PAUL & LINDA McCARTNEY
RAM
Pitch and phase corrected from the CD on DCC GZS-1037
Remasters Workshop
RMW 756
The Ram album has always been out-of-phase. It is unclear at what stage this happened - either the finished
mixes were played on a machine that had misaligned playback azimuth and copied onto a machine that was
true, or the finished mixes were played on a machine that was true into a machine whose record azimuth
misaligned. When it's been mastered by EMI or MPL or DCC, they've each used the same tape, which has
the same phase issues. The only way to get a better-sounding Ram album would be to go back to the
master mixes of each track and recompile it from scratch. Short of that happening, phase correction can
be applied in Adobe Audition 3, which is what we have done for this edition. It makes an audible improvement.
In the uncorrected version, the sound is brighter in the left and duller in the right. When OOPSed, the lead
vocals are still plainly audible, and summed to mono, the sound goes dull due to phase cancellations.
In the corrected version, both channels have the same EQ and the stereo image is more focused and sharp.
When OOPSed, the lead vocal, which was panned to center, completely disappears except for its reverb.
In mono, the sound is crisp and well-defined. On this issue, the album sounds closer to how it did when it
was recorded - a version that no one has heard but Paul and his engineers... until now!
The Steve Hoffman remaster on DCC is generally regarded as the best-sounding iteration of this album, so that's the one we used for this project.
ffp file and artwork are included.
Please preserve the lossless quality of this material.
Uploaded to Demonoid September 25, 2011.
Enjoy!
Remasters Workshop
RMW 756