I kinda get all of that Steve but what you're describing here is more of the how and why. That, I have no problem with, and that's not the bone of contention (unless I've misunderstood the topic). What I am querying is the should or should not, and the ownership. It's not exactly intellectual property is it?
Not legally, no it's not. & if you think about it, not even The Cure messed about wth the bootleg clips they used on their deluxe discs
I think the point is that these "remastering" are done by people who think: "Well, it sounds better like this on my PC's small speakers"... Mastering is a full time job, it's not just putting a bit more or less of bass / treble or adding some compression. Even a very good studio producer is not necessarily a good mastering engineer... So unless you don't really know how to do the job and you don't have the authorization, leave the recording as it is...
so - I got a message from the taper in Stockholm - he approves of this remastering job; appreciates this being brought up to him. Simple things that whoever was dealing with the tape should have probably done. But hey - better late than never. It's not that difficult to track down tapers of recent shows considering that most come from dime anyway!
I would go with the tapers wishes basically no matter what - and that was my take since before I started taping myself. I think the person who taped the show put enough effort, expense and in some cases sacrifice into getting the show taped; and without that effort - there wouldn't be stuff to 'remaster' in the first place. Some tapers are OK with modifications - others would only let people whose work they know touch their files, some would want stuff untouched - and in my view - this should be entirely their call. Or else 'go and tape it yourself' - I did hear that one enough. I usually solicit help before I release anything - and once it is released - I consider it final. I work with other people's files when (and only when) asked - and always before the release.
There are about 4 versions of the Paris phone (!) recording circulates - none of them asked or even considered asking the taper even when I offered the info - all versions suck so badly while doubling and tripling and quadrupling in size - one has to wonder what (if anything) was going through the minds of those people.
I think I should be adding 'do not remaster without....' to every tape I release from now on. Lol
And yes - we have no control what happens with our tapes once it's out there; internet is 'a wild world' (credit: Nick Cave) - but one hopes for some shred of decency. Naively. I strongly prefer my releases to run on dime because at least there the question of 'who released it?" or 'who the taper is' is resolved with a single click. Once it's elsewhere - finding the person who seeded a file set is several steps removed.
You are right, and we discussed about that, there are several versions of my recording of the Paris show and no one asked me anything. Personnaly, if people have the mastering skills and want to make a better version of a recording, why not, but the thing is just that they should indicate with accuracy that it is not the original recording because otherwise other people will remaster/convert also an already remastered version and it has no sense. At the end we have fake stereo recordings, with size doubled, many file format conversions etc etc... So to put it in a nutschell, everyone must be accurate in the credits and names of the files.
It make me think that i have some old recordings i taped (ie Aix les bains) with a minidisc and maybe it could interest some people here. The quality is good.
Rennes 1996/ Nîmes 1998/ Paris 2000 x2/ Carhaix 2002/ London 2002/ Brussels 2002/ Hamburg 2002/ Berlin 2002/ Aix les bains 2004/ Six fours 2004/ Werchter 2004/ St Malo 2005/Paris 2008/ Paris 2016/ Hyde Park 2018/ Malahide Castle 2019/ Saint-Cloud 2019/ Lyon 2022/ Montpellier 2022/ Toulouse 2022/ Bordeaux 2022/ Nantes 2022/ Strasbourg 2022/ Lievin 2022/ Paris 2022/ London 2022 x3…
I'd ask the taper - if he or she said no or didn't answer I wouldn't do anything. I do have loads I've "re mastered" for myself, most of that is official stuff though - two channel video "re mastered" to 5.1 channels, or audio from VHS/laserdisc/DVD messed around with.