> I wonder why no one would've seen something like this coming though? > > Was it just a bunch of suits saying, "Yeah, let's sell some cds!" while the > original mastering guy prepared to cringe come "Digital Release Date"? (1 > day later?) Oversimplifying it... yeah that's sort of what happened. The industry wasn't technologically prepared to rerelease all those albums. They didn't have enough equipment, much of the equipment wasn't yet very good, they didn't have enough qualified people who knew how to use the equipment they had. The 80s/early 90s simply did not have the cheap ubiquitous digital power that exists today. The inexpensive machine on my desk beats a Cray2 on every metric. It wasn't too long ago that good custom 12 bit (12 bit!) sampling consoles cost hundreds of kilobucks. And good mastering engineers were (and are) high priced talent. Last but not least, not everyone took good notes. "Did this cutting master have preemphasis?" "How does it sound?" "Meh, it sounds OK." "Then go with it." It took a long time to sort out the mess that the rush caused, and the reputation of the CD suffered for a really long time. But they made a *ton* of money. The late 80s and early 90s were the music industry's version of the housing bubble. oh boo hoo sales are down recently-- sales had never been so incredibly inflated as during the great vinyl->CD switchover when just about everyone replaced their collections at $16 a pop. Some had to do it twice after things were finally properly remastered. Monty _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
