Glad I kept the '87's along with the '09's! (I don't have all of the '09's yet, mainly the post-Rubber Soul albums.) I generally like the '09's; the stereo Beatles For Sale is particularly wonderful, as are the inclusion of original-mix stereo Help! and Rubber Soul in the mono box. But several head-scratching flaws in the '09's bug me: the 'mangled tape' start of the stereo "A Hard Day's Night", the dull-sounding stereo "She Said She Said", etc. (glad I have my lovely-sounding Japanese Revolver CD from '87 with the white jewel case hinge!) ... what happened to the quality control, with that big Abbey Road engineering team looking after everything? ... Having said that, it's only a handful of tracks that bug me. From Pepper onwards, '09's are punchy and lush. Note: I don't yet own '09 stereo Please Please Me, With The Beatles, Help! and Rubber Soul (the latter two being the '80's remixes, I didn't see the point.)
There are pluses and minuses to all versions..but long as it's a good sounding recording overall, I have no problem at all with the vocal/instrument separation, either. ..hmm..I haven't played that one in quite a while...time to revisit...thanks for the reminder
I loved the 2009 remastered on CD. I never bought the LPs, since after all, what’s the use? The LP mono box is pure analog and is infinitely better.
Yeah, I am not sure what went wrong with "A Hard Day's Night." It's still much better than the mono 1987 CD, but it is easily my least favorite of the remasters. I compiled my own version of the album using the first "1962-1966" CD and the "Capitol Albums" set. Even the packaging on the 2009 "A Hard Day's Night" is substandard. It bugs me that the iconic photo in the alley (see below) was sourced from such a plainly inferior source; it's a dark, blurry mess.
Good ol’ Steve Hoffman forum. not much is guaranteed in life except for taxes, death, and “only my opinion is right and the rest of you can just drop dead” attitudes in discussion about 9 year old Beatles remasters and anything else on this forum.
That makes sense. Those Ebbetts transfers are flawless. I used his version of the promo "Penny Lane" 45 when I recompiled the Sgt. Pepper out-takes discs to include the tracks from "Anthology 2." The Ebbetts transfer is sooo much better than what Apple/Universal used on the 50th Anniversary box.
In this case, it doesn't sound like mono at all. We are talking about a extremely wide stereo image being narrowed very slightly. Anyone who has the CD may check that it's still very wide stereo. As for the vocals on one side, the narrowing doesn't change that either. Not in an album like AHDN, where they are all centered, but not even in the first two albums (the twin track recordings: all ard right or hard left), because we are talking about a very slight change. By the way, I don't mind vocals being on one channel either, as long as the mix is well balanced (like Here Comes The Sun). My problem is with that kind of "whole-in-the-center" mixes of the two first albums and Rubber Soul. That's weird, that photo in my CD's booklet doesn't look like that at all. Maybe you got a counterfeit?
I don't have a scanner, sorry. Anyway, are you saying yours looks like that too? Maybe the European print is better?
it doesn't look like the top photo above the blue trimmed pic in the booklet...does your look bright and crystal clear? plus the scanner used could make it appear worse than it is....
I think the stereo for AHDN is problematic because the vocals are centered. For some of the songs, its more of an issue than for others. People often criticize the stereo AHDN without mentioning the centered vocals. They often just state, without getting specific, that something seems wrong about the stereo mix. George Martin knew what he was doing for the first albums, separating the vocals from the instrumentation. Given the technologies/tracks available at the time in the early to mid Sixties. Although I love what he did, in this respect, for Sgt. Pepper's as well. Even when more tracks were available. It makes for a cleaner, less muddled, sound. What some call wonky, I call "just right".
To be fair that's because the vast majority are casual listeners who don't know and honestly couldn't care less about mastering, mixes, etc. They might make a comment about a very noticible difference in passing, but they don't care in the way we do, since to them it's just music. And history and my own personal experiences and interactions with these people have shown that the terms "remix" and "remaster" are totally interchangeable to the general public. They just don't care, and that is absolutely fine because I know that they likely have other things in their lives that are and/or they perceive to be more important than being knowledgeable on the best version of a particular album.
You guys realize that we will probably get another set of remasters in the next 10 years, right?. Just sayin. After the remixes are done they will go back and re sell the original mixes again
I am done, I have a full set of Stereo and Mono 09s, I am halfway through getting a set of cheap 87s, I have Capitol Vol 1&2, plus AHDN and Y&T from the remastered US albums, Anthologies, Love, YSS, BBC1&2, Red Blue and 1+ plus Singles and EP boxes. Plus a nice amount of vinyl, the only thing I want would be some mono vinyl albums, but if I don't I have the box on CD. They aren't gonna sell me the original canon on CD again. The only thing I would take would be a nice Let It Be Bluray/SDE of LIB.
Even Stan Ricker, who cut that LP set, would disagree with you. He was forced to add too much top end by Gary Giorgi, who wasn't compensating for his own hearing loss after a bad fall. Stan's interview regarding this is on the net somewhere.
