"The Beatles (The White Album)" sound quality

Very possible they heard them. We all know The Byrds did.

 

I think the 2014 mono sounds superb!
It's a bit more compressed and 'in your face' than the stereo. Definitely not lo-fi, even on my lousy set up.

 

Dear Prudence in Mono is awesome !!!!

 

I agree 100% sir!
"Savoy Truffle" is another example. In stereo it's a so-so song. In mono it kicks serious hiney.

 

I have no problem with the White Album sound quality wise...stereo or mono...my favorite on vinyl is the MFSL Stereo...yea, I like it a lot. CD, they're all good.

 

I like the MFSL as well, it's got all that detail exposed - very fun. Never liked the old 87 CD at all. flat dull lifeless to my ears.

 

The UK Apple mid to late 70s is also a lot of fun, very punchy and real sounding. In fact, I won't listen to any US pressing of this masterwork. Life is too short to mess around with poor copy tapes and rough vinyl when there are so many good imports pressings around of it.

Plus holding a thickly laminated cover, and the 70s EMI scent is still a turn on to me. I love them when they are mint!

 

Indeed! The best sounding version of Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey...thunderous bass...I love it!

 

I think everything was four track (with some annexation on some tracks) until the Let It Be sessions, where 8 track was used for the first time.

 

No, some WA songs were recorded on 8-track, as was 'Hey Jude' (though that was done at Trident, their first 8-track recording).

 

I think it shows how we are all different and with different sounding stereos. I actually don't like any of the MFSL Beatles vinyl. They don't sound right to me, too much mid-bass and, on some albums, an exaggerated top end and sibilance. The 87 CD sounds much better on my equipment, more detail than the MFSL White Album, no exaggeration of frequencies, very clear and no surface noise on quiet parts of tracks such as Long Long Long. I think Steve Hoffman commented (but I stand to be corrected) that this CD sounds like a direct transfer from the master.

 

Absolutely

 

My problem is that you have boiled it down to CD vs LP. And 16/44 almost always loses when up against good LPs.

The MFSL is a bit tweaked up no doubt. But between that LP set and any 70s UK Apple set, there is no need to listen to the lower res CD ever again. It cannot (by nature of it's 16/44 limitations) have the detail of these two LP pressings I am mentioning. I mean since you decided to compare LPs with CDs.

The '87 CD is supposed to be a flat transfer yes, and in fact - in reality, the album needed some EQ touch ups here and there throughout the long program. SH once called that mastering "indifferent". Meaning it is better being left as is than ruined by poor choices, on the other hand it could have used some smarter choices.

It suffers imo being a flat transfer. Our host has also stated that not everyone likes his idea of mastering choices.

 

The Beatles certainly knew the Bonzos quite well, I've never picked up a discernable Bonzo influence on The Beatles - there's plenty the other way round, but you may have a point. 'Honey Pie', indeed, could have been a Bonzos song.

Much as though I love the Incredible String Band I'm not sure if they influenced The Beatles. I can't imagine John Lennon being into them.

There's a much stronger ISB influence on 'Satanic Majesties' in particular.

 

heard a stereo tape copy made by Capitol back in the 80's. It seemed very middly and a bit harsh...

 

Well the problem is that I don't agree with your premise regarding that I decided to compare CD vs LP, you did that! Nor do I agree with a misplaced belief regarding 16/44. Properly mastered it will always be superior reproduction/storage an playback medium compared to an LP on any objective measure - subjectively your mileage will vary - nor that CD is lower res. How one earth can a format with at least 98db dynamic range be more lossy than a medium which at best is 70db - ie equal to a 12 bit lossy MP3 file? Sometimes records do sound better than CD, just as in the day, I came across several compact cassettes that sounded better than LPs. As a general rule mastering/production > format.

My comments in regard to the MFSL Beatles are my own opinions and we all have our preferences. It has nothing to do with CD vs LP, although I have honestly stated I prefer the 1987 and 2009 CDs sound wise. I generally have a high regard for MFSL releases but some of them (and this includes MFSL CDs) are in my opinion eq'd wrong. Sticking to LPs, I prefer my 74 standard White Album pressing to the MFSL. For DSOTM, I prefer my original quadraphonic LP over the MFSL LP and my black triangle CD over the MFSL CD (I won't stick my neck out to state which of those four DSOTM is my overall preference...). Others eg Police, I prefer the MFSL. Back to White Album, and I'm sure you won't agree with me, but 2009 CD and to a lesser extent the 2012 LP remasters are examples of EQ touch ups done properly.

 

16/44 has limitations, to state otherwise is to say that 24/96 and 24/192 mastering is useless when mastering is done properly. That high-res is snake oil.

Dynamic range is not resolution, and you should know that. I have compared dynamic range to a very bright three-way light bulb, that has a dim, med, and bright setting, you know those lamps. The brightest to thew darkest is one thing, the shading in between is another. That is what high-res does, gives us those shades, like analog vinyl. But we've been over that for a long time. If what you state is true then there is no need for AF or MFSL to issue SACDs, or any company to issue DVD-A is there?

The the real listeners know that there is a good reason Pink Floyd included DVD-A and BluRay in those Immersion boxes, that Steven Wilson's Tull, Crimson, and Yes projects are high-res. It is not only for the 5.1 mixes. CDs are a convenience format, small and do not pick up surface noise, warps, etc. It was never about high enough resolution. It's an outdated format with too low resolution. This is not about dynamics from loudest to softest level, whicg Cds have plenty enough of.

So since you poo-poo on higher res than 16/44.1, and do not see a benefit, there is no need for me to go on. I will not argue the point and will in fact give you the last word on this (if you choose to continue to argue the point).

But I will agree that the 2009 CDs (with their EQ touch ups) sound better, nicer to my ears than the so-called wonderful flat transfer from the master done in '87.

 

Wow, how did you get from a post regarding the White Album being a good recording, to a CD vs LP debate and now, a 16/44 vs the so called hi res debate?

Ok, I'll bite. Hi Res is not snake oil in its correct context, it has a very useful purpose in high fidelity music. Unfortunately these are only relevant to recording and mixing. There is no technical, physiological or even logical reason why the identical recording played back on the same equipment should sound different at 16/44 vs 24/96 or 24/192. In fact there is some evidence that 24/192 could be worse!

Honestly, this has been done to death. There is no playback difference between these bit and sample rates nor should there be any difference. The link below points to a summary of the well known Meyer and Moran study on this topic. That paper is now eight years old and to date has not been refuted. It confirms what any audiologist worth their salt would know anyway.
http://drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

The difference you do hear with SACDs, DVD-A and HD Tracks and the like is all due to the mastering. The same reason a MFSL Supertramp Breakfast in America remaster CD sounds better than the original mastered CD. The consumer Hi Res is a marketing ploy designed to sell more music and get people into more expensive playback gear, when we really should be insisting on better mastering for all formats. Unfortunately us audiophiles are small and easily exploited section of the market.

If anyone is interested in the reasons why 24bit over 16bit is pretty well useless for playback, have a read of the thread below on the Head HiFi site. The OP explains it pretty well, and the next few pages of the thread are interesting too.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded/210

 

Well, since you asked, I got to vinyl, and then high-res specificity in relation to this album and it's sound quality. It also happens to me my favorite album of all time. So I naturally drift to UK LPs and 24/96kbs digital. I have a 24/96 copy of a UK LP as well. etc. etc.

I don't even think about CDs of this album with one exception, the CD format is a great way to have the rarer mono mix of this album.

I believe that high-rez is the next frontier for The Beatles album. CDs (w/ that one exception) are pretty much last century with their lower bitrate.

 

I thought you weren't going to reply... I picked you as a vinyl guy, I know many and all is good. We all should listen to music how we would like it to sound. I'm partial to listening to a few records, particularly when I'm in the mood and those particular albums sound better on LP. I disagree in with the Beatles though, to my ears and many others the CDs are the best sounding - so they would for any album if they were mastered properly.

I agree CD is last century, but what does that make vinyl? Despite the hipster 'resurgence' it will remain a niche market where CDs are heading. The future is digital streaming.

Studio executives love those attitudes such as "hi rez is the next Beatles frontier". More money, more sales. I doubt very much that a higher res release of the Beatles will sound any better than the 2009 CDs, though they may do so if they are remastered even better than they are now (ie they have a better remaster up their sleeves), or better technology emerges dealing with restoring old the original master tapes or even playing to certain expectation biases for an imaginary effect.

 

The Beatles definitely heard the Dylan Basement Tapes acetate - George talks about it on the Nagra tapes during the filming of Let It Be.

 

The point was that they could not have heard it while recording the white album. I think that was the point.

 

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was the 1st 8 track recording done in Abbey Road.
I'm not sure if Dolby was used on the track. If it was, it sounds like it wasn't calibrated very well. It's not as hi-fi as some of the other recordings on "WA", but that doesn't mean it sounds bad. Compared to many other records of its' time it comes across very nicely.

 

I personally love all of the very different sonic variations on this album. It makes it highly unique...

 

On LP, the song suffers from being a loud rock song placed near the end of a side. The first few tracks on an LP are where the best fidelity is particularly for loud songs.