Beware: this is no Deluxe Edition ;)
Intro
You probably don´t know it... but all CDs I buy are ripped to my PC to be "remastered". Literally everything, from Janet Jackson, Prokofiev or Jerry Goldsmith. I just don´t listen to something where I haven´t at least looked at the frequency response, spatiality or abusements of Loudness. It can be likened to an illness as I cannot enjoy the music unless I´ve worked on the sound or at least had a look. Suffice to say that I find flaws most of the time, in some cases so severe that one has to wonder how artists can allow their work to be destroyed on purpose. Well, my pain is your gain :D
Wanna know another thing? I really don´t like to do Deluxe Editions. Sound issues aside, for me the worst thing to do is the cover. Writing the tracklist? Pain in the ass. So when an officially expanded release comes along I`m usually filled to the brim with joy. I don´t need to do the cover, sound alterations will not be necessary (often, that hope is crushed though). In case of River Wild as released by Intrada last year however I had to do something about the sound as I didn´t like their take on it.
Sound
The River Wild was mastered from original session elements by Douglass Fake. Douglass is the head of Intrada and does most of the mastering for the scores they´re releasing (this saves a lot of money). His mastering work has always been a mixed bag. I like that he doesn´t abuse brickwall limiting, you won´t hear Loudness War stuff coming from Intrada. He also rarely changes the overall frequency response, the advantages being that he respects the intentions of the original mixing engineer and that the sound won´t be tweaked to the newest flavour of the month. The disadvantage is that he won´t extract the maximum possible sound quality. In other words, crappy sounding scores will still sound crappy when released by Intrada. The worst thing however is his attempt at dynamic compression. He goes the lazy route by raising the gain of soft tracks (you know, music for dialogue scenes containing only parts of the orchestra) by several decibles in order to make them audible - until they are almost as loud as loud pieces (some action music with the whole orchestra performing)! Wouldn´t be a necessarily bad thing... if he also would raise the gain of tracks that not only contain soft parts but also loud parts. With those, you´d have to raise the gain of the soft part only without making the loud part even louder. I´ll try to visualize it:
This is how Intrada releases mastered by Doug sound:
Track 2: softsoftsoftsoft
Track 3: softsoftloudsoft
Track 4: loudloud
Track 5: softsoftsoft
You can see the problem. Overall gain of such a release is pretty inconsistent; one minute just one harp on a soft piece is sounding gigantic and in-your-face while the whole orchestra the next minute sounds as if being far away. One minute you can hear everything clearly, including noise and the orchestra, the next minute you don´t hear anything and you have to turn the volume up.
What I usually do (including this release here) is:
Track 2: softsoftsoftsoft
Track 3: softsoftloudsoft
Track 4: loudloud
Track 5: softsoftsoft
You can see that I´ve reduced overall dynamics - BUT that they are consistent throughout the whole score. While that doesn´t reflect the organic dynamic of an actual orchestra, it is nevertheless easier to comprehend. Now you can hear everything that´s soft with relative ease (but it´s still soft) while loud parts won´t blast away your ears or destroy your speakers / headhones.
For River Wild I also changed spatiality and frequency response. The version by Intrada sounded brittle and lifeless; very probably this was the original sound of the sessions. I felt that it missed warmth and charm. Even Bruce Botnick, who prepared the album master, knew this and altered spatiality and EQ for the first OST released in 1994. I did the same but kept a more contemporary sound signature. I really like the sound now!
Cover
Wohoo, I don´t need to do a cover... wait... the Intrada cover doesn´t look that good... but maybe it´s enough... yeah, I´ll use it... is there a HiRes picture online... no... too lazy to scan it... crap, I will redo the cover :D Which is what I did. But I couldn´t bring myself to repeat their font choice (Georgia, the same as on all the posters for the movie), I opted for Adobe Garamond instead.
BTW, I did not redo their back cover, even though I combined some tracks to improve musical flow and an altered cover would have been merited. You can take those tracks apart yourself to fit the back cover, the contents are - apart from a few crossfades - exactly the same as on the Intrada set. Oh wait, I exchanged one track with an alternate: "The Raft". The difference is an added synth and I distinctly remember the revised version being used in the movie. Why Intrada designated it as an alternate is a mystery to me.
Now A WARNING:
1. Once the links expire, I won´t upload it again, someone else has to do that (maybe by creating mirrors?)
2. Mp3's: I won´t provide them. But you can do them yourself, it´s easy.
Spoiler!
Code:
Mirrorcreator:
http://www.mirrorcreator.com/files/IBE7MJHL/RapidRiverRafting.part1.rar_links
http://www.mirrorcreator.com/files/7IWBZZE2/RapidRiverRafting.part2.rar_links
Code:
Pass:
Action_Meryl