"Audio restoration engineer" and recording merges

[reosarevok]

Hi! Similar to the following but I didn’t want to necro a 4 years old thread:

Restoration of gramophone records: new recording?

For some reason, I often find myself adding CD collections/compilations of old gramophone records. Two questions arose: What constitutes a new recording in MB lingo? Would the original gramophone record (were it entered in MB) and the modern CD share the recording, or would we enter two of them in some relation? Do we see the process of preparing a digital copy from an old record as creating a new recoring (as re-mixing would do), or similar to mastering, which keeps the old recording? One co…

This release has a “producer and audio restoration engineer” credit:

Piano Works, Vol. 4: Sonatas nos. 11-13

It has currently been added to recordings, which seems generally normal (that’s what we’d usually do with producer and engineer credits) but means the recordings can’t be merged with the originals, since the engineer had nothing to do with those.

Should this relationship be moved to the release level so that these can be merged? I’m not too sure what would be a sensible way to deal with it, so I’d like some opinions

[IvanDobsky]

Doesn’t this fall under the “remastering isn’t important to MusicBrainz” rule, so it seems like it is Release level details to my understanding.

They are the same recordings if they are cleaned up or scratchy.

[alex_s7]

I propose to add a new relationship between recordings to represent this, although I am not sure how narrow / wide it shall be. What is better, “digital restoration of” or just “restoration of” (more wide meaning)?

If there are at least a couple of supporters for this idea, I will create a ticket on MusicBrainz JIRA.

[alex_s7]

@IvanDobsky

Doesn’t this fall under the “remastering isn’t important to MusicBrainz” rule, so it seems like it is Release level details to my understanding.

I would argue that the new relationship could allow to distinguish between just digitized version of an old recording (essentially the same recording), and a version with noise suppressed etc (different recording, although related to the old one).

[IvanDobsky]

@alex_s7 - I agree with you that a remastered version should be classed as a different recording, but elsewhere in the database that has already been stomped on. They are many recordings from 25-50 years back that get properly remastered releases but they are not allowed to be separated.

I think there is even a depreciated old relationship that has been removed from use.

I don’t see why Classical would be treated any different to Pink Floyd. As a music geek I would much prefer separated recordings for my remastered versions where they go back to the original tapes and remix but MB has previously said a big “no” to that pointing to the Recording being made when people stand in a studio with their instruments no matter how much fiddling then happens to that recording later.

[sibilant]

@reosarevok

Should this relationship be moved to the release level so that these can be merged?

I would say no. As in the other case, this one involves conversion from mono to stereo, which makes it a separate recording by MB’s definition. Also, I agree with @alex_s7: restoration is not the same thing as remastering.