Streisand / Remastered

Phil Ramone — he engineered the sound for some of Barbra's live concerts and also produced records for her — did a great job explaining how he made all those great records over the years in his book Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music:

When we cut records thirty years ago, they sounded good in the control room, but it was hard to channel that sound onto an LP. Session tapes underwent a lot of tweaking during their transposition to vinyl, and the compromising to compensate for vinyl’s deficiencies began in the mixing phase and ended in mastering.

In mastering a tape for LP, you had to cut back the bass, crank up the mid-range and high end, and use compression to make it sound pleasing on an average record player. There was a complex physiology behind groove width and depth, and the width of the grooves changed as you got toward the end of the record. The last track on an album was the most problematic; if you didn’t master the tape and cut the disc properly it would sound distorted. You could have the most dynamic mix in the world, but it would sound awful if you couldn’t squeeze it into a record’s grooves.

[...] With the CD, groove physiology is no longer a factor. But since digital recording’s high resolution can magnify a mix’s flaws, mastering becomes even more critical in the digital domain.

John Arrias — a recording engineer and record producer — is responsible for the remastering of most of Barbra Streisand's album catalog. Arrias had engineered and mastered for Streisand before (Emotion, Till I Loved You), but he was instrumental in preparing the audio for Streisand's big 4-CD box set, Just For The Record. Those tracks were sourced from “a hodge podge of analog equipment,” he told me. Arrias created the C.A.P. System to assemble the audio tracks for the box set. “It was all put in a rollaway rack and labelled C.A.P. for simplicity. It stands for Complete Audio Preservation. It included Equalizers, Limiters, Compressors and Audio Restoration Equipment.”

Arrias did his work at B&J Studio, which was constructed on the first floor of Lion Share Studios in Beverly Hills, California in 1986. Arrias says B&J stands for Barbra [Streisand] and John [Arrias].

“After we released Just for the Record [1991], I was approached by Columbia Records to prepare Barbra's first three albums for CD release,” Arrias recalled. “It went so well that they just kept sending me more recordings that had never been released on CD. The condition of some of the tapes were so bad that it soon became an archival project. I am proud to say that Barbra's entire catalog is now digitally preserved and in the vaults. It was a great honor and so much fun. All of the recordings were first directly transferred, with their original sound, onto digital tape, no equalizers or filters were used. I then went back and used my C.A.P. system to create the remastered CDs.”

Arrias began restoration by receiving all of the original Streisand master recordings, which ranged from 2, 3, 4, 8, 16 and 24 tracks. The masters were digitally preserved.

Next, “When possible, I made new mixes from the original masters to a 1/2-inch analog tape using the C.A.P. system. I then took the final mixes to Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood, where Bernie and I put the final touches on the mixes using his analog console. The new mixes were then transferred for CD release,” Arrias said.

Arrias was very impressed with Barbra's first three albums, recorded in 1963 and 1964 with three tracks. “When I finally located a 3-track head assembly, I began playing back the recordings. The split was Track 1 was Orchestra Left, Track 2 was Barbra's live vocal, Track 3 was Orchestra Right. That's it. So simple yet the balances were remarkable. These recordings were originally released in mono.”

Columbia Records began rolling out the remastered CDs in 1993. They sent a sales sheet to retailers describing eleven remastered Streisand CDs:

For the first time, Columbia is releasing 11 newly restored and remastered Barbra Streisand titles on CD. Many of the titles are also being released for the first time in years on cassette. All of the cassettes are being manufactured using the new masters.

The master tapes were prepared for release by John Arrias, who put together the masters for Barbra's retrospective “Just For The Record.” The objective with each album was to restore the tapes to the quality of the original master recording. To do this in some cases, 30 years of noise had to be eliminated. John used his proprietary C.A.P. Noise Reduction System to eliminate hiss, distortion and noise. In each case great care was taken to maintain the integrity of the original albums.

The packages were recreated using original art or printing film. Many of the packages have extensive liner notes that are reproduced in their entirety.

Included in the eleven titles is the soundtrack to “A Star ls Born,” a quintuple-platinum smash, “I Can Get It For You Wholesale,” Barbra's recording debut and her first three groundbreaking albums.

Collectors will notice these titles came with a gold "Digitally Remastered and Restored from the Original Master Tapes" sticker on the front cover. Eight of the eleven had never appeared on CD before. All of them carried the “restored by” John Arrias and “remastered by” Bernie Grundman credits on the back covers.

• I Can Get It For You Wholesale — Orig. Broadway Cast Recording
• Pins And Needles
• The Barbra Streisand Album
• The Second Barbra Streisand Album
• The Third Album
• Harold Sings Arlen (with friend) [now out of print]
• What About Today?
• On A Clear Day You Can See Forever - Orig. Soundtrack Recording
• The Way We Were - Original Soundtrack Recording
• A Star Is Born
• The Main Event Soundtrack [now out of print]