Hindi Film Music cd mastering

I read a lot of posts here which mention the poor sound quality of Hindi film cds. The ones i picked up in the recent past like Guru, Jodha Akbar, Taare Zameen Par and Jaane Tu Jaane Na have been very good. Excellent mastering. Great sound quality. Lows are good. Highs are sweet. Midrange is excellent. My system is fairly high end and very revealing. So i am very surprised there are so many negative statements about quality of Hindi film cds.

I am doing a lot of research on this and will be posting a detailed message in a few days. This will cover mostly DVD mastering, but will also show what equipment is used in India.

Hi Prem and Venkat
First all i am a novice comparing many of you ove here and nor do i have a high end system
When many of us have said that quality of Hindi audio cds (specially movie music) is not that good, it did not mean all. I guess there are some exceptions. But still I would say there wont be many which will be like A grade. Not bad but not the best.
Non Bollywood music like albums by Midival Punditz, Indian Ocean are quiet good. Note that I dont listen to classical music so i cant judge, but there are many of you who listen to, so you can compare the quality of those cds with Bollywood music cds
I will give a simple example of audio cd of KAHO NA PYAR HAI. I have not liked the recording at all. But then some like Lagaan are very well recorded. I remember reading somewhere that Amir Khan rejected the master copy of the music of Taare Zameen Par as he was not satisfied with the quality. So i feel it all depends upon the producer, music director, director of the movie upon what quality they are demanding.
There may be equipment in india to make the best sounding audio cds and super quality DVDs but then its upon the makers of the movie as to what they opt for

I think new age 'Hindi Movie' music composers are more aware of the technology and hence might be particular about the studio recording quality.

I remember reading somwhere that music composer Shekar ( of Vishal-Shekar fame ) stating that he liked the songs of the movie 'Omkara' and particularly mentioned about the recording quality of the tracks.

Few years ago this was not the case. The vocals on the recording of the movie 'Taal' is very shrill. '1942 Love Story' recording which could have been better.

The quality of music or audio in individual CDs will differ. It will be very difficult, for example, to get good CDs of old films songs as the original tape itself would have scratch noises. At the same time, I have over 200 CDs of both Hindi and Tamil film songs. These have been remastered by companies such as HMV/RPG. I have heard these on systems costing 100,000$ and more and cannot find any fault. When I go for audition I usually carry a wide variety - hindi/tamil film songs, Ravi Shankar's Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra, a Veena/Saxophone, a Fusion (Rhythm House), Breathless by Shankar Mahadevan, an orchestral number (Beethoven/Mozart), and a Japanese Album. I have used Breathless so many times, I ended up buying 3 or 4 copies. Most systems would fail to play Latha's old songs well as her pitch in many songs is very high. This is not a problem with the CD as much as it is a problem with the fact that there are very high frequencies in these songs. If you play a Mukesh or a Rafi on the same system, they would sound heavenly.

RPG had released a set of 65 odd CDs called 'Classics Revival' that has excellent songs from 1950s to the 1970s. They have take extraordinary pains to cut each CD properly. I have all the CDs, excepting a few Unfortunately these are not available now. I am ordering what I don't have as individual songs and completing the set.

I the recent past, the music of some films are being released as DVD-Audio with superb 5.1 sound. Some example as Vetayadu Vilayadu in Tamil, and Dhoom in Hindi.

I have heard a lot of people say that all Indian CD and DVDs are of poor quality. This has made my hair stand on end. For the last 15 days I have been working on the Net and talking to music directors, film directors, music companies to find out what they are doing. The results are very interesting. Please wait for my posting. hopefully I will have it up by middle of next week.

I am looking forward to Venkatcr posting. Taal incidentally does sound very good.

The results would be great to know since frankly we all know we crave good quality A R Rahman tunes in pristine quality 5.1 somewhere deep in our hearts...

Great work Venkat, nice of you to take the time and effort.The work your doing would be very helpful.

satish

Prem,

I think most of those comments would probably pertain to older content, the recordings themselves may have been sub-optimal due to equipment limitations, not enough care being exercised etc.

There's an anecdote about George Harrison landing up in Bombay to record the Indian classical tracks on his Wonderwall OST (late 60s), and being taken aback at the primitive equipment being used in India's leading studios at the time.

Another factor: most reproduction equipment that the music was likely to be played on at the time would be extremely low-fi. There are instances of certain frequency ranges boosted/ suppressed to accommodate playback limitations (e.g. to mitigate the 'jumping needle' syndrome). Of course, this can be corrected in modern-day remasters to a certain extent.

And of course, ageing (and storage in far-from-perfect conditions) of the master tapes hasn't helped any over the years.. this is as true of HMV as it is of AIR archives etc.

Regards,
Persiflage