So all this talk about the mastering of the reissue of The Fat of The Land has got me curious. A lot of people say it was already perfectly mastered and will probably just be louder with a sacrifice of quality in an effort to be on par with the loudness of other dance music these days.

I own a CD copy of More Music For The Jilted Generation (fuck that's a long title!) and Jilted is definitely my favourite album out of the bunch. But I wonder, is the mastering on the original release of Jilted better? I'm a hi-fi freak and love hearing every last detail of the music I listen to.

Would it be worth getting a copy of the original? Is there much of a difference in the mastering and can you explain it?
Cheers

I have both CDs...
I did not hear any differences... but I don't listen it very much, so there can be
I can compare wav files from these CDs, but maybe at Sunday... not sooner

well the point of the release of MMFTJG was to improve the mastering, so the sound on the record that you have should be better than the original. same with Experience. not sure if there's a huge difference, but all i can say it's not worse and it's a decent release with the second disc (same for experience).

the biggest difference is that The Heat The Energy starts with the intro, whereas on the original the intro is at the end of Speedway.

i think it was a good idea to re-issue the first two albums with improved mastering since they were originally mastered over 15 years ago. FOTL on the other hand is banging as it is. but again, there's no huge difference imo, i just prefer to listen to the remastered ones now, because they're in better shape.

MMFTJG is much much better! Specially if you using big speakers!

I thought the Jilted remaster brought out some sounds that got buried in the mix on the original

Listen to it with good headphones and you'll def hear a difference
especially with some of the samples Liam buried

Any chance of bass being buried? I do listen with high quality headphones (no not overpriced beats) but I'm ashamed to say I feel the bass is lacking in Jilted

Maybe I need to give into the equaliser.

In 1994 music cds were much quiter than today. So they simply put some volume on it, but that causes quality loss, so that's why it has to be remastered. put the volume up in a way that the quality does not gets worse. that's what I think. I'm also a hq fan as i hate mp3 and prefer flac only but more music is simply louder and a bit clearer. and i believe this latter is due to the former.

partly ©@rm4g3dd0n is right, but:
I've compared 3 versions of 13th track (Claustrophobic Sting) from MFTJG

1. MFTJG
- released under license from XL Rec. by Sonic records (Poland) in 2004 - it looks like audio is untouched from original 1994 XL release.
(http://www.discogs.com/Prodigy-Music-Fo ... ase/477149)

2. MFTJG
- Japan release by avex trax 1994 (with cd-mini 3track disc)
(http://www.discogs.com/Prodigy-Music-Fo ... ease/73698)

3. MMFTJG
- remastered version from 2008 (XL rec.)
(http://www.discogs.com/Prodigy-More-Mus ... se/1413942)

results:
1. quietest version (around -3dB compared to MMFTJG) all peaks much under maximum limit

2. loudest version, many many peaks cut off, most of these peaks are at 1:40-3:00, 4:00-4:30 and 6:24-6:50 and there is many other parts with these cut off peaks.
worst quality (1994 loud war)

3. little bit quieter than japan version, no or very few cut off peaks. It looks like their remastering try to use maximum of loudness without cutting peaks, and maybe some clearings in recording. This can looks (sounds) very good, but it can cause volume differences between 2 tracks on CD. If there is some quieter track and after that is louder track on old release and they add volume to maximum without cut offs, new remastered tracks will be almost same loudness.

I don't know if 94 release is better or worse than 08 remastered version. If you get more volume, you will get more noise, but in this style of music I think it's not audible. I can only say that remastered version is louder without cut offs than 94, not better. There are little differences in sound curve, but if you play 1 version and after that new version, I think you don't hear any differences instead of volume