My take on the remastering of Olivia's music

I've tried to be neutral on the topic of remastering elsewhere in this, because different people will listen in different ways. But I am going to stop pussyfooting around on this page, because it is my space. This is your last chance to avoid the vitriol if you go back to where you came from Everybody listens in different ways and for some people sound quality is neither here nor there. I am one who does care about sound quality, I spent more money on hifi than I probably should have done, expressly to hear Olivia better beause I like her music. I can hear the difference between remasters, demonstrably in an ABX comparison

I prefer the early releases over the dreadful dynamics compression of modern remastering. The aim of modern remastering is to make things LOUD LOUD LOUD. This kills loudness variation between and within tracks and turns music in Muzak. That's why I consider the earliest version of Physical to be the definitive digital copy, rather than the Primary Wave release. The Primary Wave release deserves a place in my collection for the many bonus goodies but not for sound quality in my view - I already have better.

The early releases aren't perfect - the Primary Wave remaster is probably tonally better adjusted, and some listeners say the early releases sound too bright and thin, compared to remasters. Some of that goes away if you play the both at the same volume, see later.

Modern remastering wrecks dynamic contrast and listenability for commercial gain, ruining CD as a medium

Faced with two similar meaningful sounds in succession, humans will generally prefer the louder one. If you take two identical CDs and play one just a little bit quieter, say > 3dB, everybody will say the louder one is better. In fact the sound quality is exactly the same. Play the quieter one with the volume turned up > 3dB this time and everyone's preference will switch. Human hearing just works like that.

So what, you may think? The maximum level out of a CD player is fixed. What modern remastering does is crush all the sound into a narrow gap below maximum level, perhaps 5-10dB, and to hell with dynamic contrast. The audience would walk out if an orchestra ignored the difference between ppp and fff¹ on the score. Play an old Olivia album from before 1995 compared to a digitally remastered one and everyone will go woot, the remastered one sounds much better, that's what we paid for, fantastic. Because it's louder. Not so fast, guys. You can fix this for the older CD without spending a cent. Turn the damn thing up - yes, go grab a hold of the knob marked Volume on your stereo and give it half a turn².

Now sit down in your favourite chair, play a couple of tracks on the older CD, preferably a uptempo track like Physical³ followed by a slow one. Listen to the difference - Olivia's in your face saying Let's Get Physical, then all of a sudden she drops back with 'take you to an intimate restaurant. She's not meant to holler TAKE YOU TO AN INTIMATE RESTAURANT - she's trying to seduce you, it's take you to an intimate restaurant, pianissimo. Then for some reason you don't get it, and she gives it you full bore LET'S GET PHYSICAL so the chump knows what's going down.

Now put in a more recent CD remastered after 1995, and take out the half turn. Listen to the same tracks, and you may notice how Olivia no longer swoops and soars between the intimate restaurant and LET'S GET PHYSICAL, she's in your face all the time, and when she's not the band is, you end up with a wall of sound. That gets kind of relentless after a while, though it's great if you just listen to music in the background. You are deeplinked three levels into a site which is all about Olivia Newton-John and how lovely her work is. Please tell me you at least sometimes stop whatever else you are doing and give Olivia your full attention, else, quite frankly, what the hell are you doing here reading this rant?

Don't determine the merit of a CD remaster by instant A/B comparisons

Because you'll be suckered by that loudness effect. It'll sell you Bob Speer's "distortion with a beat" in a straight A/B. Don't just play a bit of one, then a bit of the other. Make some attempt to match volume, and listen to a track on each at least. You can do that accurately using Foobar's ABX comparator that levels loudness for you, or use replaygain, or use your ears. The loudness wars were specifically designed to push loud tracks at you. It gets tiring having everything flat out all the time, but it takes time to notice that. CD swap comparisons are easy but not accurate without levelling volume.

Olivia sang her way into my heart on vinyl, half a lifetime ago

Vinyl just doesn't let you do the max loudness thing too much, particularly on 33rpm LPs, because if you did that they'd last for about 10 minutes a side. It helps get more running time if you have a balance of ballads and belters, particularly if the ballads are turned down a notch, because they should be quieter. Quieter tracks don't take as much physical space on the record. That sort of works with the rhythmn and flow of an album, if you listen to it as a whole. We tended to do that in the vinyl era because changing tracks was tiresome. On her 1970s albums Olivia would typically leave you⁴ with a ballad or softer track at the end.

Half a lifetime of listening to Olivia's predigital releases on vinyl and then CDs that were taken from the vinyl masters probably has made me listen in a different way to many listeners now. Vinyl mastering preserved dynamics better than CD remastering after the loudness wars that started in the late 1990s. This is not an inherent design limitation in the CD standard relative to vinyl. It was a stylistic distortion from cultural and marketing trends, not an engineering necessity. So I fully accept many listeners may prefer remasters. Quite apart from loud and soft within a track, many modern listeners don't stick to the album running order. They may find level variations between songs objectionable - the very level variations I like when listening to the album as a whole.

The Primary Wave remasters

There's much to like about the Primary Wave releases, and I will probably get most of them. I have measured the two I have and the remastering is competent from an engineering point of view, which is nice and sadly not a given - Universal Japan I am looking at you! That said, I don't regard Primary Wave's versions the definitive digital copy of Olivia's predigital albums from a sound quality point of view. I have already said my piece on the Physical remaster comparison If I wanted to listen to Olivia in my car or on the train, however, Primary Wave's releases would be the optimal sources. They have eased back from the sort of ultra-loudness that was done around 2010, and to date I haven't caught any engineering howlers. To me some of PWs releases sound a bit rolled off at the top end, but then I've been using CDs that others say are bright, chacun a son goût.

the CD versions I favour

I have linked the pictures below to the versions I prefer⁵. They're pretty much all the earliest versions, which if Greg Calibri is right are probably straight transcriptions of the LP master "CD and cassette masters were taken from the LP master." . People were very afraid of running into the maximum signal level of 0dBFS on CD back in the day, so they aren't LOUD. These sound quiet next to modern remasters. I can fix that. I got a volume control, and I'm not afraid to use it ;) The DR values consistently show a higher variation beteen loud and soft, there is variation in loudness between the softer ballads and tracks like Physical or Gimme Some Lovin'. I don't actually play the CDs as CDs, I use lossless rips with a local streaming system from a NAS. If I were bothered that these are quieter than more recent CDs, I could get replaygain to fix that and turn the volume up for me automatically. Since I listen to an album at a time, I do that myself. If I listened to a random mix of tracks, or Olivia mixed with other tracks then yes, I'd use replaygain. Olivia in the 1970s isn't going to sound like a 2020s act. If I want a 2020s act, I have stacks of great music available to me.

For what it's worth I am not hidebound that earlier always = better or that a higher DR figure always = better. On Xanadu, at least on the track Suspended In Time that I ABX compared (log file here), I prefer the later MCA version despite a significantly poorer dynamic range and some scars of the loudness wars. It almost sounds like a different mix, and the two earlier versions sound dull to me. I can hear the dynamic compression and screechiness as it gets going, but that's better than feeling there's a towel over my ears, particularly on the Aussie Jet version. It's a compromise, you can't win 'em all.

That's enough of that. I said up above it was opinionated and may be at variance with your experience. I am not Primary Wave's mastering engineer, so you don't have to suffer my preferences ;)

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the good, the bad and the ugly

There are some just plain distorted remastered Olivia CDs out there. An engineering viewpoint - how to spot distorted remasters to avoid.