Rainer

And of course there is no such thing as a DSD DSP. It's called Direct Stream Digital for a reason. If the 'work flow' entailed any kind of digital processing, the transfer has to go via hi-res PCM. Essentially, the only processing possible when transferring to DSD is analogue EQ. I believe that ultimately hi-res PCM is preferable for the highest possible fidelity in archiving, but the fact that DSD puts a hardware obstacle in front of obsessive 'tweaking' is a major plus in its favour.

These sophisticated "correlational" de-noisers have their place, mostly with speech, such as old movie soundtracks, where the object is simply to make them 'clearer' and easier to follow. But when it comes to music .... meh.

Absolutely. At the same levels, the tape-noise I've been harping on about sounds much smoother and less intrusive on a DSD transfer than with 16/44.1 PCM, hence, as you say, maybe they tend to be left (relatively) un-molested. Hi-res PCM isn't far behind, but it seems that the simplicity of the DSD process makes it easier to engineer 'natural-sounding' converters.

Sorry, the company is actually called Plangent Processes, for anyone wanting to search for info.

Heh. haven't read through the thread yet, but didn't Bill Hicks have something to say about how a lot of the music many of us love came into being - you know, through, er, induced altered states? Alcohol; for me there's a sweet spot before my senses get too addled - maybe two glasses of wine / two bottles of Budvar. The Evil Weed? No comment .......

I've noticed that - seen it some 'needle-drops' I've done, but even more clearly in some hi-res digital transfers. It's even being used by Plangent Systems as a datum to de-wow/flutter recordings - fascinating stuff. But heavy-handed use of de-noising within the audio-band is the issue with many remasters. When I said "20 dB or more", that's probably a conservative guess. OK, so the "pumping" that used to be so obvious is a thing of the past, but in the end such use of DSP's is only ever going to be destructive, in every sense of the word.

Something almost never remarked on when it comes to "remasters"; Older, analogue 2-track [ETA >>or mono] masters (particularly if they're generational copies) will typically have tape-noise at -60dB or higher. If they were simply compressed to give "modern" RMS levels, that noise floor could end up being raised to levels similar to cassette (without Dolby, at that). Hence they first have to be aggressively 'de-noised'. The DSP's used to accomplish this have doubtlessly improved since early ones (like the first Sonic No Noise), but they're still VERY destructive, sucking the 'life' out of recordings by removing ambience/acoustics cues and delicate harmonics along with the hiss [ETA >> hence what's often described as a "sterile" sound]. If de-noising wasn't used so profligately, many such compressed re-masters would sound a LOT better, despite the tape noise, but as often as not the operators seem to want to make them sound as quiet as digital, which probably requires well over 20dB of attenuation.