| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/13/2009 6:53:58 AM | Just thought I'd mention...To keep your new Beatles CDs free of scratches, I suggest using CD envelopes. I had a bunch of Memorex envelopes, so I cut them slightly to fit inside the digipack sleeves. I really dislike how EMI just crammed these into the digipacks with no protection; and you really have to be careful removing the CDs.
But this is my only complaint about these.
The packaging is otherwise beautifully done. The booklets are okay...not really as informative as the booklets in the Who's remastered CDs, but then again Mark Lewisohn's books fill in that gap nicely.
I'm curious about how many of these CDs will feature the Quicktime documentaries. Supposedly this will be a limited run.
According to the New York Times, The Beatles' remasters sold over 200,000 units in just the first two days. Not bad for a band that broke up in 1970! | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/13/2009 7:44:14 AM | Oh, my bad so is it just Abbey Road and Let it Be not released in the mono set?
A few other minor quibbles: The sound, of course, is awesome, but I wish there was more in the form of liner notes or historical information. It's nice they included a bunch of pics and such, but I want some detailed info on these sessions, nor just blurbs. Elvis Costello got it for christ sake, why not The Beatles? Also, those documentaries are lame. Oh well though, the music speaks for itself | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/13/2009 8:36:54 AM | True, the liner notes are a bit lacking in info, but if you can track down Mark Lewisohn's book "The Beatles Recording Sessions" it makes a great companion for the remasters.
The mini-documentaries, I agree, are pretty lame. There's no real "new" information there, much of it taken from the "Anthology" dvd...But, hey...overall these are great remasters of one of the greatest music collections of all time. I'm pretty happy this week. | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/17/2009 7:37:14 AM | As I delve more into this mono box set I am more and more astounded by how great it is.
The re-mastering is simply astounding, it's like re-discovering them all over again.
I can't recommend it highly enough. | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/22/2009 9:13:51 AM | I managed to scoop up all the individual remasters a few at a time. I found that "Past Masters" was a bit of a challenge to find. It was sold out in 2 Targets, 3 Wal-marts, 2 Borders and 2 Barnes & Noble stores. I tried FYE and they had only 1 left. They guy at FYE suggested that it may have sold out fast everywhere because of the greatest hits compilation nature of the album.
My only complaint, after having heard them all at least twice (in headphones) is a bit of distortion and a quick but noticable drop out in sound on the song "Chains". Overall these remastered Beatles CDs have been the musical highlight of my year. Now I'm thinking about that mono box!!! | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/23/2009 8:40:33 PM | I've concluded that I won't be buying the entire boxed set of the new remastered Beatles. From the reviews I've read, it's definitely a mixed bag. For those that might not remember the way The Beatles sounded on vinyl, the reviews are favorable. They rave about how crisp and clean they sound and how you're able to distinguish background noises more clearly. I think I would like to hear these new releases to check out the commotion going on the background too but ultimately, I suspect I'd be disappointed in the long run. Oh hell, I'm stepping into territory I don't know the proper lingo to so I'll let a review from Amazon.com speak for me.
The big advantage of digital technology is not clarity, but dynamic range. Analog can be (and typically is) perfectly clear and defined, but has limits, especially in the case of vinyl as compared to tape, with big shifts from soft to loud. The CD, when it came out, was touted as being able to accurately reproduce the dynamic flow that is present in all great music. Instead, it quickly became a "convenient" and "portable" medium, and was not used (much) to improve dynamic range. Revolver, and I'll wager, all the rest of the Beatles remasters, is highly compressed. Tomorrow Never Knows, Good Day Sunshine, And Your Bird Can Sing & Eleanor Rigby- should breathe with the dynamics of live performance. Instead, they are crystal-clear but canned.
That sounds like my original complaint. I was hoping they could recapture that wide, dynamic, all encompasing, not compressed wave of sound their records used to have but it sounds like they haven't gotten there yet. Maybe I'll do as some other members here have suggested and just buy "The White Album" to see how that sounds before I invest in the rest. | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/24/2009 8:43:24 PM | I've heard all the stereo albums... and, except for a few exceptions...don't find the sound qualitythat much improved...to be worth buying to replace the original 80's cd releases I already own. For Sale sounds quite a bit different, perhaps because it is in stereo whereas I had only heard the mono release from before... there are some songs on the Past Masters that sound different in stereo, too... Thank You Girl comes to mind. I'm still thinking its a cash grab...given the original Beatle albums were generally 33 to 37 minutes long for the most part...they could have put both versions on one cd for the albums that had stereo and mono releases. Plus...the music starts going public domain in 3 years....
With all this hype in Beatles as of late, I've actually found myself listening to the Dr. Ebbetts 24 bit stereo versions released a few years back (ripped off of vinyl, to boot)...which , in my opinion, portray the Beatles in a much warmer sound. I need to hear some of the mono releases now... both the 2009 versions... as well as trying to find the Dr. Ebbetts versions. I hear in 2010 they are putting the 2009 remaster versions out on vinyl... which could be interesting in itself. | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/29/2009 12:47:20 AM | I got the Stereo Box set and have been playing The Beatles in my car for weeks now. I went to The Recording Workshop in Ohio and know a little bit about mixing music. I compared some of their 80's CD songs to the 2009 remastered ones and learned some things with headphones on.
On some songs there is much less noise. Sometimes reverb can be heard, and even over-all song "room reverb" on a track or two. The volume level was sometimes mixed higher than the original 80's CD while other times the volume was mixed lower. In some songs it looked and sounded as if the only changes they made to a mix was to either increase or reduce the volume levels, with maybe a little reverb added. I feel that some mixes of the late 60's were pretty darn good to start with so they felt they had to change something, so they made maybe just a slight volume adjustment, so that way they can still re-sale the song as being "remastered".
I liked comparing the song Kansas City, as it looked and sounded much better in the 2009 mix. It is the one song I believe people should compare from old mix to the new mix.
I read about the MONO set and how they contain some musical changes not heard in the stereo mixes often. However I was stunned at how fast the MONO box set sold out, I really never expected to see that happen.
Over all, I feel the 2009 mix was an improvement, but for the most perfect collections I would combine some of the older mixes with the newer mixes because I honestly thought a few songs had the most perfect mix to start with, while the early albums shown the biggest improvement to me.
-Just one guy's opinion. | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/29/2009 4:31:06 PM | I agree that to some extent it's a cash grab. But no one is forced to buy the CDs! Yes they should have put mono and stereo on one CD. But 'If I needed someone' now rings like a dozen church bells. It was worth it for that alone!
I have to admit that I'm curious about the Yellow Submarine re-master. No change at all as far as I can tell! | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 9/29/2009 6:42:12 PM | Oh yeah, it's all about making $$ at the same time the $250 VIDEO GAME of The Beatles comes out. Good ole marketing.
But I can honestly tell you that I have compared the waves of their music directly on my screen using the programs Gold Wave and Sound Forge and often one can "litterially" SEE the difference in the old vers 2009 versions as well as hear them in headphones. Many songs, for example, have John's vocals mixed in the left speaker, while in the 2009 versions they have him panned a little more to the right.
There are sites that show the old and new waveforms along with MP3 samples to compare directly. On many songs one car hear an improvement, especially on their earlier albums. However on a select few on their songs all I can detect is a change in volume, sometimes they seemed to only of turned down some songs. All in all the 2009 Box Set in Stereo or Mono are nice collector items for their fans. But the high retail price and production limits have resulted in many people scalping new box sets for as high as $400- over double the retail cost in most cases. The last I noticed Amazon.com was sold out of the stereo box set, and they did not even have a page listed for the sold out mono set.
I have their entire old collection on CDs and I have their new Box Set. I must say I enjoy playing the new remastered set in my car much more than the older one, mainly because many songs sound cleaner. The song Kansas City on Beatles For Sale is a great song to compare the old and new mix together- the new mix sounds way better because it has much less noise in it, but it seems each song was mixed differently depending on the needs that the original mixed posed. It's also a lot of fun comparing their old vrs new songs with musical editing programs such as GoldWave and SoundForge- One can see the music displayed this way. | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 10/2/2009 6:28:40 PM | | you should go on youtube and listen to them there. they all sound great. the songs sound like they were recorded in the past 2 years instead of 45+ years ago! i downloaded some youtube program where you copy and paste the youtube url for a video and it transforms the video into mp3, and then i put it on my mp3 player. or u can burn it to cd. but all the songs sound great in stereo to me. | |
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| Beatles Re-Mastered
Posted: 10/4/2009 10:56:42 AM | | I grabbed a sample of the re-mastered Beatles on YouTube. I think the mono is truer to the originals. There's some kind of weird, synthetic effects on the drums on the stereo versions. Plus, the vocals are buried and slushy. The guitars and pianos are definitely out there, but it sounds unbalanced to me. | |
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