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

I now haven't a fucking clue.

I think the version of Pepper that I've got IS real. Certainly wavelengths are different. But with Sound Check on, the difference on the stereo versions isn't much. I've not got the mono, which people have said is leaps and bounds away.

Never listen to anything at work, turn SoundCheck off, and don't A-B microsections of tracks. Listen to a whole album all the way through.

These are fucking ACE.

Am I an idiot for not knowing what A-B microsections of tracks means?

I thought you worked in a library xp? No wonder you can't hear them properly.

rumour has it that the 87 and the 2009 versions of the stereo CDs...are hardly different at all in many of the album's cases.

Wait has this leaked?

I've got hold of 3 - Abbey, Revolver, and Pepper.

It's very weird; I had a listen to Pepper at work on a cheapish pair of AKG (£35) and was really struck straight away. Came home and A-B (flitting directly from one to another) small sections of tracks on my big AKG K601s (£150, and running through all manor of DACs and headphone amps) and the difference was negligible. Then I realised Sound Check was on; turned it off, and the difference jumped back out at me, especially when Im played through a whole album rather than just 10-30 second snippets. So now I'm really intrigued as to wtf Sound Check in iTunes does, and I'm even more eager to get the actual CDs, so I can open them on on speakers, cos I have a sneaking suspicion that the K601s are gonna ring a level of detail and timbre out of the 87 releases that wouldn't be apparent on speakers, but that the new remasters are gonna fucking slay on speakers.

Here's some waveforms;

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Screenshot2009-09-03at192942.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Screenshot2009-09-03at192942.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Screenshot2009-09-03at192606.png

John's vocals and the brass at the end of Got To get You Into My Life, fucking awesome.

The best way to appreciate these is going to be when you realise all of a sudden that tracks you've ignored for years are now amazing - I had that with Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite on the Love release.

Still loads of headroom.

paul's vocals surely?!

Think he's talking about two different tracks there.

Some ILM'ers have the real Geir as a contact on Facebook, and may have discovered he is this strange guy who writes a lot of incomprehensible status messages in Norwegian ;)

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Wednesday, September 2, 2009 10:50 AM (Yesterday)

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/profile5/908/55/n566800737_1257.jpg

Geir only shares certain information with everyone.

omg

Nick: all SoundCheck does, AFAIK, is a sort of normalisation - clearly the 2009 remasters are much hotter than the 1987 versions, so SC will be bringing the '87 versions up to match. Hard to tell how much of the huge differences you're hearing with SC turned off are simply down to the '09 versions being several dB louder (though, it would seem, not overcompressed).

Normalise both versions in Audacity and then listen. (I assume these are mp3s? No point running frequency analyses then...)

Nope, it is Paul, I was wrong - just confused by him not sounding like a pussy, I guess.

Double x-post; aye, I was doing some Googling - Sound Check was definitely bringing the 2009 ones down (rather than the 87 ones up, I think). I've done some Googling and can't find anything that seems to say it does anything else, but as far as layers of detail etcetera goes, things were very, very close - I was going off AACs (of the 87s) and MP3s (of the 09s) initially, but the bitrates were high on each, and I wouldn't have thought that alone would make that much difference. I also ripped the 87s as MP3s too, just to be sure (it's those I took the Audacity waveforms from), and again, negligible difference.

Take a close look at the Taxman waveforms; the contours on the lower channel of each one look as if the newer ones are upside down? What does that mean? Can that even be?

It's phase reversal - fine if it's happened to both channels (and the left channel on Taxman is fairly loud throughout on the remaster, so it's hard to tell) but will sound different if the right channel has been reversed viz the '87 version and the left hasn't.

That left-channel drum-hit (or whatever it is) about 6sec into Taxman is fairly well squashed in the '09 version, isn't it? Nothing major by the looks of things but some transients have obviously been sacrificed for the greater "good".

Shouldn't you guys just wait and analyze the uncompressed stuff in like 6 days? It seem like there's no way you can get usable data from this process...

Hey, I'm just responding to questions here! I'm not even interested in these records! Well, a bit perhaps.

Haha it's not like it bothers me. Just seems like anything you learn now will be changed soon.

I'm excited to hear this stuff too, assuming it sounds markedly better. And I believe it will.

this forum is now on it's EIGHTEENTH set of 1,000-post threads on the subject of the remasters since they were announced.
Just to clarify that is 18,000 seperate posts. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND mind you.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=2

SNAP found 'em. are they labeled "24 bit remaster"?

umm.....nevermind that's something totally different

The Revolver someone culled from Waffles and uploaded, er, somewhere didn't sound that much different from the '87, and I listened to it via decent headphones. I've heard other say these might be fake ala the Loveless "remasters" that made the rounds.

What a fucking awesome rhythm section this band had.

If the Revolver I've got is fake then someone's gone to a lot of trouble with that phase-shifting thing.

Within You Without You! Someone counts down in your right ear at about 3.45! The sitars! The strings!

The coda of Rita!

you are a very sick man. don't change.

OB LA DI OH BLA DA

The "chikka chikka chikka chikka" backing vocals in the channels as the trumpet run goes!

Macca IS the best rock bassist ever.

Fucking Wild Honey Pie for fuck's sake.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT'S FUCKING NEXT

You think of Taxman as George's song, don't you? It's NOT. It's Paul's.

They're all Paul's.

Even though he's a wanker.

WTF IS HE DOING WHILE GEORGE IS TAXING THE STREET?

he's taxing the BEAT.

He doesn't need it, but I'm always happy to hear praise for McCartney's bass.

Never mind, Sgt. Pepper's is right on and I am ready to join Nick in praising this from the roof and the hilltops.

they know what it's like to be dead

Within You Without You! Someone counts down in your right ear at about 3.45! The sitars! The strings!

― Sickamous (Scik Mouthy), Friday, September 4, 2009 3:08 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

You could hear that count-down in the old one too. Also I always loved the bit in "I'm Only Sleeping" where you can hear John off-mic saying "Yawn, Paul!"

WTF IS HE DOING WHILE GEORGE IS TAXING THE STREET?

Isn't that amazing? I first noticed that a few years ago (naively thinking I was intimately familiar with the song) and promptly re-played that section about 50 or so times. I still can't make out exactly what Paul's doing (some combination of hammer-ons and glissandi?), but it's fucking astonishing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8238380.stm

Previously unheard Abbey Road session tape chat here!

I was in HMV this morning, and they've got all the end-of-aisle displays ready, with books and merchandise and whatnot, but they've got cds there too and the price of them made me look twice - with all the fanfare about the new editions they've cynically bumped the price of the '87 discs to £16. Designed, it would seem, to make the punters who are less informed about release dates than music geeks like us, think that they're buying the new remasters.

(In fact a lot of the prices in HMV this morning were head-spinningly insane - £120 for the 3 cd Tell Tale Signs set that was about £80 last Christmas.)

.. and was around £35 in Fopp...

I saw a "original" "The Bends" for £12, yeah the pricing in HMV has gone potty.

Still, when they sell none, they will wonder why.

I think I just got the Revolver one, sounds pretty amazing. Some deep bass in this!

anyone found any mono l£aks yet? on s0ul$££k?

XXXP: Prices of Beatles CDs have been dumped here for months. I think it has more to do with EMI wanting to get rid of all the old edition copies as soon as possible though - Warner are doing the exact thing with Neil Young now.