Do You Agree With George Martin On Re-Mixing Analogue Recordings for Digital Audio?

I totally agree....The Beatles catalog does need remixing for todays standards...

 

Remixing is fine, but the original mixes should always be available for historically important artists like the Beatles.

 

smoke brings up a great point.
I like remixes myself, but not when the originals go OOP.

 

Or squeaks on guitar strings? You can hear that on Blackbird vinyl though...

 

Agree 100%. They fudged it though in '86-'87 for Help and RS.

 

Interesting about the "narrowing" of wide panning by vinyl cutting, never knew that.

 

Not so much that as long as they aren't real clangers.
But I have heard lap noise , noise when someone is moving an acoustic guitar around.
When squeeks get really bad is when there is a large hall or cathedral verb as the ambiance on the mix.
But I have only heard one album where finger squeeks were unreasonably loud and could have been fixed, and that is on a release of a friend of mine who I can't imagine let them get out.

 

Remixes that are not an attempt to recreate the original mix, yeah.

But attempts to recreate an original mix, especially rock era stuff remixed on digital gear, run the risk of sounding different because of the effects used.
As an example, on Green River John Fogertys voice has what sounds like a heavy spring reverb on it that has a certain sound that just would not sound the same on a digital verb.

 

I do sympathize with Martin's position when the catalog was originally released on CD. I love Martin and highly value his contributions to The Beatles' legacy, but sometimes have to wonder if he too bought into the "they're a pop group, how much longer can they last?" attitude the band faced from the rest of the industry, at least for the first few years. It would be understandable to let rough edits, lazy stereo mixes, and noisy background mistakes make their way onto finished recordings if you figured the core audience, teenagers, didn't care one way or another. The songs were what those teens were buying, not the engineering skills.

Fast forward a couple decades, and your greatest career contribution to the most important "pop" band of all time is now being scrutinized on a new format. I think most of us would reach for some new tricks to cover those embarrassing decisions made back when cranking out hits was the only concern. I think he stands by those decisions now only because it would diminish his own legacy as a great producer. Or he just doesn't give a damn and prefers to worry about more important things in life, which is entirely possible.

 

The Beatles were a rock n roll band, and from the outset were far too viewed as trendsetters in the rock world for them to go away quick.
George Martin was also a very good judgement of talent and no doubt seen them as being a mix of extremely rare talent. So, I don't think he ever had that attitude.
What they did then was not lazy, it was a label and studio working with what it had.
Don't forget, the Beatles were in England in a studio that had no need to update until they arrived. It took them until the late 60s to start catching up with the technology.
It was a label that looked at rock music as being a necessary evil because it was something they didn't approve of but at the same time seen a dollar sign hanging over.

 

Even in 1963? I wasn't there, but I can imagine those early singles & albums as being catchy, interesting, fresh...but did anyone actually expect them to last? Martin has stated that they always astounded him by topping themselves with each successive single, which I take to mean he expected them to stop evolving, and they never did stop. So sure, let's put out She Loves You with a terrible-sounding edit in it. The kids won't care. The suits want a stereo mix of their albums? Who buys those? Let the two-tracks go out, that's not my real work. Here comes 1986, and Martin really listens to those things again, and suddenly involves himself in the reissue campaign.

 

I don't think the Beatles themselves expected it to last, but I think it quickly became obvious to them all that it was not going to be a temporary phenomenon. I think it was obvious they knew they were not going to be temporary.
And, that edit isn't terrible. It certainly didn't benefit from computer program cut and paste, but by the standards of the day, it was an edit that they no doubt got a pat on the back for. Their music was extremely well recorded considering the technology of the day.
The only rock n roll band that came close to them, in my opinion as far as recording quality, is Paul Revere and the Raiders.
You have also got to consider that those songs were mixed to sound good on juke boxes and a.m. radio. It was about singles at the time, for everyone but classical artists. AOR was yet to come, and an audiophile was a guy that listened to Beethoven on a tube HiFi that he mail ordered as a kit.

 

Beatles remixes? NO...unless they are only released on vinyl.

 

Well, he's certainly right about the record players in those days being foggy to a greater or lesser degree -- even audiophile kit in those days did not have the clarity we can achieve now. In principle he's right about a remix for a modern standard -- CD being the most ubiquitous standard today that could still be considered high fidelity. Or you could argue it should be remixed with 24/96 or 24/192 digital in mind. The problem is that I don't think there's anyone qualified to do it properly, in a way that won't change the essential character of what was really intended to carry across. So... I say leave it alone. But they'll probably do it anyway, eventually -- just for the dough. I won't be purchasing it however.

 

THEY WON'T BE...as we learn from the Stereo remixes of Help & Rubber Soul...the original Stereo mixes of Help & Rubber Soul are now relegated to the CD Mono Box...

 

Good God... todays standards. Which would mean post production compression that destroys the frequency range and makes the sound intolerable for anything more than a few seconds?
Every time recording technology takes a step forward now the music takes three steps back.

 

Consider this. GM meant the RS and H! remix to be the cd version only. But because cd nearly wiped vinyl out they became the canon mixes by "accident".

Then something happened and emi began using the new mixes on vinyl too. Unbeknown, and certainly out of his control, his original mixes for the vinyl medium became out of print.

He didn't foresee that cd overtook vinyl. And he only meant those mixes for cd.

 

Only it did NOT work. The decay time is much shorter in the refurbished chamber. And it made those anthology mixes (those that weren't made for the sessions album, bad as they were) sound wrong too. And in the mid 90s they could easily have gotten a lot closer to the original reverb sound on a digital unit.

 

That is a childish response...There are people out there that know how to use the current technology to bring out the proper sound qualities without doing all those horrible things you described.....I would hate to live in the area between your ears

 

Good idea except no one by the time you posted had even said anything of the sort.

 

Yeah.

 

If re-mixing means they will brickwall it (to sell it to todays mainstream music listeners), then I will pass.

 

I have six of my favourite Beatles albums plus Past Masters Vol.1 & 2 (24bit/44.1kHz USB versions) and I personally can't hear anything wrong with the original mixes of those albums. I'm excluding A Hard Day's Night and Rubber Soul for obvious reasons. I thought they all sounded very fresh when the remasters came out. I don't know what could be done to improve on them myself. I imagine the multi-tracks are safely stored and backed up.

Having said that, someone once sent me the original stereo mixes of A Hard Day's Night and Rubber Soul that were taken from the mono box set, and I must say that I preferred the more popular and widely available 1987 remixes. I'm wondering why only these two albums were chosen by George Martin to be remixed for the initial CD release and whether the original mixes of these two albums in particular were noticeably poorer than the rest of the catalogue. There must be a reason as to why he only decided to remix those two albums.

 

Isn't that associated more with the mastering rather than the mixing?

 

The original mix though, heard on a system "Of the day" ((mid 60's)) will sound radically different than hearing it on a system of the last 20 years, or even today though.

Many things were optimized to how a typical system sounded back then.

So owning an "Original mix", still is not "Hearing" the original sound.

Having owned my share of vintage stuff, I can say for certain, even really good speakers and stuff from the 60's, had a far different tonality, and sound character. compared to stuff from the last 25 or so years or more.
So listening to a record made in 1965 on todays equipment, is in itself introducing changes, to the sound, not even accounting for things they did back then with records, to limit skipping, distortion and so on.