How to Digitally Remaster your Analog Masters

This is an introductory tutorial for those that are interested in how to digitally remaster the analog masters (also known as the “analog mix down”). These masters are those that are saved in vinyl, analog cassette tapes, reel to reel and other analog storage media many years ago when digital mastering is not yet common. One big disadvantage of analog storage media is that it is subject to long term degradation due to their mechanical nature. Therefore the following are the main reasons why it’s important to have your work digitally remastered:

a.) Preserve your work in digital format which is not subject to mechanical degradation.

b.) Improve the quality of your existing analog masters. These qualities can be any of following: tonal balance, less-noise and increased loudness (but not too much that it would destroy the beautiful dynamics).

c.) Benefit of having your analog masters to be distributed digitally as quality mp3.

Get the Source Right- Best Quality Analog master sound

Take a listen to your existing masters in analog. This is the mix down in analog format. Mix down format is NOT yet adjusted or processed by an audio mastering engineer. Mix down is the output of the audio mixing process. You should have a copy of this. Most recording labels do kept a copy in its archive. Make sure it still sounds good and the quality is not degraded. You will need a specific analog player that has a stereo line output on it.

a.) Cassette tape – you need a quality cassette tape player to reproduce and play your masters. Clean the tape heads as a dirty tape head can affect the quality of the playback.

b.) Vinyl –you also need a good vinyl record player. I do not have a Vinyl player at home but I still remember my grandfather used to play some great records on Vinyl. The sound was perfect!

c.) Reel to Reel – you need a reel to reel player.

Credits: Nixdorf on Wikipedia

You need a high resolution audio interface

Once you are sure that you have still a perfect analog master. You need a high resolution audio interface. This will be used to convert the analog recording to digital format. In order to convert analog to digital audio, you need to set two parameters in your audio interface (make sure these parameters are natively supported by your audio interface hardware). These parameters are the bit depth and the sample rate.

This is where most common mistakes in digital remastering are being made. One common mistake is to use CD bit depth and sample rate (16-bit/44.1KHz) in converting analog audio to digital audio. This is a mistake because the digital reconstructed signal is far from the real analog signal. See differences below:

Credits: How Stuff Works

As you have observed, it shows a sample 10 KHz analog signal (the sine wave). The reconstructed digital representation of 10 KHz analog signal sampled at 16-bit/44.1KHz (in pink) looks very far from the real 10 KHz analog wave signal.

However when a 10 KHz analog signal is sampled at DVD audio quality (24-bit/192KHz in brown color), the resulting audio wave is now a near perfect replica of the analog signal.

Therefore you should be using an audio interface that supports recording at 24-bit/192KHz to get the highest possible quality out of your original analog masters.

Not all audio interfaces natively supports recording (or analog to digital conversion) at 24-bit/192KHz, some can only support 24-bit/96KHz or even low-end audio interface at 24-bit/48KHz.
This external audio interface would then be connected to your computer either via Firewire or USB. Before moving to the next step, make sure your audio interface drivers are fully installed and configured to work with your computer.

Setup for Digital Recording Transfers

Now you have the highest possible resolution for digital audio conversion (24-bit/192KHz). The next thing you would do is to wire up your hardware in preparation for the digital recording transfers. This will do the actual job of converting analog to digital audio format. Follow the steps below:

1.) Connect the stereo line output of your analog player (whether cassette, vinyl, etc.) to the line-input of the audio interface. Make sure it is a stereo line output so that it could playback your analog masters in stereo format.

2.) Turn on both analog player (with your analog masters on it), your audio interface and finally your computer.

3.) Launch your recording software and configure to record in 24-bit/192KHz stereo. For example in Adobe Audition 1.5, this can be done by going to Edit view – File – New then select 24-bit (or 32-bit float, this is still using a 24-bit resolution), 192KHz.

4.) Test the recording signal by playing the analog recordings then making sure that the peaks should hit no more than -6dBFS in your audio interface level meters. For example see the level meter of the audio interface below, the green led at -6dB indicates the maximum possible peak of recorded signal.

If there are certain instances in the song that it hits above -6dB (particularly the loudest section of the song), try to lower the volume of the source (analog player). If the output from the analog player is very weak despite having stereo line outs, then try adjusting the gain of the audio interface to some reasonable level.

5.) Finally when all checks are done hit the record button in your recording software then play the analog source. As the analog source is playing, your audio interface is converting analog audio to digital audio in real time at 24-bit/192KHz which you can then see in your recording software as waveforms. Make sure the recorded digital audio is in stereo format.

You are now ready to perform digital remastering process

What you have right now as an output of the previous section is the mix down of the song in 24-bit/192KHz digital audio format. As a mastering engineer, you can now start working on remastering the track using digital plug-ins. Common processes is shown in the chart below:

Good luck in your remastering process.

Content last updated on August 24, 2012