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

I'll try the Beatles For Sale thing right away. That's probably my favorite Beatles album at this point.

man i NEVER see good copies of the originals anymore...i kick myself for not buying all that stuff in the 90s...now all i see is bargain bin once all hashed up like with the record just thrown in the cardboard with no sleeve

starting to get that way with the prime stones stuff too, i paid 15 for beggars and i thought it was a good deal

I have a bunch of Beatles vinyl that I probably never listened to because I also have the CDs. :/

People thought because they had a vinyl copy of a record everyone owns that they were sitting on a goldmine.

OTM. Around Atlanta you can find lots of Beatles records in thrift shops (Goodwill $1-2, Last Chance $1.99, Value Village 40cents) but yeah go to an antique store and you will find any old Beatles record in thoroughly used condition going for something insane like $35.

yeah i always chortle when i go to this one secondhand flea market type place in my town, and there's a seller who has shit like Allman Bros. LPs for $30. Basic Beatles stuff, too -- with comments like "ORIGINAL PRESSING" and "RARE" ...

If people want a taster for what the new remasters might sound like I'd recommend the Love thing from the other year. Got me pretty fucking excited.

yeah, i pulled out Love this week in anticipation. made me angry/excited in equal measure. some of it is soooooo retarded. the sound is great though.

"Something" on Love is one that stood out -- incredibly lush.

People thought because they had a vinyl copy of a record everyone owns that they were sitting on a goldmine.

Reminds me of a woman who came into Streetside Records shortly after Conway Twitty died and bought one of each of his CDs because "they're going to be worth something some day."

Yeah, some of the edits / segues whatever are a little annoying, but fucking damn it sounds astounding.

Like, is there something I can listen for that will make me really anticipate this?

Euler, like Nick mentioned way up there, the sound quality of the Love thing that just came out year was pretty awesome. You should listen to that, and if the remastering on that doesn't impress you, you probably won't get much out of the forthcoming reissues. And if you do notice the bump up in quality, you might be convinced to buy a few.

That said, I'm part of the evil plot for the RIAA to scam millions of people out of their money through what we call the "new format trick". You might wonder, "how would that trick work without someone pointing a gun at someone else's head and demanding that they purchase the same old album in a new format or be murdered?" You're absolutely correct, and that's why the RIAA pays me to point guns at baby boomer heads until they shell out the money.

and we'll just keep repeating the scam until the public catches on, and then we'll gladly take our TAXPAYER BAILOUT!

MWWAHAHAHAHAHAHA, it's so perfect!!!11

how would that trick work

It's called encouraging the mass-culture fetishizing of audio (and video) fidelity.

http://www.filmjunk.com/2009/02/03/the-least-essential-blu-ray-releases-so-far/

I haven't heard much of Love (one of these days!). It's the Beatles, I'll probably buy all of these, provided I can afford it. I wanted to hear more of what to listen for, and so I'm going to try the Beatles for Sale thing pointed to above.

hahaha audiophile fidelity is so far from "mass culture" it's not even funny

Just for the sake of argument, at what point do you think the improvement of audio and fidelity should have been halted? CD? 180g vinyl? Wax cylinder? VHS? The spirograph?

VHS

i remember making mixtapes on vhs! they could be like 6 hours long

Stylophone.

As someone who volunteers in a charity shop sorting their vinyl, and only ever seems to buy from them too- any Beatles vinyl is incredibly scarce, and the stuff we get, no matter how beat up and shitty, we can sell within a day for a tenner plus (when the majority of stuff, good quality, is marked at £1 - £3).

Also, considering hopefully I should have my first full time job by the time these come out, I might consider actually buying them as I've been living off inherited beat up vinyl copies of various albums and shitty downloads of the rest. There is a generation who haven't yet bought their first Beatles albums who will end up loving them like everyone else this could be sold too the same way my older brother and all his friends drank the kool aid circa the anthology.

Would it have been better if DVDs and Blueray had been developed and introduced without any sort of advertising, so as to not encourage people to fetishize the improved fidelity?

Records should have never been created. They have killed music.

damn you, thomas edison. DAMN YOU TO HELL.

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/images/adaccess/R/R02/R0206/R0206-med.jpeg

haha, what does "OYEZ!" mean ... ?

"hear ye"

I've said this before, but the whole nu vinyl-fetishism is hilarious to me because people are buying these brand new indie rock records from Insound for their "better sound quality" but they were all recorded digitally anyway, so it doesn't really matter what format.

Well, the product and packaging is bigger, they usually come with a free download, and vinyl is more expensive to produce. So you get more value for your money from a vinyl even not taking into account sound quality.

But yeah that stuff is so funny. Lots of my musician friends with use 8-track digital recorders or their computer to record something and then do the mixdowns onto tape and then make a digital copy of that tape to send in to get pressed onto record. I bet no-one ever sends tape to a record pressing plant anymore, it's always CDrs.

The Beatles remastering technique described above has "24 bit 192 kHz resolution," which is vastly more than what you get on a CD. So if they go from the 24-bit master to vinyl, you bet the vinyl could sound better than the CD.

But yeah that stuff is so funny. Lots of my musician friends with use 8-track digital recorders or their computer to record something and then do the mixdowns onto tape and then make a digital copy of that tape to send in to get pressed onto record. I bet no-one ever sends tape to a record pressing plant anymore, it's always CDrs.

i think even stuff recorded digitally lots of time sounds better on vinyl though, like "ga ga ga ga ga ga" by spoon comes to mind, because it's not mastered so harshly and vinyl tends to sand off some of that hissy high end.

i know a few ppl that have done all analog process but i've A/B'd stuff on vinyl and CD and it sounds better on vinyl, even digitally recorded stuff.

as far as recording digital and bouncing to tape, that's not uncommon actually, tape can give you a nice natural compression that makes your mixes hold together, the guy we recorded with (on tape) used to have some clients come in just to bounce to one-inch on the mixes just to get a little tape compression before mastering.

yeah I'm sorry guys M@tt is otm, vinyl just sounds better - doesn't matter how it was originally recorded. At this point in the game, there's pretty much nobody using an all analog process, digital is always involved somewhere along the line.

as for why this took so long: it has apparently taken about 4 years to do the actual work of remastering. why they didn't do it earlier: anything involving the beatles involves mccartney, star, ono, harrison (when alive) and his wife (now); AND EMI. there was a deal in place to have these remastered by DCC in the 90's but harrison refused to sign off. I think the multitude of people involved in agreements on anything is a horrible mess; I'm frankly surprised this ever happened at this point.

Shakey, the "vinyl just sounds better" argument when talking about digital era indie rock records is snake oil bullshit to make collector nerds feel superior in a brave new world where anyone can download a record. It's just another reason for merriweather post pavillion people to pat themselves on the back.

what's funny (haha!) is that if they had actually done remasters back in the mid-90s, they could totally STILL be re-reissuing them this year, in new NEW remastered form. I mean, look at Elvis Costello.

like M@tt I am mostly speaking from personal experience here insofar as the records we made sound better on vinyl than they do on MP3/CD but whatevs Whiney yr mileage may vary

Shakey, the "vinyl just sounds better" argument when talking about digital era indie rock records is snake oil bullshit to make collector nerds feel superior in a brave new world where anyone can download a record. It's just another reason for merriweather post pavillion people to pat themselves on the back.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, April 10, 2009 8:54 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm not saying across the board 100 percent it always will, but like i said i will trust my ears...though recently i've gotten a better CD player and have been buying up jazz reissues and stuff that sound FANTASTIC on CD...but overall there's a sense of space to vinyl...also it's less harsh sounding at high levels...

like i said, i think it's more that vinyl inhibits/fights a lot of the bad mastering practices that are so prevalent now.

have you ever A/B'd stuff? i mean i've done it at my place for skeptics (like my wife haha) and even they admit there's a certain quality that's gained from vinyl

i don't really think anyone should pat themselves on the back for animal collective though.

also the vinyl I have of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga totally sounds better than the mP3s that came with it, that's a good example

fwiw no one should pat themselves on the back for anything, pride is a sin and all that lolz

(also at least part of it is that you can get a pretty damn quality record player like a Rega P1 or Pro-Ject Debut III for around $400, i think those far out-do any CD player you could buy for the same amount in terms of relative quality)

Ah yes, the love affair with distortion lives on! Those uncomfortable with full range could also just get a graphic equalizer and adjust the high end.

lol my shit sounds tight homie, no distortion

also harsh mastering actually adds distortion when shit hits the ceiling

let's put our cards on the table here - who here has A/B'd material, participated in the recording/mixing/mastering process etc.

i'll put my cards on the table right now and say I don't know what I'm talking about, esp. regarding sound quality, etc. actually, regarding most things.

i'll put my cards on the table

http://www.3ofakind.com/images/full-house.jpg

Only the former for me. I can tell an appreciable difference if I am listening super close (esp. with headphones), but since I spend exactly 0 time listening to music like that in my day to day life (an amount of time which I think corresponds to basically all non-16 year old shut ins) I think it's basically complete bullshit to pretend that these difference is something anyone should really care about. I mean so what this piece vinyl sounds a little better, I'm not going to be able to set up my turntable on desk at work or carry it on the bus with me.

i am listening to an ipod right now.

but it's not that hard! i dunno. i just usually listen to my stereo about an hour after hubby goes to bed, reading a book. am i a weird shut-in? i dunno. i go out a fair amount. it's not like IMPOSSIBLY hard to read and listen to a record or CD IMO.

how do you people WATCH TV? it's CRAZY? i only watch clips of sportscenter on my phone, way too busy

If I am reading a book or making dinner I am not listening closely enough to a record to care about the minute sonic differences between CD or vinyl. So you are special and obv there are a few like you, but I think most people (justifiably) think that this "oh you don't know what you are missing" thing is a lot of bullshit, cuz the way most people listen to music most of the time they aren't actually missing it.