Abbey Road 50th contents, outtakes and sound quality thread .. only

Unless Kanye actually releases the album that was supposed to come out already ha. Not likely.

 

Paul and John, 1974:

 

That was what I was thinking; I just assumed if Paul was definitely on drums, it makes it more likely that George handled bass, unless it was overdubbed.

 

I can believe it's Paul, but I find it odd they didn't include any studio chatter to confirm it when it would surprise anybody to know he was on drums.

 

It was. The book puts the personnel as:
George Harrison – lead vocal, guitars, organ
John Lennon – piano, backing vocal
Paul McCartney – drums, bass, backing vocal

and then makes mention of bass and guitar overdubs being made on track five. They say the basic track is Paul's drums, George's guitar, and John's piano.

 

I think the third/fourth/fifth week sales of young (or hyped) artists will be stronger than 'Abbey Road' next week. But who cares, it's cool they will hit #1 again this week.

 

Sure thing! The manufacturer of CDs with pre-emphasis intended the CD player itself to apply the corrective de-emphasis after the digital to analog conversion. The CD player does this only upon finding specific "flags" encoded in the CD's table of contents/track info. A few ways one may not be achieving the correction in playback are:
The CD player does not recognize the flags
The disc is a copy that does not contain the flags
Digital files (WAV, flac etc...) extracted from the disc are being used (de-emphasis would not have been applied to the extracted digital content)

The true method to achieve analog de-emphasis as intended by the manufacturer is to listen via CD playback and ensure that the player is in fact applying de-emphasis. Amp bass and treble settings (2-band eq) could be used to make moves in the right general direction, but at best would be a gross approximation of the actual de-emphasis frequency cuts needed to hear the content as intended.

If CD player analog correction is not achievable, the second best thing is, as you guessed, the oh so fun software solution. Should you desire, more info on that can be found here under the "de-emphasis processing" section towards the bottom of the page: Pre-emphasis - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase

 

The premise of this rhetorical question is faulty. I think it's safe to say that not a single person here who doubts that it's Paul on drums fits your description of the hypothetical person who doesn't "expect any new / previously unknown information out of them or won't trust any new information they happen to provide".

 

After finally listening to the Blu-ray stereo, I have similar impression overall, especially on tracks like Come Together and Something. Sounds like a boost around 90-100 Hz mark. Come Together was pretty boomy even on the 2009 remaster and now it's imo, oversaturated with bass. I prefer the 1+ version of CT now (always liked that mix actually). From the other hand, Oh Darling and Here comes the sun sound good to me.

 

Huh. this is surprising on several levels, lol. Again, weird that they're acting as though this is common knowledge and not worth noting. Thank you!

 

Nonsense, there wasn't ever anything audiophile about the 1999 'Yellow Submarine' OST remix. I always find it hilarious when the same people panning the 2015-2019 Sam Okell remixes are gushing over the 1999 'Yellow Submarine' remix. The Sam Okell remixes might have weird stereo-izing of mono tracks, some panning gimmicks, bass boost of the kicks, too much compression across busses.

But the 1999 remixes had shrill EQ-ing, harsh backing tracks, even more heavy compression, overpowering vocals with out of balance harmony vocals smothered in digital reverb, and the worst of all: it’s butchered with heavy noise reduction. The often mentioned “bass boost” is present on the 1999 mixes. And the vocals are often overwhelming on the 1999 mixes and most of the time much more in balance on the newer mixes.

Some of the 1999 mixes are worse than others. But if the 1999 remixes are what one thinks are (near) perfect experiences of how the Beatles songs should be mixed, then I would advise to rethink if you truly think the Sam Okell remixes are that bad.

Just to show: ‘Yellow Submarine’ is 3db louder on the 1999 remix. ’Sgt. Pepper’ is 3db louder on the 1999 remix. ‘With A Little Help’ 1db louder on the 1999 remix. ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ is 1db louder on the 1999 remix. Then, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ about the same. And ’Lucy In the Sky’ is 1,5db louder on the 2017 remix and ‘All You Need Is Love’ is 3db louder on the 2015 remix. But over the majority, this shows the 2015-2019 remixes aren’t the brickwalled messes some people think they are, and the 1999 mixes aren’t the transparent heavenly dynamic treasures.

The mixing, where to start, the whole frequency range is killed by noise reduction on the 1999 remixes! Something they only used sparsely, and only on certain elements, on the 2015-2019 remixes. The stereo field differences are down to personal preferences mostly. There’s more, but I gotta show samples to just let people hear what they think it is (or isn't!).

 

Beware absolutes and the final word

 

But the Yellow Soundtrack remix is a more consistent album overall. The recent ones are all over the place within each specific album (the White album is the best if the three IMHO). I don't feel the Yello Songtrack is shrill at all. At least not the vinyl version on my rig. But even the CD version is a great listen.

I feel they got it pretty close to high on the Yellow.

 

You forgot Hey Bulldog with DR6

 

Why doubt him? Because even experts are not always correct. Because conclusions about things that happened many years ago are often based on incomplete and therefore potentially misleading evidence.

BTW, I don't have an opinion as to who is on drums, nor do I care whether it's Paul or Ringo. What I do care about is getting the facts right.

 

If it plays without audible problems like skipping or flutter, keep it.

 

Wow. This puts me in an actual "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' [ears]?" fix.

Never had any idea Paul was that good a drummer. When did he find the time?! (Seriously!)

 

Which doesn’t always work, speaking from experience.

 

There's no new remix for th- oh there actually is, the Blu-Ray bonus of course. There we go: 3db extra head room on the 2015 remix for that song. Talking about a bass boost, ever listened to the first 2 bars when the band kicks in before the bass overdub, on the 1999 remix?

But this is new evidence, a new report, from someone who freshly listened to all these tapes and a group of people actually working for The Beatles coming to this previously unreported conclusion.

 

If that's Paul drumming on Old Brown Shoe, then he sure regressed a lot by the time he recorded his debut solo album in '70.

 

Apologies, but what book?

 

S/T sound like basic demos.

 

I wonder why they didn't just use those mixes ("Something" as well) in 2019? They coulda saved a lot of time ...

(Count me in as a big fan of Giles' Beatles 1.)

 

Consistently bad while 75% of the 2015-2019 remixes are good, maybe . The whole 'Yellow Submarine' remix indeed sounds uniform, because they made it very clinical, with rock or pop songs all sounding the same mix-wise. I do agree with you that some of the choices on the last 3 remixed albums don't make much sense for the specific songs. But the songs on the 1999 remix all got the same treatment, which also isn't a good thing.

 

Not necessarily - as mentioned, Paul was always way better when he was the drummer in a band laying a bed track down. On his own, he would track drums, for the most part, later, restricting what and how he could play.