometimes tracks get clipped etc because loudness is pumped up, but the previous remasters have all been excellently handled, with no loudness issues to speak of. Boy especially has been handled magnificently, cleaning up the minor tape noise, crackles, background 'garbage' that mics always pick up (shuffling feet etc). Those noises are less prominent on AB because of the layering, but they are still there. I would have loved them to clean up those aspects. I am most looking forward to heaing the drums in Acrobat, and the quiet songs like So Cruel and One where those noises are much easier to hear.

And just a little addendum:

Maybe they have done exactly, and only, that. Cleaned a few little things, made the sound a bit crisper and less sullied by minor noises, but didn't feel they had tweaked enough to call it a full remaster?

Re-ssue still covers all functions a remaster may serve, but perhaps they drill down to the level of specifics required to call it a remaster, so re-issue was more suitable to the work they actually did do?

 

[dan_smee]

No-noise or NR noise reduction is the worst nightmare of audiophiles.

I never said no-noise, I said cleaning of noise. And sorry, it isn't a universal hatred of audiophiles, it is a subjective element of sound. Compression isn't. It is categorically bad, but noise reduction can serve a purpose, especially on remasters like boy where tape noise was a bit of an issue. It brought forward (without making louder) the drums and bass.

 

[U2_Guy]

I never said no-noise, I said cleaning of noise. And sorry, it isn't a universal hatred of audiophiles, it is a subjective element of sound. Compression isn't. It is categorically bad, but noise reduction can serve a purpose, especially on remasters like boy where tape noise was a bit of an issue. It brought forward (without making louder) the drums and bass.

Maybe a little cleaning is good.
But NR is only good on the rare ocasions it's well handled. Very rare.

 

[dan_smee]

^ would you say that U2's previous remasters were poorly handled?

I understand the arguments against NR. Much the same as the eternal battle of explaining that Blu-Ray often contains grain for effect and isn't an indication of a poor transfer or poor picture quality

 

[Nick66]

There is a lot of muddiness in AB (and I'm not talking about the intentional dark and 'industrial' sound). A lot of things could be fixed and the levels could stay very much the same. I think oftentimes people mistake cleaning of the sound as adding loudness. Yes, sometimes tracks get clipped etc because loudness is pumped up, but the previous remasters have all been excellently handled, with no loudness issues to speak of. Boy especially has been handled magnificently, cleaning up the minor tape noise, crackles, background 'garbage' that mics always pick up (shuffling feet etc). Those noises are less prominent on AB because of the layering, but they are still there. I would have loved them to clean up those aspects. I am most looking forward to heaing the drums in Acrobat, and the quiet songs like So Cruel and One where those noises are much easier to hear.

Yes. This is part of what a true remaster does...clean up that kind of thing. It's lot more than just making it "louder". And I agree, all the previous remasters were handled superbly, I have no complaints about any of them. However, I will say, the new masters are definitely louder...that's just a fact. Don't get me wrong, they're just not so loud that you notice any clipping and they don't sound like shit. They sound great actually and did it right (as opposed to Bomb, which sounds awful b/c of compression and loudness, but that's another story).

As an aside, I agree about all the "layering" in AB, and I think that's part of the reason a remaster would not necessarily result in an improvement to that album. I think it sounds just the way they want it to, or as close as they can get without screwing it up. At some point, where the "sound" of an album like Acthung Baby is so central to what it is, if you mess around with it too much Achtung Baby is no longer Achtung Baby. I suspect the band (especially Larry, I'd imagine) agrees with this. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to hear a remaster, for comparisons sake if for no other reason. But there has to be a compelling reason (beyond $$$) to do a remaster. This isn't Boy or even Joshua Tree we're talking about...Achtung Baby was recorded on state of the art, best available at the time, digital equipment with the best engineers in the world when U2 were on top of their game. Give U2 some credit for asking themselves..."Does this album need a remaster"? Should they do it just because they can?

All that is part of the reason that I believe this is not a remaster, because if they went to this kind of trouble, we would have heard about it. And I don't buy the press release "typo" theory. Setting aside the press release for a second, if they were really remastering it, we still would have heard something about it before now (other than a third hand tweet). This is a high profile project. And if this typo theory is true, then we should get a correction pretty quickly. As I said previously, maybe they haven't pressed the discs yet and Edge was waiting for the tour to be over to do the remaster. This is obviously a long shot b/c of the timing, but would partially explain why they didn't mention it in the press release and is at least possible I guess. But I kind of doubt it.

 

[U2_Guy]

^ would you say that U2's previous remasters were poorly handled?

I understand the arguments against NR. Much the same as the eternal battle of explaining that Blu-Ray often contains grain for effect and isn't an indication of a poor transfer or poor picture quality

I'd say they were well handled. But i don't believe NR was used... Not to a great extent, anyway. And i don't think AB is in need of NR. Maybe a little cleaning here and there.

 

[Hollow Island]

What the world has been waiting for: Hollow Island's two cents on this ridiculous remaster war that's going on here.

Since the press release makes no mention of it being remastered, it probably isn't, and there's no reason to think it will be. Every reissue I've seen that has been remastered makes a big deal out of it so people think they'll be hearing a new version of the record. If it was remastered it would be mentioned.

It was recorded digitally, released on the same format it was made for, and the band probably realized that they didn't need to do anything to it, unlike their early records, or REM's IRS albums, or the Cure's 80s records. If it isn't remastered - and at this point there is no reason to think that it is - then good for them. I hope they don't re equalize it. I hope they don't do anything to it. If people think it's too quiet, just use whatever digits you favour and turn up the volume. It's one of the best sounding albums ever made, and it would be really easy to fuck it up. That being said, they probably will boost the volume, but there's no reason to think it will be a victim of the loudness wars. All of the reissues have sounded great. Whatever bonehead creative decisions U2 have made, their albums (almost) always sound really good

This re-release is probably meant to just make a lot of money for Universal and the band...ooops, sorry....

This re-release is probably meant to remind people of when U2 were awesome....oooops, sorry....

This re-release is probably meant to commemorate one of the greatest records ever made and package it with everything else of quality from the sessions (as well Zooropa, which is really weird and I hope it doesn't mean they're going bone their true masterpiece) in various configurations. The visual aesthetic of the era is iconic and spectacular and was probably the primary motivation for the various editions, aside from being able to charge absurd amounts of money...oooops....

The single cd will probably have an expanded booklet and be louder. It's not for people who already have and love the album - the other stuff is for them. It's for people who have heard great things about it and are buying it for the first time.

The vinyl box set is for the rest of us! Or me, anyway. I'm stoked.

Now, some quibbles: 8 versions of Mysterious Ways and 7 versions of Real Thing are on the two most comprehensive editions of this thing, and they're all fucking useless or terrible aside from the album versions! What the fuck. Why not throw on a disc of Zooropa demos or alt versions and make it a true ZOO TV reissue, or scrap the remix discs altogether and have Zooropa out takes, Passengers, and Passengers leftovers, have a real, complete box set of one of the most creative, daring eras in music history?

This thing could be really good, depending on how good Baby Baby is (I think it will be more interesting than good), but in the main it seems more style than substance, which is fitting in a way. It could have been a giant fuck you to every band in the world though. They could have shown that they could do ANYTHING back then, and they had a brilliant AND entertaining concept that was perfectly executed.

‪Always Forever Now - Passengers‬‏ - YouTube

 

[U2_Guy]

^ would you say that U2's previous remasters were poorly handled?

I understand the arguments against NR. Much the same as the eternal battle of explaining that Blu-Ray often contains grain for effect and isn't an indication of a poor transfer or poor picture quality

Btw, Examples of terrible use of NR: the Beatles Anthology and that Elvis compilation duo Elv1s and 2nd to None. NR killed those albums.

 

[Nick66]

what the world has been waiting for: Hollow island's two cents on this ridiculous remaster war that's going on here.

Since the press release makes no mention of it being remastered, it probably isn't, and there's no reason to think it will be. Every reissue i've seen that has been remastered makes a big deal out of it so people think they'll be hearing a new version of the record. If it was remastered it would be mentioned.

It was recorded digitally, released on the same format it was made for, and the band probably realized that they didn't need to do anything to it, unlike their early records, or rem's irs albums, or the cure's 80s records. If it isn't remastered - and at this point there is no reason to think that it is - then good for them. I hope they don't re equalize it. I hope they don't do anything to it. If people think it's too quiet, just use whatever digits you favour and turn up the volume. it's one of the best sounding albums ever made, and it would be really easy to fuck it up. That being said, they probably will boost the volume, but there's no reason to think it will be a victim of the loudness wars. all of the reissues have sounded great. Whatever bonehead creative decisions u2 have made, their albums (almost) always sound really good

+1

 

[dan_smee]

I'd say they were well handled. But i don't believe NR was used... Not to a great extent, anyway. And i don't think AB is in need of NR. Maybe a little cleaning here and there.

That is mostly my point about AB. The small amount required for AB probably isn't enough to label it a true remaster. I just hope they did do (and well!) what was required.

 

[Nick66]

And just a little addendum:

Maybe they have done exactly, and only, that. Cleaned a few little things, made the sound a bit crisper and less sullied by minor noises, but didn't feel they had tweaked enough to call it a full remaster?

Re-ssue still covers all functions a remaster may serve, but perhaps they drill down to the level of specifics required to call it a remaster, so re-issue was more suitable to the work they actually did do?

This is actually a very reasonable argument.

 

[U2_Guy]

This is actually a very reasonable argument.

True. And if that's what happened i think we are safe.

 

[Nick66]

Originally Posted by dan_smee
And just a little addendum:

Maybe they have done exactly, and only, that. Cleaned a few little things, made the sound a bit crisper and less sullied by minor noises, but didn't feel they had tweaked enough to call it a full remaster?

Re-ssue still covers all functions a remaster may serve, but perhaps they drill down to the level of specifics required to call it a remaster, so re-issue was more suitable to the work they actually did do?

Originally Posted by Nick66

This is actually a very reasonable argument.

True. And if that's what happened i think we are safe.

Yeah. I agree. On the other hand, who's to say that's not all they did with the previous "remasters"? We really don't know how much work actually went into those releases to justify them putting that label on them.

In any event, if the band doesn't think enough was done with it to call it a "remaster", than it's really not.