Chuck's Vegetable Stand

Anyone in the technically creative field should be able to say that all their previous work is inferior to what they’re putting out now, otherwise, if you’re not getting better at your craft, you’re doing something wrong. This doesn’t apply to the music itself, just the production, as I still firmly believe that this EP, and the accompanying music video, were accidentally the best things our band ever created.
But I assumed I could give it a quick remaster and that the remaster would sound better than the original (we’re putting the vinyl back up on bandcamp), given that since 2011, I’ve learned a lot more about mastering. I was wrong. Sure I managed to sort out some of the low end gremlins that my HS80s never revealed, and tamed some of the harsh mids that stuck out on the physical pressing, but I couldn’t maintain the presence or the weight of the kick and snare, so I gave up and resorted to the original masters.
I didn’t beat myself up about it though, because the original master was done on my dbx Quantum, a now antiquated piece of digital mastering hardware (vastly superior to the TC Finaliser imho) that I struggled to sell when I decided to do it all in the box.
I never liked the limiter on the Quantum because how you were receiving the output dictated how hard you could hit it. S/PDIF sounded the best, while AES/EBU or Analog were either quieter or produced weird artifacts.
But I loved the multiband compression section. I used to wonder how anyone mastered loud, aggressive music without multiband. But also, since I was mastering with the mix project (but not necessarily out of it), I was mixing to the Quantum’s advantages, so trying to remaster from that original mix was an unfair comparison.
If anyone’s interested, these days my mastering chain usually consists of Ozone’s Maximiser, the UAD Massive Passive emulator and whatever compressor fits the bill (becoming increasingly fond of the Summit Audio TLA-100).