What does remixed exactly mean?

[playman]

When you have a album with prior released songs but mixed by different group/groups then the original, what does it really mean by mixed. How do they change it? Do they use the original tapes and add nothing of their own?

 

[Jon_Logan]

The original recording is primarily for levels. That is, all of the mics are recording something,... voice, guitar, etc. They record all of the mic inputs at their highest levels possible. This multitrack recording is the tape that can be mixed down to 2 (4,6,8) channel recording for the album, DVD, etc.. Later on, you can take the original multitrack tape and remix it depending on how a producer feels it should sound.

 

[Super866]

More often you'll also see digitally remastered, Which sadly seems to mean "squished and made as loud as possible for your boombox pleasure" There are examples of albums that have been released and rereleased as the years passed and they kept compressing them more and more.

Personally I no longer think digitally remastered is a good thing. At least not in the hands of most engineers.

 

[Lnerell]

A remix is an alternative version of a song, different from the original version. Usually a remixer is given the original song in multi-track format or will be given just individual tracks (like vocals, guitar, etc). The remixer then usually make substantial changes to the oriignal song by adding other elements that were not part of the original version. Most remixes are usually for dance clubs so things like the tempo might be changed with heavy amounts of drums and synthesizers added for effect and for emphasis.

You could also "remix" a song using just the original tracks for surround sound (5.1, DVD-A, SACD, etc), but that does not happen as much as the above discription.