Beatles Mono VINYL Box Set - 8th September 2014 Release Date (Part 7)

Its the adhesive that is leaking through to the oxide coating that is covering the tape machine replay heads resulting in a lack of high frequency after several minutes of playing, so each track has to be transferred separately and then the replay head would have to be cleaned after each transfer, the tape could also be baked to dry the adhesive but Abbey Road obviously decided not to do this, I find it surprising that Emitape which they used at the time has suffered from this problem because Emitape was far more reliable compared to Scotch and Ampex tape which was used by most other studios.

 

Right. Here's something else George Martin says about mixing Rubber Soul in stereo that way:

GEORGE MARTIN: [...] I was aware in those days that the majority of record players in the home were built into kind of sideboards, where the speakers were about three feet apart, and the stereo picture was a very near mono one anyway. So I exaggerated the stereo to get a clearer effect. These were experiments. It wasn't a question of rushing, I really was trying all sorts of things.

http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/kozinn.htm

 

I'm no expert on baking tapes etc, but I believe this (sticky shed) only became a problem in the 70s with a change in tape formulation.

I read the problem as the adhesive from the splices had contaminated other parts of the tape.

 

That seems to be the case. As Sean Magee points out in his Uncut interview, "the tape itself wasn't shedding but the glue that holds the edits together had seeped through various layers of the tape".

 

....and Fremer is now changing the ratings of the Stereo re-issues now that the Mono box is in his hands?

So he recommended the Stereo LPs before....but now he doesn't as much....nice. Oh well... It's only money....

 

Also only one man's opinion. I don't have a problem with retroactively changing ratings when a new product comes along to compare with.

 

It's age. Simple as that. NO tape in the world will last forever. Not even emitape. The chemistry of the glue is eating through the magnetic layer, And thus time has caught up with PPM mono master tape. The "it was fine 5 years ago" is like saying to your car repair man "but the brakes were fine last year".

Nothing in the world can change that the chemistry of the glue eats the magnetic layer. And PPM is the oldest of the bunch. So next in line is the other early albums. It's sad but we shall count ourself lucky that digital has progressed this far the last ten years, and that flat hi res transfers were made while the tapes were in good conditions. In x amount og time they will be all we have!!!

 

I thought the "logic" behind the vocals right/instruments left mixing instruction was because if you fold a stereo mix with information in the centre to mono, whatever is in the centre gets boosted by 6dB or somesuch figure. By eliminating the middle information, EMI engineers thought they;d found an elegant solution to getting a nice sounding mono mix from a stereo record. (Completely ignoring the fact that the resulting stereo mix was totally useless)

 

Isn't the point that for the 2009 M0no CDs they could transfer each song individually and clean the tape head every time afterwards? And you can't cut individual tracks to vinyl. Therefore they had to make a new "master" that can play all the way through.

 

There wasn't any thought for stereo George Martin liked to separate the backing track and vocals so he had the option to change the balance on the mono mix after the event, when demands for a stereo release were required they simply just used the original working tape.

 

I assume they can probably cut the leader tapes away from the magnetic tapes but maybe playing the tape has caused the sticky sludge to be smudged over more of the magnetic tape than just at the joins.

 

I really wish I could remember the source of where I read it originally, because the timeline is still blurry as to what was mixed that way by whom and why. I'd be open to be told that I'm wrong since I can;t cite my source, but no matter WHO signed off on the order it IS indeed an interestion transition time as they tried to figure out which way to go in the whole mono/stereo world.

 

It is possible to change the leader tape and clean off the 'sticky sludge' from the magnetic side
if this is the problem with PPM also musical splices can be remade using new splicing tape.

 

Surely Sean Magee and the other Abbey Road boffins would know this? That must mean there are others reasons/issues for not being able to do it the case of the PPM master.

 

Yeah I would have thought that would have been standard practice - get rid of the problem leader and use something that doesn't have any residual problems

 

No, I don't think you are right there (for Rubber Soul anyway - for PPM yes). There was an EMI edict about information in the centre of a stereo image. I don't doubt GM was a huge fan of isolating vocals for mix purposes, but that doesn't explain the "vocals centre" approach of Money, BFS or AHDN, nor his middle of the road work with Cilla, Matt Monro etc, all of which were vocals centre until the 1965 period.

If I might just quote our host on this for a moment:

 

The first 2 albums were mixed that way because there wasn't much choice, as they were made from twintrack. I would guess that the stereo mixes made after that, while being better than the instruments left/vocals right mixes, had mono compatability problems and so EMI went back to the old 'hole in the middle' style around the time of 'Rubber Soul'. I too have read about the 'EMI instruction' somewhere before, and that other EMI records were affected, though I haven't looked into it deeply.

Another possible factor (though I have no evidence) may have been Capitol's decision to fold down the recent 'Help!' stereo mixes for their soundtrack album. These sound bad because of the 3dB increase in the centred vocals when folded to mono. Possibly GM and EMI, not knowing if this might happen again, went back to the left/right mixing style for 'Rubber Soul' to make any potential folds totally mono compatible.

 

I was only talking about PPM I agree with your comments on the later albums PPM is the only album where the left and right are totally isolated and does sound like a mono working tape.

 

He overrated some and underrated others IMO (although this was based on the Rainbo pressings not the Optimal I have). I think it is legit to alter these now otherwise his Mono ratings would look at odds as they clearly should be superior for most if not all the albums (unless you only like the primitive stereo - which can be fun).

 

As others have explained, its not the tape, but the splices. Keep in mind there hasnt been a need to play back an entire reel of tape at a time in decades. Im not sure about the 80s CDs, but we know for a fact that the 2009 remasters were digitized one track at a time, between which the tape heads were cleaned. It could very well be that this issue was known to those at Abbey Road since then, if not earlier.

 

it's funny. as someone recently posted here...
Ironic that the demand for all analogue vinyl makes the use of some 1st generation masters impossible.

 

A I posted earlier, he means "analogue-y". Fremer's usage is plain daft.

 

I enjoyed Fremer's reviews and the accompanying videos. He seems like a no-BS sort of dude.

He sure looked stoked when he was examining that set for the first time! He was totally geeking out - just like most of us will be in a couple of weeks!

I am delighted that EMI chose to carefully replicate the look and feel of the original releases. Bummer that the Emitex repro inners are not included though.

 

Yeah, the reviews don't seem that eloquent but I guess that's not the point. He's clearly respected here by a lot of people with much more audiophile knowledge and high end equipment to me so I'm intrigued by his assessment of these reissues. However, to be honest, I'm finding them a little confusing, especially the ratings which seem to conflict with his opinion in the writing. As another poster suggests maybe I'll just ignore the ratings system.

 

EMI/Universal have clearly underestimated demand for the Mono Box. All pre-sales have been called off so only product already ordered by dealers will be available most of which has likely been pre-ordered by customers. Few spare sets will be available so unless they decide to press more that's it. Don't think the individual titles are limited (so far).

http://www.diversevinyl.com/news.php?id=81f6bcfddee194fa65ec0d18f8cf2989