Prism Sound And Sadie Play A Vital Role In
The Success Of Abbey Road’s Beatles Remastering Project
October 1, 2009
Source: Prism Sound
Prism Sound converters and SADiE mastering
equipment played a vital role in Abbey Road’s marathon
four year project to digitally remaster the entire original
Beatles catalogue.
The project, which involved 13 albums, took many hours of
work by Abbey Road’s specialist engineering team. This
was led by project coordinator Allan Rouse and included Guy
Massey (Senior Recording Engineer), Steve Rooke (Senior Mastering
Engineer), Paul Hicks (Recording Engineer), Sean Magee (Mastering
Engineer), Sam Okell (Recording Engineer) and Simon Gibson
(Audio Restoration Engineer).
The first part of the process, which was undertaken by Guy
Massey and Paul Hicks, involved transferring each song from
analogue tape into the digital domain. Prism Sound’s
ADA-8XR multi-channel modular ADA converters were used to
transfer the material into Pro Tools and the songs were then
formatted into 24 bit/192kHz and video referenced.
At this stage Simon Gibson took over. Using a SADiE 5 system
with built-in Cedar Retouch, Gibson began the careful process
of restoring the audio without compromising the character
of the original recordings. De-noising technology was used
subtly and sparingly to remove noises such as audible clicks
and pops from mics and faders, but performance-based imperfections,
such as breaths and coughs, was retained.
“The integration of Cedar Retouch into SADiE 5 has literally
changed the way I work by making the whole restoration process
much quicker, easier and more precise,” Gibson says.
“The visual element provided by SADiE was essential on
this project because I was able to zoom in and actually see
what was happening to the audio. By changing the zoom I could
look at the mid and low range frequencies and see how to get
the best out of them. Each song on each album had its own
issues, but with SADiE 5 and Cedar Retouch I could easily
identify problems such as tape drop outs because the broad
upper frequency shading was interrupted by a thin strip, which
indicated where the audio needed gating.”
While Gibson was restoring the album tracks, he also used
his SADiE5 and Cedar Retouch system to helped Giles Martin
and Paul Hicks create the audio for The Beatles: Rock Band
video game.
“In order to use the original songs within the game we
had to isolate individual instruments and voices so that players
can have individual control. Given that many of the Beatles
earlier recordings were done on two or four track tape, this
was quite a tall order.
However, with SADie 5 and Cedar Retouch I was able to pick
them apart note by note and effectively rub out the frequencies
we didn’t want. It was incredibly labour intensive and
took ages to do, but the results were worth it because the
majority of The Beatles catalogue can now be used in the game.”
Throughout the entire restoration and remastering process
immense care was taken to maintain the authenticity and integrity
of the original analogue recordings. The whole team deliberated
every change at every step of the way to ensure that the audio
remained as pure as possible.
“We didn’t want to have a negative effect on the
resulting audio,” Gibson says. “Instead, we wanted
to end up with audio that was as close as possible to the
original, recorded studio sound. In terms of audio restoration
this meant taking a subtle, almost forensic approach to the
job. I was fortunate to have both the time and budget to do
this.”
Following restoration, all 13 albums were mastered by Steve
Rooke and Sean Magee, who handled the stereo and mono recordings
respectively. Once again a SADiE Series 5 PCM 8 DAW played
a part in the mastering process, as did Prism Sound converters
which were used to transfer the audio back into the analogue
domain and for noise shaping.
Most of the EQ-ing was done on Abbey Road’s 1972 EMI
TG mastering console, but a Prism Sound MEA2 was also used
for additional EQ where finer steps or specific target frequencies
were required.
Abbey Road’s marathon project finally came to fruition
on September 9th when all 13 of the remastered albums were
released through EMI Music and Apple Corps.
Commenting on the role Prism Sound and Sadie played, Graham
Boswell, sales and marketing director for Prism Sound, says:
““Prism Sound has always been associated with high-quality
analogue-digital conversion, commencing its manufacturing
activities in 1993 with the AD-1 stereo analogue to digital
converter. SADiE, working in parallel, at that time, was known
for its professional audio editing software and in particular
its reliability and ease of use."
"The focus then was on stereo devices, both for new recordings
and for the re-mastering of analogue back-catalogue for the
then-new medium of CD and Abbey Road were early customers
for both products. Since then, many legendary works have been
re-mastered for digital release on Prism Sound and SADiE equipment
at studios around the world and SADiE has become part of the
Prism Sound family, while both have developed multi-track
products for recording and surround sound production. It is
an extraordinary honour to have the SADiE editing systems,
the Prism Sound conversion and Maselec Master Series analogue
outboard processors used at Abbey Road Mastering for the re-mastering
of the Beatles catalogue.”
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