Why do Beatles CD's have such low fidelity?

Grant, you forgot the people who wish the Beatles would do what the Beach Boys did, and release a bunch of two-fers that sound good. This would be my preferred configuration:

MEET THE BEATLES/THE BEATLES SECOND ALBUM
SOMETHING NEW/THE EARLY BEATLES
BEATLES '65/BEATLES VI
HELP/A HARD DAY'S NIGHT
RUBBER SOUL/REVOLVER
SGT. PEPPER/MMT
THE BEATLES
ABBEY ROAD/LET IT BE

Did I leave one out? I hate YELLOW SUBMARINE. It can come out on its own.

 

Hmmm...innaresting. Lyle Lovett is one artist I've always liked on CD. He survived Fremerism, even.

 

I love Yellow Submarine. Only A Northern Song and Hey Bulldog are 2 of my all time favorite Beatles songs.

 

Same here. I was just playing them this morning.

I like how they sound on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack CD.

 

Well, then you have to come up with a better pairing. Maybe they could go on the HELP CD instead of HARD DAY'S NIGHT, since it's from another label, anyway.

 

We already have the songtrack anyway.

 

I would prefer more stereo/mono mix two-fers like on the Ted Jensen mastered Capitol Albums Vol. 1 box, if it's going to be the American versions. The mono mixes are quite often superior. Nicely mastered UK mono/stereo two-fers would be of course by far be the best but it looks like it might not happen in my lifetime.

 

I don't know if it's just me, but I've heard the Beatles mono EP box several times. I just got it recently. This set has been more enjoyable than any recent recordings. More enjoyable than any recordings in my collection! It sounds wonderful to me. I guess I love mono, because I put this and Steve's Pet Sounds in the top 10 of my hundreds of CDs.

 

I haven't checked the timings, but are you sure ABBEY ROAD and LET IT BE can fit on the same disc?

 

Yeah, and it's remixed.:thumbsdn:

 

Some of the remixing is good (the Rubber Soul tracks) and some of it is not so good (All You Need is Love or Baby You're A Rich Man). At least nothing was taken out of print and replaced with the remixes.

 

No.

 

I prefer the MONO mixes of these songs anyway.

 

I'm not sure why these remixes are so unpopular. I think they are the best ones! The original recordings suffer because the tracks have been bounced so many times and there's so much stuff piled on.

 

I just always thought the original stereo mix of All You Need Is Love was horrid, so anything new is an improvement.

 

That's the appeal for me. And, as Steve says, the rhythm tracks are too low in the mix, and for me, the vocals are usually too loud.

 

Well, let's cut the vocals by, shall we say 20db. That ought to make the backing track loud enough. LOL

 

great point.

Given the age of the tapes and likelyhood of finding the original 2/4/6/8 track masters, are we wasting our time?

I can see the next batch to be DVD/DTS/Dolby Digital, no SACD or DVD-A - and certainly no vinyl. Then we'll all go nuts about how awful they are and how the CD's sound much better.
They'll be dolbied to death - added echo.delay etc.

That'll push the original vinyl up even more - that's my pension sorted anyway.

Tim

 

And Your Bird Can Sing needs the drums brought up.....they're almost nonexistent!

 

Probelm is, the Beatles catalog is so sacred, so I bet Apple is wondering just how to approach or tackle the task in remastering the catalog. They know no matter what they do, people will be unhappy and critical, so that could also be a factor as to why the Beatles catalog hasn't been remastered yet.

 

Why can't they just get Steve to master mono/stereo hybrid SACDs? They are well aware of his pre-eminence in the field so it seems like a no-brainer to me.

If people want a surround mix then that could also have been catered for on the hybrid discs.

Instead, Apple busy themselves with projects like "Songtrack", "Let It Be - Naked" and Cirque De Soleil .

 

Maybe we should all sign a (new, specifically Beatles) petition like the one Jojopuppyfish started to support new SACD releases. This one being about The Beatles I am sure we would get thousands of signatures in a few weeks. (Oh, yes, and please add an SACD version to the lot - with 5.1 mix on the side, pleaase).

 

What do you mean by "Given the age of the tapes and likelyhood of finding the original 2/4/6/8 track masters, are we wasting our time?". Nearly all of the Beatles material was carefully cateloged at EMI. Only a few session reels have gone missing. I personally don't like about 50% of the remixes on YS Songtrack and most of Let It Be Naked (Spector got it right the first time). I'd be perfectly happy with the original mixes mastered as carefully as possible.

Derek