Snap, Crackle & Pop -- Why?

[Moosbrugger]

I recently bought a copy of Benny Goodman's 1938 Concert at Carnegie Hall on CD.  Although the recording is pretty good, many of the tracks have a lot of crackles, pops and loud tape hiss.  I don't know anything about this stuff, but I'd think that with computers and all that, it would be pretty easy to remove the defects from the old recordings without sacrificing the sound quality of the music.  Yet, I keep finding that when I buy old recordings, they're difficult to listen to because of the mess.  

Am I just wrong about what it takes to clean up the recordings?  Are the publishers just lazy?

[rando]

My most recent album of the evening is as good an example as any of this.  To the average person listening on a car stereo or typical low-fi setup the lack of assorted noises and drop outs will seem to be a massive improvement.  Studio magic bumping up lows and generally tinkering with levels to produce a higher DR adds to the effect.  Anything approaching audiophile levels of playback looks right through the mask.  

 

Then there is the highly specialized XR Remastering process.  Which a year or so back a sufficient number of us explored on our own systems in a comparison with official historic recordings that were strictly digitized.  For many the low quality and disruptive elements prevalent in recording of that era were a chore to listen to.  The XR version was almost unanimously found pleasing enough to listen without straining.  

 

So laziness is not the biggest factor.  Degrading recordings requiring specialization  in a very narrow line of conservation techniques required to save them, very labor intensive restoration with very small market and valuation of finished product, and two elements of time fighting against each pretty well sum up the issues being faced.  However, the easier answer is for someone with a lot of skill to simply remaster them to taste and move on to the next paying project.