Although, unless faced with an audio salvage situation, then I adopt the less is more approach when it comes to processing, preferring to let the original recordings speak for themselves. Miles: Sure, I have various EQs, my go to is a SONTEC MES-432C which is a hand built esoteric American unit, I also have EQs from Manley (Massive Passive Mastering edition), Dangerous Music and Maselec as well as some original EMI TG mastering EQs. SDE: Could you remind us what your go to analogue mastering chain is, again? Miles: Once I had captured the masters into my workstation, I upsampled it to 88.2 kHz and mastered the album via my go to analogue mastering chain. SDE: What was the process once you had captured this audio? Miles: Yes, this was the standard for 1610 as used in the music industry (Sony did offer 44.056 kHz 16 bit for the NTSC TV broadcast world, but I never ever saw that used for music). SDE: Was this audio on the Sony 1610 16 bit and 44.1 kHz? The 1630 digital processor was locked down using a very stable word clock generator and everything was working nicely and sounding as good as it could and certainly better than a non-word clock locked system would have done in the mid-1980s. I was running a tape verifier while I was dubbing from the master tape and the error count was still very low. Thankfully, the masters were edited onto Sony U-matic cassettes which are standing the test of time very well (compared to Ampex U-matics, which are another story altogether). Miles: Abbey Road still has several well-maintained Sony 1630 systems (1630 is fully backwards compatible with 1610) which are in excellent condition and given good tape stock continue to work well. SDE: Was it difficult getting the gear to allow you to play these old formats? Not a huge difference, but more open and a better stereo image. To prove this, I had access to a digital copy made (by a VERY reputable studio) from Neil Dorfman’s personal clone 1610 tape, and the original masters sounded better. We now know that anything that went through a Sony DAE-1100 editor was subtly different (it is just that we did not know what to listen for then). Miles: Back in 1984, most of us believed the hype that digital clones were identical to the original. SDE: Isn’t a digital clone identical to the digital original? This is important because many of the previous vinyl/reissues/manufacturing runs (including those originating from other territories) were made from digital clones of this tape. Miles: I was allowed access to the original Sony 1610 format digital master from the archive vaults. SDE: Given that the album was a digital recording, could you reveal what source material you were working with? Miles Showell: I can confirm that Brothers In Arms was cut as a double 45 RPM edition. SDE: Is the forthcoming half-speed mastered vinyl of Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms a 33RPM or 45RPM pressing? Next week, Universal Music will reissue half-speed mastered vinyl pressings of Dire Straits‘ 1985 album Brothers in Arms and Mark Knopfler‘s 1983 soundtrack to Bill Forsyth’s film Local Hero.īoth albums have digital master tapes, but Abbey Road mastering engineer – and half-speed specialist – Miles Showell talks exclusively to SDE about the detective work required to source the correct tapes in preparation for the half-speed mastering process and some surprising discoveries along the way…
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