I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

no surprise; the Beatles is still the Paul show.

Oh come on. The real difference is the louder elec. piano. Right channel guitar is a little quieter, yes.

I mean, yeah, bass is louder. It should be! It doesn't sound very good on the original stereo!

I don't even know if it's louder - it's MUCH fuller.

And call me crazy but the harmonium on "Mr. Kite" sounds a little louder on the new mix to me but in the context of everything else being louder as well.

Fixing and Hole and Getting Better outtakes nice but piano and bass no guitar =(

they've cut them talking about acid in the water on the Mr. Kite outtake. still a little exclusive treasure on the Anthology 2.

i really like Sgt. Pepper Reprise Speech w/ Take 8. what the hell is going on at 00:28? is that Ringo? it almost sounds like an early drum machine, maybe it is on the organ George Martin is playing.

Someone drumming their hands on something?

I've been listening to this a bit more (just the version on spotify : did you guys buy the boxset ?)
it does sound great (I have no problem with it being in stereo since... I have never heard the mono version !).
indeed, the rhythm section is on fire from start to finish (even Good Morning, which is by far the song I like the least on the album, is - a bit - redeemed by its riotous drums/bass).
I don't really hear the difference/issue with the guitar intro on "Getting Better", though ? (but the outtake revealed how easy and fun to play on the piano that song is !)

Highlights for me are hearing Paul working out how to sing Fixing a Hole at the end of the song and the early takes of Getting Better and Lovely Rita. Has anyone heard disc 3?

I'm just listening to streaming versions of this unless I can find the other discs from the box to download; not throwing out $150 for this since I don't do 5.1 and that's overpriced anyway. I like the stereo remix fine though; it's interesting, but it's not going to supplant the 2009 remasters (stereo and mono) or my old vinyl. nice, but not necessary

I haven't heard all of the new mix, but I just had a listen to the new 'A Day In The Life' mix and thought it sucked.

For one, I fucking loathe the compression that seems to have been applied to the drums, and the orchestral cacophony actually loses something when you can hear what the players are actually doing - it works better as a slab of noise. MatthewK kinda OTM.

To be fair to Giles Martin, his stated objective was to create a stereo counterpart to the mono mix because of the Beatles' direct involvement in that mix. And since the latter is compressed heavily, he recreated that in the remix. What maybe happened was that the compression was originally applied to the mono mix as a whole, using analogue gear - for cutting purposes I presume - whereas maybe the elements of the stereo mix were individually compressed, and maybe in the digital domain?
Also - given the much greater bottom end emphasis of the remix, and the higher bass and drum placement in the mix, the overall effect of any applied compression can't help but be different, since the energy is distributed across the frequencies differently. If the low end is EQ'd out of the drums, it has no effect on the signal level the compressor sees, but if it's present it will have an effect and the compressor will compress differently. Would be a reason to compress the individual elements rather than the mix, and then you'd lose the "smearing" effect of whole-mix compression. Probably a case of good intentions undone by conflicting goals: recreate the mono mix + rebuild elements from first gen pre-bouncedown + make it "higher fidelity" = songs don't cohere.
I'd like to hear a remix using the original stems, from scratch by a producer with a good ear and musical intuition - presumably Nigel Godrich has the right kind of aesthetic, for example. Giles is there because of his name, if these results are a fair indication of his ability.

It’s no surprise, then, that the Beatles’ shift toward a more respectable and artistic branding meant shedding their sex appeal. The “Sgt. Pepper” album cover features the Fab Four dressed in goofy-looking uniforms

*dejectedly flops billy shears sex pillow into dumpster*

and the orchestral cacophony actually loses something when you can hear what the players are actually doing - it works better as a slab of noise.

George Martin said that the string players tended to follow one another ("like sheep," I believe is how he characterized them), while horn players and woodwinds had a much more independent approach to the glissandi. And you can hear the string players trying to play in tempo -- one 4/4 bar of eighth notes on one note, the next 4/4 bar on a higher note, etc.

They shoulda drafted in Penderecki to write out a score for that part.

Oh, just give it to Radiohead to remix then!

I dunno. You people..

stock aitken waterman remix or gtfo

will.i.am.'s nuanced work on the "girl is mine" remix suggests he might be just "the man" for this job... a real ear for mccartney's sensibility i think

I feel that MatthewK is OTM regarding Giles Martin. I, too, get the feeling that he's only there because of his name and because he's the son of George Martin rather than for his ability. I wouldn't like to hear a Godrich mix of this LP, though.

lol i see it already got quoted here but if you missed it here is the worst hot take on this album ever written:

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/29/against-sgt-pepper-the-beatles-classic-made-pop-seem-male-nerdy-and-important-and-that-wasnt-a-good-thing/

lol i came here to post that. the funniest part is when she claims grunge was heralded for wiping out girl pop like Madonna and Mariah Carey. they did fine in the 90s! the only thing grunge completely decimated was the most misogynistic strain of rock music in history - hair metal.

In an interview on NPR Giles Martin said they used the original compressors. Abbey Road RS124s I guess? There's no sidechain input for an EQ AFAIK, but if they had enough they could split frequency bands between them.

NPR interview with Giles Martin.

https://n.pr/2qpIdqW

the only thing grunge completely decimated was the most misogynistic strain of rock music in history - hair metal.

― flappy bird, Tuesday, May 30, 2017 5:30 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

WRONG. Def Leppard and Bon Jovi continued to do well during and after grunge. The likes of Warrant, Winger and Poison were on their way out anyway.

(because they weren't very good to begin with)

I worked on perhaps the last mag to still get excited by Warrant, Winger and Poison a few years back and it was amazing how they all held grudges against Nirvana and grunge for ending their careers and killing off their genre, even if they actually split first time round in 88 or whatever. Like, grunge did a good job of making this stuff seem uncool, the "The emperor's naked!" it needed or something, but what killed off that scene was cocaine overuse, cynicism, a simple idea worn too thin and hiring Diane Warren to write indentikit ballads*.

(* I actually like Diane Warren ballads but you get what I mean)

guys this has gone on long enough

But yeah, that whole Salon piece is mostly a steaming pile apart from this bit...

It’s no “Dare” by Human League, that’s for sure.

...which is OTM.

oh wait we're literally discussing the same article on two different threads? sorry got confused there

xp

It's just that momentous and thought-provoking.

WRONG. Def Leppard and Bon Jovi continued to do well during and after grunge. The likes of Warrant, Winger and Poison were on their way out anyway.

― The Anti-Climax Blues Band (Turrican), Tuesday, May 30, 2017 2:21 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Def Leppard went 3X with Adrenalize but that's coming way down off the last one, then Slang was just gold

Bon Jovi did better cuz they were only partially dependent on the metal crowd they had a classic rock/Springsteen/Billy Joel appeal

I was in HS and early college when grunge hit and me and tons of my friends basically all stopped listening to hair metal w/the exception of GnR if that counts and transferred over to grunge/alternative

man check out all the hot grunge action on these charts, no bubblegum pop here nope

http://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1993/hot-100

or here
http://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1992/hot-100

Peabo Bryson was the bridge between Hair Metal and Grunge

is the Mono mix in the box set any different from the mastering of the mono mix that they put out in 2009?

xxxpost:

By the time that Slang came out, Cobain was long gone and grunge was in its final stages.

Leppard's greatest hits LP, Vault, was a Top 5 record in the UK, and 'When Love and Hate Collide' was a big hit, peaking at #2. This was in 1995, a year after Cobain died and four years after Nirvana supposedly (in flappy bird's words) "completely decimated" them.

no one remembers that song

yr british right? i'm not speaking abt grunge to you

Haha

I remember it.

...and why? Because the US was dumb enough to buy truckloads of Bush records and we weren't? ;)

yr british right? i'm not speaking abt grunge to you
new board descrip

I personally thought we Brits were OTM by not buying millions of copies of Ten ...

very much so

Brits had p good taste in grunge and grunge-era American rock iirc - Nirvana, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.

Soundgarden's Superunknown and Down On The Upside were both Top 10 LP's here!

And here I thought I could turn this place into the Steve Hoffman Forums - pearls before swine, I tell ya.

Re-watching the 1987 tv documentary It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, and man, it really contextualizes Pepper like nothing else -- certainly, nothing published about the 50th anniversary -- has been able to do. Regardless of one's feelings about the music, this would be my go-to for anyone asking what the big deal was. Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, David Crosby, Peter Fonda, a Dutch anarchist, a couple of draft-dodgers, Barry Miles, some California commune-dwellers...they're all here!

(most of it is in youtube in chunks)

Whoops, I was wrong. Crosby's not in it. But Ed Sanders is.

sorry to break up all your grunge talk but could someone tell me if the mono mix and master is the same or no?

guess I'll listen to my pirated copy and decide for myself