Why is earlier Beatles material in Stereo separated terribly?

There a even a few songs on Revolver, Sgt Pepper and White Album that have lead vocals hard right.

 

Yeah, you're right. The quote of mine you used was before I was "edumacated" to the fact that George Martin purposely created the mixes that way. I think it was someone in this forum who pointed out to me the 1987 GM interview with Allan Kozin where the story was cleared up-

GEORGE MARTIN: Putting a voice on the right hand side doesn't make a record more quick to produce. In fact, there is a reason for it which becomes apparent after a while. And also, 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.

 

Yep, even the opening title track has Paul's vocals hard right. On the Yellow Submarine Songbook, they fix this problem (and it IS a problem as far as I am concerned). They also fix Elenor Rigby which is just one of the songs that has the lead vocal hard right on Revolver. I am not so nostalgic that I need to hear the original horrendous stereo mixes of ALL Beatles songs, when they can be improved on like this. I never was into mono, when true stereo is available. However Duo-Phonic (RCA calls it Electronically Reprocessed Stereo) is an abomination, and should never have been invented.

 

The Green Label reissue of Yesterday And Today LP got rid of the of Duo-Phonic mixes of the Revolver material found on the original stereo pressings and remixed them in proper stereo.

 

One thing I do not understand is why GM did a stereo remix in Help, as it has all its lead vocals in the center already. He just muddied up the mix with more reverb. As for Rubber Soul he also added reverb and panned it from right to left to give the illusion that the vocals were moved from hard right to "soft" right, near center, and it also made bad things worse.

 

They recorded it on only one machine. If thay had recorded it live with vocals in the center the wocals would be twice as loud when folded to mono. It also would mean that if George Martin wished to lower the vocals, or make them louder he would not be able to do so. Or treat the vocals alone with additional reverb.

So:
1, they could not make a good mono version if they had the vocals center.
2, they would have no flexibility in mixing instead of a little
3, additional effects to either the instrumental track or the vocal track would be impossible

All VERY good reasons seen from a 62/63 perspective.

 

Well it is true, once you have dedicated the recording to have vocals hard right and instruments hard left, (a binaural recording) you cannot remix it to properly have vocals in the center, unless you want instruments hard left and vocals center, and nothing hard right.

 

Well, hard left instruments, hard right vocals isn't binaural.......... it's just a mono left and a mono right with no co-mingled elements.

In 1965 , grabbing the older tapes, loading onto a couple of newer higher-track tape machines and a console (or a daw if you're located in the 21st century planet)...... you could certainly hard pan the instruments left, copy and then offset (ddl by 1973 onward) that track by some degree of milliseconds and hard pan that right, and then center the vocals. That would give a wide instrument bed that spreads completely left to right and a nicely focused centered, narrower vocal field. But alas, that doesn't always sound good either.

 

This increased loudness in mono happens with a straight stereo to mono fold down. And 3 db is NOT twice as loud as the myth goes. It takes twice as much wattage to increase the volume by 3db, but a 3db spl increase is not twice as loud. Bill Porter did everything in preproduction. And Elvis recorded live in the studio during this period. Now, RCA often dicked up the recordings when they mastered them to wax, often adding even more reverb and compression. If you are able to listen to the original session tapes (or CD mastered directly from the session tapes) they often have much more transparency and dynamics when compared to the final master tapes. The 50s binaural tapes blow away the mono master tapes in this regard. And when I switch my preamp to mono for these binaural releases they sound much better than the mono masters.

 

Yes, you are correct, dual mono, so to speak.

 

It was only invented so the record companies could charge $1 more per LP over mono, as was the case with true stereo records. Just a cash in.

 

Well as bad as some of the Beatles stereo mixes are, I still prefer them over the mono. I had the mono box, and some of the artifacts were interesting, as I grew up with the stereo mixes. My UK LPs were all stereo. But I sold my mono box and have the 2009 individual UK Stereo CDs now and the recent US CDs of A Hard Day's Night, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Yesterday And Today and The Beatles Again. I did commit to CD-r the original stereo mixes of Help and Rubber Soul from the mono box set. And I have all the two Capital box CDs committed to CD-r as well. My favorite CD for listening pleasure is Yellow Submarine Songbook though, even with its faults which are tolerated due to the superior mixes for my tastes. I also have the original CD issues of the Red and the Blue albums.

 

Yeah ERS was invented to justify that extra buck to a $4.98 list price. But I am still trying to figure out how a 5.1 mix resembles anything in nature. I have yet to go to a musical performance where the orchestra, combo or band surrounds the listener. All the concerts I have attended the performance is in front of me, with the sound panning left, center, right, close or far, but never behind me or arcing to either side of me. Whereas stereo replicates a real life experience (or at least has the ability to, when done properly).

 

This is the type of primativd stereo separation they were dealing with

Actually this compact stereo has speakers wider than most

So make the separate recorded mixed channels discrete and as far apart as possible

 

ha! One place where I worked loved to play an oldies station ad nauseam. And as most oldies stations do, they played at least 4 Beatles songs per hour, and often from the same short list of 12 or 15 songs. (I got tired of The Beatles very quickly). And since they concentrated on the early stuff, depending on where I was sitting that day, I could only hear either the vocals or the instrumental portion of the recording, as our two speakers were each placed on the extreme ends of a rather long room.

 

It's not.

 

then for some reason they went back to duophonic, supposedly some later issues the stereo mixes re-appear again but they are a hard find and are random....I have no idea why this release is so inconsistent. I am also not certain that even all the lime green Capitols have the true stereo mixes either.

 

and it was well worth it back in the 60's when stereo was new, cool and exciting for me anyway!

 

I don't have first-hand experience with this, but a musician friend of mine (classical piano) told me there are ancient churches and cathedrals in Europe that appear to have employed some kind of acoustic design that enables music played at the front to be heard all over the interior of the room in a 'surround' sort of arrangement.

Don't ask me how that's accomplished or what. I'm not expert and not even conversant on the topic.

 

Actually speakers on units like this were detachable and could be separated about 10 feet from left to right. The speaker wire would unravel from a hole in the speaker cabinet. These portable units were designed so the user could set the stereo sound field as they wanted.

 

Yeah, I understand that not all pressing of the green label Y&T LP had the true stereo tracks too. I guess I was lucky. (but not lucky enough to have gotten a paste over copy black label issue)

 

any idea what year this little portable was made? looks like the one my girl "Beatle" friend had back in 64...

 

Also, though I like harmony vocals, I HATE vocal doubling, which The Beatles did a lot, and was used quite a lot in pop music in general. One good example is And I Love Her. All stereo and the UK mono mix used vocal doubling, US mono does not, and it sounds so much cleaner and clearer without it. It seems that pop music has always been mixed for the lowest common denominator throughout history, first AM radio for car radios and now for MP3, iPhone and ear buds. I say if you make something sound its best through the best equipment, it is going to follow it will sound just fine on crappy equipment, but the reverse is seldom true. Great equipment with make bad music sound worse.

But for the vast majority of Beatles recordings, I prefer the UK versions. For some reason the USA was so obsessed with compression and reverb. In fact, the only real fault I have with even Bill Porter's Elvis recordings, especially the fantastic Elvis Is Back album is he laid on the reverb to the extreme.

 

Now here is some separation every Beatle fan can enjoy: