Arete (Remaster Project)

An Audio remastering project to be deliverable on Vinyl, CD, & streaming music providers.

Original Release Date: December 5, 2019 on streaming services only

Why remaster after only 4 years?

In 2019 I only mastered the EP for streaming and digital album download with no intention of releasing in any other format. Since then Print on demand services for vinyl and CD have cropped up and streaming services are now offering music at resolutions much higher in definition. Music mastered for streaming is done so on a much lower db level than CD and a slightly higher level than Vinyl at a lower sample rate. The original masters were required to be at 16bit 44.1khz (CD quality) while the mixes were done at 48khz 24bit (DVD quality). When submitted to streaming services the files were compressed even more to a lossy format, which in turn resulted in exposing some nuances in the mix that were unexpected. For example, the track "Adept" while I wanted a powerful and hard hitting kick drum just above the grinding Bass guitar, ended up instead being an overpowering annoyance in the final offering to listeners on streaming services. That and making the guitars bite harder on the track Hex, providing more space and air on the track Isolation, are just a couple of things I hope to achieve in the remaster without compromising the final mix. This is not a remix project, I'm overall proud of the balance the mixdown session resulted in.

Since 2019 Apple has offered their algorithms free in the form of droplets that automate the process of how the Apple engineers distribute music on to their service. And how to make your projects suitable for being "Apple Digital Masters" formally known as "Mastered for iTunes" I plan to utilize them by making them a very important part of my workflow for releasing new material.

The Digital Streaming services have evolved in such a short time since the initial release of the EP with offering music with bit rates of 24bit to 96khz. My original mixes were done at 48khz 24bit (DVD quality) only to be downsampled in the masters to 44.1khz 16 bit. Future mixes and masters will be done and delivered at 96khz 24bit.

The Mastering process will take in consideration all these formats and delivery options, and celebrated by new packaging and enhanced artwork with added bonus mixes and demos. There will be two offerings, a standard remaster of the original 5 tracks, an a deluxe edition remaster featuring 6 additional tracks comprising of alternate mixes and ddemos making a total of 11 tracks.

ARTWORK for The Final VINYL Release of "Arete (Remastered)"