A Drexciya style track was one of the first things I did with the MonoMachine when I got it.
This is all MnM, except for the arpeggio (minibrute), live 1 take.
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For some of the classic Drexciya trax, you should look into the Spectral Audio Neptune 2 synthesizer.
That’s if “You don’t know”. :- D
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I like a lot the tone of the discussion here! 
Just as a place to store info, I point below to a Gearslutz thread that has interesting info in it:
Check messages 195 and after.
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wouldn’t mind some opinions and ears here.
a friend and myself went on a deep dive last night listening to our favourite Drexciya records and ended up comparing the originally released mixes alongside the recent clone reissues mastered by Alden Tyrell.
I’m cautious that i don’t want this to come across as a hate stirring post, definitely more confirmation of what we experienced and an open mind to detrimental mastering in recent years.
also i’ll caveat this by saying our comparisons weren’t laboratory certified. we listened on a nice system but our sources were a mix of youtube encodes from the last (upto) 15 years vs CDs where possible and the bandcamp wavs.
a truly authoritative comparison would be to have the original 16bit CD versions and reissued 24bit bandcamp digitals.
but christ was the disparity evident.
the originals sounded alive, with so much detail and depth (especially on the snares with their famously swooshing flangers and phasers).
the remasters sounds totally dead. loud but dead. with everything pushed and the snares loosing all their fizz and nuance.
this really struck me! the original versions sound amazing, and anyone discovering these recordings for the first time may do so via the clone versions and miss out on so much…
has anyone else noticed this!?
i’m especially sad as the last new release was the Abstract Thought 12, whilst i love these tunes i’d love to hear the original mixes as i’m sure they’d sound better.
separately the first track of grava 4 sounds like an autechre mix from the last 5 years, amazing 20+ year old electronic music that deserves to be heard as intended, not squashed to sound loud out a phone speaker…
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Gotta try this with the Opsix
Edit: opsix can’t pw modulate the waveform in ringmod mode.
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Model cycles track I did, kind of reminds me a bit of Drexciya tones.
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I haven’t heard the different versions but i always prefer the original versions when it comes to remastered music. I don’t get the idea behind remastering at all. If that “old” sound is what got people into the music why should it be remastered?
Just read this interview because i was interested in the process and the ideas behind.
“…I found out I was trying the impossible. I wanted all the Drexciya music to sound like modern-day club tracks, with all the heavily-compressed, pumpy overwhelming sound that comes with it. He told me that’s not the way to go, that’s impossible. For starters, the productions are way too rough for that, and it’s not the kind of music for that kind of sound. So then I took a much simpler approach – A-B’d it with the original masters and decided that I did a fairly good job…”
Even if he realized the music shouldn’t sound like modern club music in the end this to me shows again how strange the idea of remastering is. Especially if the artist who made the music isn’t doing it or at least decides how it’s going to sound.
And i’m not saying Alden Tyrell did a bad job, i just want to hear the music how the artist wanted it to sound.
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thanks for this, interesting read and gives some insight into the whys and whats and subjectivity.
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I’ve bought most of the vinyl reissues as they’ve come out and enjoyed them, they definitely veer towards being crispier/punchier than the old CDs and the odd original records I’ve had though. What I will say is that a lot of the old stuff on Submerge etc. sounded quite murky and the pressing quality wasn’t great which also didn’t help, so I think there was fair scope for some tasteful reinterpretation. Maybe he got that right on some of them and went a bit too far on others, I don’t know. Also the digital is probably different again to what I’m hearing. I guess Gerald Donald must be OK with it but maybe he’s not interested enough in the old stuff to kick up a fuss anyway? I could see some artists being that way.
It’s a general bugbear of mine as well though, it annoys me that anyone checking out New Order for the first time now will get the horribly compressed versions unless they really go out of their way, for example. Another one is Cocteau Twins - taking such incredibly airy/dynamic music and smashing it all through a compressor beggars belief to me… And that was Robin Guthrie himself.
A weird one was Dreamworld by Blackout, one of my favourite Memphis tapes. The cleanup job on that was absolutely remarkable… To the point where the album loses most of the murky atmosphere I just assumed was inherent to it but was actually largely the result of everyone listening to an MP3 rip of a probably pretty worn/cheap cassette for decades. Still a great album but absolutely not the same album at all.
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I guess you’re right. Some artists are probably not interested in remastering their old material again. Or even being involved in the process. First i was wondering why Gerald Donald wasn’t doing it himself. But yeah, i myself would also prefer to work on new music then rework my old stuff.
The Ensemble machines are really great to patch Detroit style chords and pads. Flavour them with the inbuilt possibilities: Chorus, Filter and pitch modulation, Delay, Sample Rate Reduction. Great bass sounds come from the FM machines, pulse wave machine, and saw wave machine. They don’t sounds exactly like 303 or 101 but you can come close with careful filter and EQ settings. For telephone and bell tones I would try the FM machines, too
awesome bass
Not sure I’d even be able to tell what the mastering is like on the Quantum Transposition reissue that just turned up… Modern vinyl quality control at its best 
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I have a clap I shaped/inspired by the Black Sea Clap.
909 Clap->Boss SE-70->Alesis 3630->mixer/drive/eq->MPC One/sample. Then crushed the file a bit like I had saved it in a S900 and back to the MPC One as a one shot.
That said it is still a starting point for me. I don’t try to create finished sample/sounds. I expect to play them back through my rig.
The instruments are the starting point but you really need the 90’s fx to nail the 90’s sound easily. Personally, I’d say buy a Behringer td-3 and a K-2 (303 and MS20 clone) and some 90’s fx hardware…
You can do it in a DAW but it’s more like finding a needle in a haystack than finding the instrument’s sweetspot.
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ouch.
A DAW is not a haystack when it’s not cluttered with a billion plugins.
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Wtf!? That’s quite extreme. 
I’d argue that it is metaphorically. Even with Live no plugins the scope to shape and sculpt a myriad of sounds from any genre gives you magnitudes more choices as compared to the scope of sounds you can get out of a vintage analog instrument such as a 303 or MS20 as per my example.
sorry to keep going on about this but i think i’m seeking validation, or “no, your ears are broken and the remaster is the superior version”.
remaster
original
worlds apart in terms of space and vibe.
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Remasters always fail miserably, I won’t even listen to them…
Pants
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