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

that improvements in EQing and *mystery audio sauce* mean that pressings now may sound fuller/more exciting than was possible in the 1960s

I'm guessing that this is correct.

even if they would be less representative of what was originally intended (though arguably more representative of what the intentions of 1960s people would be had they known these things would one day be possible)?

On the other hand, I'd think that it would be easy to overstate the potential problem regarding original intention. Vinyl masterings are, I think, always different sounding, involving different gear and different engineers. It's never going to sound exactly like the tape and a mastering done now could well sound more like the tape than one done fifty years ago. I'm sure it just varies a lot depending on the particular instance.

I mentioned on ILV that I got an '80s U.K. mono pressing of A Hard Day's Night less than a week ago. It is sourced from digital but I think the sound on it is really impressive.

people still buying the old mfsl boxes for 800+. and there is a reason for that. they're great. you can still find individual mfsl pressings for 4o-50. not cheap, but kinda worth it. even a mono parlophone revolver or whatever can be found online for 40+. also worth it. japanese pressings in the 70's and 80's were great. i get nice capitol/apple beatles records all the time at the store. some of them are unbelievable.the earlier the pressing the better. i try to find the perfect white album. i have one now that is preeeeeeetty near perfect. sounds insane. a jaw-dropper.

i wasn't a fan of the cd remixes so i doubt i'd buy one of these.

there are also nice mono parlophone reissues of various vintages. they sound great too.

they have been repressed sooooo many times. the only ones i wouldn't recommend would be 80's-era american copies.

there are great 60's, 70's, and 80's beatles pressings. tons of them.

I think I have some of those! Do you think the new ones are useful? Honestly I don't get it. Apart from maybe just being able to pick up a new mono copy of Revolver for £20 instead of a worn-out, roughed-up copy that the shop put up on the wall for the same price. You think there's something new to hear in this? Genuine question. I'd trust your ears over my own.

You sort of answered the questions already.

i wasn't a fan of the cd remixes

For the record, there have been no remixes...

they'll probably sound nice and shiny. and be really loud.

i call them remixes cuz i don't like them. or how they were made.

They're just another mastering job.

i remember reading some article about the crazy alchemy involved in separating vocals from instruments for the beatles rock band game, something about making it sound even better than the official releases, but i could be conflating that with the rock band metallica tracks sounding better...

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, September 27, 2012 7:08 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

From about 1966 on, the Beatles would fill up four tracks, bounce these down to one track of another four track, fill up the remaining three tracks, and so on. Naturally, they couldn't bounce down too many times, as the sound quality would degrade. But what I think they did for Rock Band (and for the 1999 Yellow Submarine Songtrack, and for Love) was go back to the original pre-bounced multitracks, sync them all up, and were therefore able to separate the individual elements.

For the record, there have been no remixes...

George Martin did stereo remixes of Help! and Rubber Soul in 1986/87 for the first wave of CDs.

That's true. And there's the Yellow Submarine Songtrack CD also.

Which is quite a listen, in my opinion!

what i love about a first pressing of say sgt. pepper or whatever - mono or stereo though mono will always sound fucked up to me cuz of decades of listening to the stereo - is how home-made they sound! they don't sound anything like what you hear on the radio or on a cd. you can hear the parts fitting together in some crazy magical way and they AREN'T perfect. they aren't shiny. they're weird. in a great way. i could play a beatles-hater a copy of sgt. pepper that would make their head spin! the bass on early pressings is so heavy. everything sounds so...fucking...cool. in an indescribable way. and i turn them up loud on my stereo myself. don't need anyone to do that for me.

McCartney supposedly insisted that his bass have its own track for most of the '66-'69 Beatles stuff. So one track might have four vocals, another would have an orchestra, the third might have guitars and drums, and the fourth would just have bass.

I haven't read through all of this, but one advantage these new vinyls will have is better bass. EMI mastering engineers frequently lowered the bass levels from the master tapes when preparing production masters to cut to vinyl. The newer remasterings are translations of what was on the original tapes.

CNN: So a remaster is as if the Beatles existed today and are downstairs.
Rouse: Yeah.
CNN: And recorded with today’s technology.
Rouse: Yes. That’s what you are trying to achieve, yes.

CNN: Would you agree the [early] CD era actually took away the richness of the music,
and now we have moved beyond that and are going back to the original, or is that just a
lot of …
Rouse: No, I still think that probably the CDs aren’t up to the sound vinyl gives us, but
it is the CD that we have got. So we have to make do with that as it stands at the
moment. And I would like to think that what the guys have attempted to do is to make
it sound more acceptable in that format.

CNN: The press release says you took out bad edits. I didn’t know there would have
been bad edits in the original Beatles. What does that mean, and what is it you could
take out?
Rouse: There wasn’t many, to be honest. I mean, it was just an issue that we could
deal with now. There were a few songs where they had created it over two takes and
they wanted to use a part of one take and a part of another, and sometimes the edit
wasn’t as good as it could be. In some cases, we couldn’t do anything about it. But if we
could, we would try and smooth it over so it wasn’t so obvious.
We have treated the stereos and monos just slightly differently in the sense that we
think the stereos are going to the product that is going to sell the most, because most
people are into stereo -- but obviously the collectors and people who grew up in the
’60s are going to be more familiar with the monos.
So from that point of view, one of the things that is a contentious audio problem today
is limiting, “brick-wall limiting,” which is making the music as loud as you possibly can.
And you make it louder than somebody else’s so yours sticks out a little bit more. For
something like the Beatles, a band from the ’60s, it would have been inappropriate to
have given it that treatment, but we have made them slightly louder. So that they are
at least slightly contemporary for today but certainly not as loud as the more
contemporary bands. But the monos we haven’t, for example. The monos remain
unlimited.

I have the mono cd box and I love it

I know the vinyl is better etc but I'm happy to have something good sounding so I'm happy :)

i think the mono box would be the way to go.

I'm eternally grateful for them too, because it's given me such a level of detail and...warmth?...that I never had before. Like now it sort of sounds like 4 guys in a room playing together, like sometimes you can hear fingers on strings and it just makes the music so much more alive for me, personally

lol that sounded corny

I agree. The 2009 remasters I've heard are really warm sounding and super clear.

VG OTM. I have the mono (CD) box and love it. Warm and punchy.

I haven't read through all of this, but one advantage these new vinyls will have is better bass. EMI mastering engineers frequently lowered the bass levels from the master tapes when preparing production masters to cut to vinyl. The newer remasterings are translations of what was on the original tapes.

― 50 Shades of Greil (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, September 27, 2012 7:40 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In his book (Here, There, and Everywhere) Geoff Emerick talks about how he had to go to some lengths to ensure that Pepper was a flat transfer during the mastering process.

EMI was notoriously bass-shy, even compared to other British labels. Lennon in particular was always pissed that Beatles records had so much less low-end than Stones or Who records.

That seconddisc link claims they're not boosting the loudness for the lps: It was also decided to use the remasters that had not undergone ‘limiting,’ a procedure to increase the sound level.

capitol pressings had big bass. serious bass! everybody has to come over to my house. for real. beatles sound so sweet on my ancient pioneer speakers.

sang freud, do you own any of the old mfsl pressings?

i got these 70's japanese pink floyd pressings a couple of weeks ago. ay yi yi...so amazing. obscured by clouds sounds so nasty! heavy stuff. makes me believe in god when i hear stuff like that. for real.

Early Capitol releases -- like the epochal The Beatles Second Album -- were more frantic and alive than the UK versions, mainly because of the ludicrous amounts of reverb added by Capitol. But more bass, too.

things got better around rubber soul. capitol stuff sounded better. or emi or the beatles gave them more shit for it. i dunno. course rubber soul is a whole different animal on capitol...

maybe revolver was the turning point. nice mono capitol revolver always sound great. brit pressings just better all around in the end. but capitol DID know how to make a record.

beatles recordings were pretty simple. kinda hard to fuck them up.

The mono Beatles Second Album is really thin sounding. I like the other early mono Capitol pressings (Early Beatles and Beatles '65) I have better than that one. Used to have Beatles VI mono but it was funky sounding.

sang freud, do you own any of the old mfsl pressings?

nah, i've been a beatles cheapskate through the years. i still have my nearly destroyed yet somehow still playable capitol originals from when i was a kid. plus various things i've picked up here & there but nothing fancy. i might give these reissues a go; sounds like they're putting their heart into it.

they're about as good as you could ask of such an undertaking

Oh man, messing with "bad edits" is not good, imo.

There's a rip of a German DMM white vinyl "White Album" that's been floating around for a while and it really sounds incredible.

they're nice. the white vinyl white albums. i think early apple pressings are better though. half speed master mfsl white album is pretty phat too though.

if i bought beatles remastered anything i think i would buy japanese versions. if i were rich. just cuz they are so much better at making cds. manufacturing cds. other than germany maybe they're the only country that cares anymore about sound. in a big way. not in little ways. would definitely buy their version of the remastered vinyl too.

I'm not buying these, not buying these, not buying these.... five, six times of purchasing this catalog is enough for me, even for my favorite band. I have a decent toshiba-emi japanese blue box. not the best pressings on vinyl but they're good enough, and I loved the mono and stereo remasters. so i'm out this time.

http://www.spincds.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/bealesloveme7.jpg

To celebrate this important date in the history of British rock, EMI are releasing this "replica" of the original single in the original colourful house Parlophone sleeve. The audio is taken from the mono remaster of 2009 to ensure highest quality playback.

It's fifty, that the important date in history.

vinyls are out today in the U.S....anyone get one? really curious as to how they sound

samples here sound pretty awesome:

www.beatles.com/vinyl/

Haven't heard it myself, but what I've read so far doesn't bode well ("under a thick blanket"..."gloomy nightmare"..."missed opportunity").

We sold like $300 worth of these today. I still don't get why you wouldn't just buy the originals.

tarfumes, do you have any links to impressions?

Yep, the Steve Hoffman forums: part 7, and towards the end of part 6. More favorable impressions are being posted, but the big hangup is that these were not mastered at 24 bit/96kHz. Which is apparently a thing.

some initial Hoffman postings did claim the same about the CDs; that they were 'a botch' etc. i wonder if these are considered better/worse.

Here's a bunch of Beatles nerds comparing various pressings on a http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-12/entertainment/ct-ent-1113-beatles-vinyl-20121112_1_beatles-nostalgia-beatles-catalog-beatles-lps65,000 system. Verdict seems to be that, overall, the new pressings are just fine.

Wow, fucked that up. Anyway, there's the link.