It's not every day you get to make a new master of an album you've already worked on – especially not from a completely new mix !

But that's exactly what happened for me recently.

Dan from Ember Rev had never been happy with the guitar parts on their 2019 album "From The Country To The City To The Sea" and recently decided to re-record them. At the same time he used the opportunity to make some changes to the arrangements and song structures that more closely match the way the band perform them live.

The album was originally mixed by Simone Silvestri, but for this new version Simone wasn't available and Dan asked Sam Inglis from Sound On Sound to handle the re-mix. Sam took quite a different approach, which he's written about in detail for a fantastic new article in the latest issue of the magazine. He also asked me to contribute a short segment talking about the differences I heard from a mastering perspective, and the different approaches I took when mastering each version.

You can read the full article here, (or sign up here to read the whole "Replica" issue for free !) and in the video above I demonstrate how all this sounds in practise, using the song "Ultramarine" as an example. You can download and compare the files for yourself, plus many other examples, here.

How much difference does mastering really make ? And perhaps more importantly, how much difference should it make ?

Take a listen and decide for yourself !

PS. You might also like to take a listen to Ember Rev's latest album, also mixed by Sam and mastered by me, here