Dave

QUOTE (shaun3701 @ Aug 9 2010, 05:52 PM)How do you remaster remasters? Are they just going to be LOUDER to make them sound more "modern"? Ideally remastering is supposed to make the quality better, but often that is not the case. It is used more as a marketing ploy to pump out a louder version of the material. With a digital recording there is only so much bandwidth available and when you make it louder something has to give. That something is the dynamic range, the difference between the loudest and softest passages in the music, because the peaks get clipped off. The is what happened to VT and R3 and so on. The proper way to remaster is by using the best technology available to actually improve on the quality of the transfer from the studio master and not any previously remastered versions. Raising the gain is never a good thing. A good general rule of thumb is that the louder the recording, the lower the fidelity.

Steven Wilson did a good job with the King Crimson material. He has been pretty outspoken on the evils of compression commonly used in the recording industry that destroy the dynamic range and overall quality of the recordings. Unfortunately Rush has been hit extremely hard with this business practice with all of their later releases. I say this, because it is business men that make these decisions, not the artists. If the rumor of Steve Wilsons involvement is true, then this is great news indeed, as I know and trust his work. My last Rush purchase was Retrospective 3 and it was a huge disappointment. That proved to me the direction their current management team was going, and it was not a good place. The worst part about R3 was that they took previously well recorded songs and pumped up their gain so much as to completely clip and saturate their digital waveforms. In other words, they brought them way down to the horrible benchmark set with VT. Here is a link to a previous discussion about this and an example of how they destroyed the song Presto. R3 Discussion

I see that this is a Rhino release. They have a way of mastering their work for superior sound quality. It should be a real treat.

This new excellent review says it all, and so well. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/ru...n-_b_48141.html

QUOTE Well, how to believe in god or gods without faith? I believe someone can be spiritual and not have faith or believe in organized religion. It sounds to me that Neil would rather trust his own moral compass that he knows to be good and true, rather than have faith in what someone in religious guise is telling him.

The music of Rush has never been about sex, drugs and rock & roll. Their music has always been on a higher level with positive messages. I don't see these current lyrics, or those from the past being anti-God. However, I do see them as being anti-organized religion. There is a difference. I believe that a lot of the songs with similar lyrics, past and present, are meant as a slam against the intolerance and ignorance that some fundamentalistic religious beliefs foster. A common theme I see that runs through many of their songs is a strong belief in humanity and that if we work together, instead of being divisive by religious conviction, we can fix a lot of what we ourselves have somehow screwed up. In other words, don't blame God for everything that goes wrong, and don't just sit on your butts waiting for him to fix things either. If we work together instead of being divided, we have a good shot at accomplishing something. These are messages of hope and love for humanity. And what was Jesus's most important commandment? So, how can you get more spiritual than that.