Well, as it turns out, it ain't (unlike 80s "Rubber Soul" which really feels like a remix due to a very much changed stereo panorama as well), this is just EQ applied to the previous German master. And of course it's a great thing there is so much choice around, to each listener's personal preference. But as I always said, my shootouts are all highly subjective. And I do need a point of reference (the earliest UK I can find), so everything else is compared to that. A really interesting shootout would be a truly blind test. But I couldn't do one, that's for sure.
Yes, I have that one, also--my first German Beatles lp, actually. It's certainly excellent, but for Baby..Rich Man, I prefer the greater volume on the clavioline in the left channel on the +C (this is what I mean by "rebalancing"). The earlier cut sounds exactly like the standard cd and digital lps one commonly gets now, where the bare piano dominates(the mono is better than both of them, anyway). Of course, yes, you must then accept the bass for the +C, but I like it.
Ok, that specific I don't remember. I sold my version quite a while ago because I didn't like it that much. Your first German, however, is fantastic to my ears. Perception is different...
Sure, if the lacquer gets etched with a matrix number and then plated, it's done, and the only thing you can do if you want it gone is scratch it out from the metalwork. And they did exactly that on other Beatles albums, so it's not like they were opponent of doing so. All your points are valid, and as far as I am concerned there really are only two ways the different matrix numbers on the White Album and on Please Please Me that we talked about could have happened: A: they didn't inscribe the fresh lacquers, but the mothers, like @TheHutt and I repeatedly suggested here in this thread. How identification worked at the pressing plant/electroplating process before the mothers were marked and how they managed to not mix up sides (or even worse than that) is something that is beyond my guess. B: they made an entirely new cut from the same source tape, on the same lathe, with the same cutting stylus, with the same settings for EQ, compression, limiting, overall volume, groove width (fixed pitch?), etc. All this probably without any need, because they replicated the preceding cut to every degree, so the quality of the first one wasn't an issue. Could only be the case that the metalwork got damaged, but then why do all four sides of the White Album over again? And both sides of PPM? And still I wonder how they could turn up looking and sounding exactly the same as they do. Beatles German Pressings - Need Help! I don't have any answers, mind you! I'm just wondering about this since I saw it for the first time. Who knows, maybe they had some overnight shifts and some sand paper and just polished the hell out of those father plates and managed to flatten the raised letters to nothing but a clean and clear shine without touching the adjacent runout grooves at all.
Big compliments on your latest review! Always a pleasure to read. And very interesting to hear that the bass on the German 2nd is in comparison a touch lower than on the UK/Dutch. I always felt the German version had a strong, deep, very solid state-like bass already, without being bloated, but I always thought it must have been upped instead of lowered! Don't know why I thought so though... Your finding on "She Said, She Said" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" are intersting as well. "SSSS" especially does sound good on the German 2nd. And yes, the horns on "GTGYIML" do cut your head off, but I thought that was on purpose.
Thanks! Though I'm getting the impression they're getting out of hand in terms of amount of text. I think I should try to compress them down a bit. It is very fine and detailed, and maybe it's just strong enough to perceive it as deep. Not to forget, that was a direct A/B comparison done in headphones, so I picked up many details I usually wouldn't on my regular setup (like that stereo widening). After all, it's just very slightly lower. (to compare, when I was switching back and forth between the UK and the Japanese, the latter sometimes had the effect of a AM radio - again, in straight comparison). Yeah, I suppose the 2nd German widened the deadwax area by reducing the bass slightly, therefore also reducing the intergroove spacing. (Just odd that the Dutch didn't, and still has wonderful SSSS and TNK.) Funny story about German 3rd cut. My wife actually left the room when I was listening to it and "I Want to Tell You" came up. Couldn't bear the bass pounding.
The 3 coloured vinyl DMM LPs could all have been pressed at Teldec from what you're saying. This is what I was alluding to earlier when I pointed out the difference in the impression under the labels between the white vinyl and black vinyl versions. All 3 coloured vinyl LPs show the same impression under the label and all 3 are marketed as DMM, all from 1985 according to the ever reliable discogs DMM was a joint venture between Teldec (Telefunken-Decca) and Neumann, first pressings were exclusively Teldec commencing in 1982. EMI was the first outside company to sign a licencing agreement with them to use their new mastering technology. Electrola being a fellow German company was the first in the EMI group to commission the new system in 1983, the UK followed a year later. The various DMM trademarks were registered in June 1984, and it meant that to promote a record as a DMM using the official logos the technical specifications had to be met. One of those specs, apart from buying the Neumann lathe, cutting head and ancillary electronics, was the adoption of a flat surface record profile. So not only was it an investment in paying licencing fees and purchasing new mastering equipment, there were also further expenses as new moulding equipment had to be introduced and implemented into the pressing process itself. That's why we see these unofficial DMMs, some marked with a "+C" and some not marked at all as they are not full spec. It appears that Electrola didn't make those changes to their pressing equipment until quite a bit later. We didn't adopt the DMM profile in Australia at all, simply noting that the record was "Mastered on Copper". Getting back to the black vinyl and white vinyl WA versions I wonder if they were cut as closely alike as possible in order to evaluate the difference between the 2 record profiles. For the 3 coloured vinyl versions it appears that the blue vinyl copies were pressed before the white vinyl copies, your white LP with the blue smear bears that out. There could be any number of blue vinyl or marbled blue and white vinyl WA records produced at the change over in the pressing run. It takes something like 40+ pounds of vinyl to be extruded through the press to clean the line and produce a new clear strain of coloured vinyl. Most of those change over pressings would have been meant for the waste bins but who wouldn't grab a rare non-official coloured copy as a souvenir given half the chance?
I have a Dutch 3Y/3Y copy which was highly praised here years ago when shootouts like these were more common. However and yet again, my -3/-4 UK version is better.
It's the same process they used in the UK to produce a "sub-master" An early stamper or stampers are plated, you then have a new mother or mothers to extend production.
Looks like the inner part is indeed separate. I googled some stamper pics and found inner holes of different diameters in the stampers. Seems to be different for each type of press?? Here is a pic of an "Elvis Country" stamper: And this is about Blue Note stampers: All original Blue Note records manufactured by Plastylite in the 1950s up to late 1961 have a deep groove on both sides of the label central area – the groove being a “trench” around the inner circumference of the label created by the metal die used to hold metal record stampers in place. Blue Note vinyl: the deep groove
In a way, what Electrola engineers did with the Beatles 80's cuttings is what Abbey Road did with the 2009 remasters: they tried to make them up to date with the times. Perhaps if they hadn't had the constaints of vinyl media to deal with, they could have boosted the bass and kept the wide stereo presentation.
Actually, when I got my Dutch, I think this was this recommendation I had in mind. Alas, only one side of my copy is 3Y. I wonder what the difference to 2Y might be.
Thanks, this is indeed a very insightful post! (and makes it clear how comes there are blue Teldec WA copies in existence. They must have been intermediate ones from between changeovers).
Just to make sure -- you're talking about the German whity vinyl WA with DMM on the labels and that small black sticker on the sleeve? That would mean they made more than 10,000 copies. Hmmm.... Yes, of course, there must be a source tape for the transfer to vinyl. Which, unless a specific new tape was ordered from EMI London, is the source tape for all transfers, from the first release to DMM or any other analogue remasters. Yes, and my idea was that the source tape for the DMM transfer (both the white and the black vinyl variants) may have been damaged (the missing pause after Savoy Truffle). I simply can't believe the DMM cuts were made from any form of sub-master tape. Absolutely improbable, given the purpose of the endeavour, and not consistent with usual practice.
Thank you! Well, if a blue vinyl version of the White Album was not solicited, a solitary blue copy (as applerecords.nl says) or a couple of them (discogs) may have been in that souvenir category. Wonder where that waste bin is with the rest of them. Don't , that surely depends on the company involved. And even if it is, the matrix number must be part of the stamper and not the 'inner part'. Absolute confusion would result if it were otherwise. Stampers, being a nickel copy of the mother (or actually a copper master) are not centered when they are made, they must be centered before they are used, and modern pressing companies use electronic equipment the get that right. The centre hole is usually not larger than the spindle hole of a record. Depending on their presses, pressing plants also brush the middle (label) area in a separate process. I'm not aware of any special technique that prepares the stamper for a depressed or 'dished' label area, however. Does anybody know? I completely agree with your reasoning in that post. Thanks also with your explanation about DMM specifications. I knew (did I pick that up in a hoffman-forum-discussion a couple of years ago?) that Australian engineers made unmarked DMM issues of Beatles records. And that's what German Electrola did as well. It didn't always work out as well as with the WA DMM version. What is a cut? There is much more 'remastering' than we think. Yes, whenever a set of master/mothers is exhausted, there will be a recut, that is, a remaster. Remasters follow a protocol and if carried out correctly are almost indistinguishable. Many UK albums were remastered several times during their first press run, and only exceptionally (With the Beatles first pressing, Rubber Soul 'Loud Cut', Revolver mono -1) were the differences noticeable. With Sgt. Pepper, both the mono and stereo, Parlophone stayed with the first -1 master, due to the difficulty of cutting the locked groove, but they made many mothers and finally derived new mothers from stampers. We can see those 'sub-mothers' in the dead wax today (stacked numbers). The master (source tape identification plus number of transfer, in this case -1, was present from the lacquer onwards.)It may have been the case that matrix numbers were only added to the mothers. That is how GZ Media, the Czech plant that provides a great proportion of European vinyl issues (the others are in the Netherlands and in Germany), handles lacquer cuts. For DMM, however, the master number is added to the copper master. That means that submasters (= new mothers) can only be created from a father with the same deadwax information. The German DMM White Album, therefore, seems to have been mastered at least twice, from the same source (that contained the missing pause after Savoy Truffle), with the A1 //+D cut being the earliest.
The missing pause on side 4 of the German DMM has always made me wonder if they received a different or new master from EMI. The DMM sounds different and more "fresh" than the standard UK's I'm familiar with.
You mean the UK engineers recut/remastered a record, but didn't change the suffix number in the matrix? Or do you mean they recut, changed the number, but the sound remained the same? I guess you mean the latter, but it's a little unclear... Thanks, and I agree that the German DMM WA looks to be cut at least twice, since they changed the cut numbers from -1 to -2 and -3 respectively, which made it implausible in the first place that the different pressings come from the same transfer. For the lacquer based records in question the Electrola engineers did stay with the old cut numbers throughout, so I'm leaning towards "same cut, but different matrix".
Yes, the -2, -3, -5 cuts or whatever were very similar because they followed one and the same protocol. Still, there may be subtle differences, and people prefer one cut over another. As shown by discussions here. I'm not talking about reissues that were remastered in a specific way such as tube cut/solid state or one-off masterings such as the UK white vinyl version of the WA. Also, specific first cuts were sometimes found wanting, as you know, and quickly replaced (mono Revolver -1 on side 2; Rubber Soul 'loud cut', and others). This I don't quite understand. Are you talking about the WA or in general? As I understand it, an original SHZE number, for instance, could remain unchanged in two possible ways. If the matrix number or part of it was added to the mother, that would account for addition of a new catalogue number to the older marking. That could be a form of bookkeeping (such as the stamped SHZE in the pictures you included above in post 1619 ) and the cut could still be a new one. We wouldn't know. If the old cut number was transferred from the father (master), the cut was the same, however, and any new information was only added to the mother(s). That accounts for scratched-out old matrix numbers or hand-etched additions. Little signs such as # or + could designate new mothers from one and the same cut. For the White Album, the SMO YEX cuts and the later 04173/4 cuts (without a trace of the YEX) should be different masterings, and a B-1 cut versus a -B1 cut is certainly a different mastering.
However, Now I am wondering. How do the Red and the Blue German DMM compilations fare in terms of sound? Any owners? (wouldn't spend 100€ apiece just for the fun of it...)
nope. But, now that we speak of it, the longer I listen to my 2015's Red and Blue, the less I like this certain obtrusive brightness...
Is it really changed that much? I never perceived it that way, just found one channel (the left one) to be a lot louder compared to any UK cut. In this way, it matches the right channel which it usually doesn’t, and it also reveals the typical bass boost of those 80s German DMM pressings.
