David Backhouse - 3/31/2011

Before buying the new Queen remasters myself, I read countless reviews on various sites and forums and I found that NO ONE actually did any technical reviews on the albums!
As a Queen fan of 25 years, I've bought this album and all the others at least THREE times, the last two times being the USA remasters of 1991 and the Japanese remasters of 2001. As such, what I wanted to know before I spent anymore money on the same albums yet again was "How do they differ in sound quality from previous releases and should I buy them yet again?"

The answer is "Yes, I should buy them again", and here is why:
The albums have been re-mastered by Bob Ludwig, who is remowned as the best in the business.

Because of the age of the recordings and, more importantly, the fact that Queen would do multiple overdubs on their master tapes, it would seem likely that creating a new mix from those multitracks was not possible.
Instead, they have opted to remaster the albums from what is known as the "flat mix master". This is the stereo mix created from those multitracks and so the first thing you will notice is how clear the recording is.
All previous remasters were created using stereo mixes a few generations down, and therefore all sorts of 'impurities' had been added to them :(

The remastering process apparantly involves adjusting numerous frequencies to bring out and seperate the instruments and vocals.
What this has resulted in is a much wider stereo seperation than ever before. With stereo you tend to have sounds that only appear on the left or the right channels, sounds which appear more on one channel than the other and sounds which appear equally on both. The latter is known as the "centre channel".
With Queen II especially, this centre channel is now clearer because the other stuff has somehow been seperated out and moved further left or right. Instruments stand out more than before and I'm now hearing cow-bells and guitar work that I've never previously heard because they were buried under so much else.
Roger's Drumming and the sound of his cymbols are crisper than they have ever been, and John's bass really shines.

March of The Black Queen is the stand out track for me. There is so much going on in this song that it used to sound quite muddy - not anymore. I'm literally blown away with how good it sounds.
Queen II has always been my favorite Queen album and I am VERY familiar with how it sounds, but this new remaster makes it sound fresh and a joy to discover anew.

Thanks Queen. You could have just put the same old sounding albums out all over again, but you didn't.
You spent some money producing the best they've ever sounded and put a HUGE smile on an old fans face :)