The Beatles ONE + TWO 24k 2 disc CD set

Hi all,
I have asked a few of our people on the board using personal messages but I haven't really found much out about this Import that I bought on Ebay, it is The Beatles ONE CD only it's 24k gold and there is a 2nd disc that comes with it that has some of the some songs as the 1st disc but I would imagine they are either different mixes. It seemed really interesting so I bid on it until I finally won the auction (my first as well).
So I was hoping that some of our users here could give me the skinny on this ONE before I received it in the mail.
Thanks to all replies and feedback on this. It is much appreciated.

 

The bonus disc - with George solo tracks! - would indicate it being a Chinese or Hong Kong pirate.....

 

Bump.

I can't find this in a search. Does anyone know?

 

Here's a recent one sold.....

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2513882382&category=1057

 

Thanks JohnnyH.

Terry,

If disc one is a straight copy of "1" it's not going to get high marks for sonics. "1" has been (justifiably) much abused here. Maybe a better source was used?

When the set arrives, we'd love to hear your review.

Welcome to the Forum!

John

 

Don't fall for these. These are Chinese counterfeits. I've been to China a few times and stuff like this is (almost literally) a dime a dozen. The audio quality is almost always quite bad but sometimes they're decent, but they're never going to be better than the originals that they were bootlegged from.

I buy these as curios since they are very cheap and fun to have. I have the two disc Beatles "1" set, or should I say, a variation of it. There are so many counterfeits that you will see wide variations of a single title from store to store (or from street vendor to street vendor).

My Chinese copy of "1" is an HDCD, if you believe the packaging (it is NOT HDCD, if you're curious). The counterfeiters just throw on whatever logo is in vogue at the time, even if they are contradictory technologies. I've seen some discs that are supposedly 24-bit, 24k gold, HDCD, SACD, XRCD and MP3 all in one!

As with the "1" two-disk set, a favorite tactic of the counterfeiters is to assemble two titles together to give it that "limited edition" feel. The thing I find amusing about these discs is the often terrible typos and/or translations they come up with. A while back I posted a pic from one of these: Beatles - "Sgt. Peeper's Lonley Hearts Club Band" (their typo, not mine).

At best, these Chinese counterfeits are copies of the originals. At worst, they are very poor reproductions, obviously assembled from highly compressed MP3 files.

Anyway, I have another trip to China here very soon (two weeks) and will be picking up another armload of "curios" to bring home. If you're curious to check these out without playing the eBay fool, drop me a PM.

 

Thanks vex for your thorough explanation. Please let us now about some of the curios you pick up.

John

 

An even bigger business is the selling of counterfeit movies in VCD and DVD formats. Probably the funniest typo I saw was the western "A Man Called Horse" that was titled "A Man Called Hoser".

 

Okay, I dug up my Chinese counterfeit copy of "1". Here is the front cover. The Chinese characters roughly translate to "Long-haired People".

 

This image is from the booklet of the Chinese counterfeit "1" CD I have. File this under "What were they thinking?"

 

Another page from the Chinese "1" booklet. I really don't know what to say about this one.

 

Finally, I thought I'd go ahead and post the cover for my "Sgt. Peeper's" CD.

 

Wow Very interesting to say the least, however I must say that the set was only 20.50 plus the 3.50 shipping and I actually was in a bit of a bid war as the price I started at 16.50, however Vex the cover to the one I was shown is not like yours and I kinda like yours with the Beatles at the bottom front but what is "Michelle" doing up in the right hand corner??? LOL that's rather different. Well I can't wait till this arrives at my door but lucky I do own the original just in case any of you needed to know that, after all it was my first win on an auction on Ebay. Ahhh but I got another one that I'm hoping to win soon. I will give you the details later on if I get it and you can all let me know how I did. Thanks again for all the cool pics! Sgt. Peeper's is GREAT!! HA HA!!!!!!

 

Heh heh, glad you enjoyed the pics. As for the differences between your Chinese "1" and the one I have, well, like I was saying, there are a ton of different variations because of all the different people counterfeiting them. The "Michelle" on the cover of my version refers to the "bonus" disc that, for whatever reason, they chose to call "Michelle" (makes more sense than calling it "Bob", I guess!)

 

Hi guys,
I got my Beatles ONE + TWO 24 bit 24k set today. Well vex could not have put it better words curios to say the least, (Please check the pictures he got in his booklet.
The outside cover is just like the released ONE CD but this one is from Universal (like the movie studio's record label). when opening the celophane to get to the CD jewel case it's front cover to the booklet that came with mine is a picture from The Beatles 1967-1970 CD cover and then when opening it there is then a track listing of the songs from Beatles One but the disc itself has on it titled Love Me Do. Disc 2 is titled Don't Let Me Down. Now this is the one I listened to and in fact it did let me down. Not so much the sound of the cuts but the editing mostly sucked as either the endings of songs that are supposed to fade out are just abruptly cut, Sgt Peppers is the 2nd track and instead of a fade at the end before the intro of BILLY SHEARS it just cuts out like SPLICE big time. This also happens to the intro's of some of the songs it's like a second of half a second is cut out from them.
The classic typo's that vex speaks of is all over the place on this either in the Booklet the disc 2 is has the entire track listing and picture of Lennon Legend CD but the Beatles stuff lets see I have songs like "A Feel Fine" "Eight Days A Night" oh and lets not forget HELQ! and many more.
The Set also does say the discs are HDCD and that they are 24k discs, ok they are gold colored on the bottoms and they are factory pressed discs but I don't know about the 24K nor have I tried to listen to them to see if they are really HDCD. But all in all I'm sure that for the price I got this set at I will be able to enjoy them to some extent and as vex said they are sort of cool to collect except buyer beware don't expect to much from them or anything else.
The pics in mine are as follows, there is a page with all the 45 picture sleeves from around the world starting with the Capitol one. And then the Lennon Legend picture and then another page with all the 45 picture sleeves of Yesterday again starting with the Capitol version. Then there is a picture of like ummm how do I put this "The picture of this young model type of dude that look like he belongs in some GAY men's book? VEX, I thought of your complaints about your pics of What were they thinking with this???
All in all, I will leave another post in here if when I get a chance to play and really listen to Disc 1 of this set called Love Me Do. I'd say this much that if you went to a CD fair or place that sold bootlegs/imports one might easily paid a lot for this well constructed looking set regardless of it's mistakes. Oh yeah, VEX at least you got colored pics in your booklet mine are just glossy black and white's. which was a drag when it came to the picture sleeve's but the front photo is in color and the back inside has a pic of them from the Hey Jude photo shoot on the inside back tray cover!

 

Well here is the skinny on the Disc 1 of this Beatles One which is titled "Love Me Do"! Now if anyone reads my previous post about this curio 2 disc set as VEX has named it. The 2nd disc of this set is titled "Don't Let Me Down, and it did. But and this is a big BUT, Disc 1 called Love Me Do which has the exact same song listings as the original released version, well all I can say is Love it, I Do. Why ??? This sounds absolutely fantastic at least to my ears, So I don't know what the deal is about this disc but being its a gold pressed disc or whether or not it is in fact an HDCD disc. But it sounds 110% better than my origianl release of The Beatles ONE. I mean I could not believe how clear and how well the stereo separation is on this when listening through my portable headset as well as through my nice car stereo. I have no need to even listen to it through my Altec Lansing setup which consists of 4 cubes L + R and 2 sub-woofers, or my Home Theater System. Guys it's that good, these tracks sound as good as my favorite German Stereo versions and or Japanese MFSL needle dropped versions but I dare say even a bit better. I am totally blown away by this, it's quite a surprise in deed especially after what I said about disc 2. So this ones a gem and a keeper. I'd highly recommend the version that I received but according to Vex it you could get one and it could have different songs or different artwork, so again buyer beware. I guess the thing to look for would be getting the same artwork that I have and actually I went back to Ebay to look at the outside artwork on the front and back that I was supposed to get and just like Vex said could happen mine in fact is different than the one pictured that I bid on. I may have lucked out, too bad I didn't get as good a sounding disc 2 perhaps one does exist. I will have to ask Vex's opinion on what his disc 2 is like.

 

I can tell you with 100% certainty that your discs are NOT HDCD encoded. Also, I'll bet my left nut that the discs are NOT gold, even if they are gold-colored. These discs are counterfeits. The fact that your disc one has an identical track listing to that of the original "1" release tells me that, AT BEST, it is a direct copy of the commercial release. With that said, I'm amazed that you think it sounds better. I'm not doubting you, but I do wonder what part of the duplication process would allow you to reach this conclusion. I have heard of folks saying they thought some CD copies sounded better than the originals, but I've never understood why.

One thing you can try is to rip a song or two from each disc (original and counterfeit) and compare the wave files. It will be pretty easy to tell if they are identical or not. I'm guessing they will be. The alternative is that this counterfeiter, instead of just trying to make a quick buck, actually cares about the music (hahahahaha, yeah, right!) As ridiculous as that sounds, it is not outside the realm of possibility. If this were the case, then the counterfeiter could have tracked down stellar versions of each and every track on the disc and made his own "1" disc from those sources. EXTREMELY doubtful, but hey, stranger things have happened...

The important thing is that you are enjoying the disc, and since you own the original, more power to ya! These are fun collectibles, but to be honest, I've never given them a serious listen. I have played them just to make sure they play okay and to prove to myself that they are not HDCD encoded.

 

Yes Vex, I would agree with you on all points except the sound is a bit brighter. During the duplication process, the only thing I can gather would be the fact that the discs may be just of a higher quality to make it a tad more liking to my ears than the released version I have. I'm just glad that it does in fact sound as good as it does because of my disappointment in the 2nd disc with the terrible editing as I had explained in my earlier post.