As reported earlier this spring, The Beatles catalogue on CD has been remastered for the first time since the 1980s and will be released on 9/9/09. Hmm. No. 9, No. 9, No. 9. In another coincidence of marketing strategy, a new Rock Band video game version featuring The Beatles will be released on the same day.
For details about the project, including specific mastering techniques, as well as a wealth of other information on The Beatles, check out Beatles-History.net.
As I often react to these type of announcements, I was rather resistant to yet another wave of remastering by a major act, particularly since the results of these re-releases has been mixed at best in the past 10 years. Many audiophiles and purists are now claiming the original CD releases — you know the ones we sold, traded in or in some cases some collectors threw out! — actually sound better than the remastered ones because they came from better sources.
Add to this that I, for one, believe the original Beatles CDs from the 1980s, sound rather good. When first released I was a bit miffed that all the early albums were mastered in mono, since I grew up with the stereo versions no matter how retched they were.
But I got used to Please, Please Me and With The Beatles and Beatles For Sale, as well as others, in mono. After all, this was the way they were meant to be heard and much more time was spent on the mono mixes in the early-to-mid 1960s.
By the time of Help! and Rubber Soul — well most of those mixes anyways — and Revolver, stereo became the dominant format, and those CDs had dedicated stereo mixes. Also, just 10 years ago I purchased a 30th anniversary remastered release of the White Album and it still sounds pretty good to me.
But, of course, I believe they announce these things way in advance so that your mind starts working on you and as dribs and drabs of information come out about the remastering, you start to figure well I might like to have one or two of those or maybe one of those neat box sets they’re releasing.
The collection’s individual releases will include all 13 albums in stereo — from Please, Please Me to Let It Be — and Past Masters Vols. 1 & 2. It’s the first time the group’s first four releases will be available in stereo. Although Capitol did release the American versions of eight Beatles albums in stereo and mono back in 2004 and 2006. Some of those actually don’t sound bad at all, given they came from anything but original master recordings. Tim Jensen at Sterling Sound did an amazing job with them.
The stereo CDs will also be available in a box along with a collection of DVD documentaries of each. A mono box set, already coveted by the audiophile crowd, will also be available. It includes 10 of the original albums and a Mono Masters disc covering much of the same ground as Past Masters. It features the debut mono mixes for Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s, Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album, with stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul also included.
For technophiles, details of the mastering techniques, which have some on discussion boards ranting already despite the seeming conservative nature of the mastering team’s approach, is listed down near the bottom of this page. As of today, the box sets, which are very pricey by the way, are only listed at Amazon.co.uk.
I’m undecided. I can see buying just a handful but it would be nice to have the stereo collection from a completist viewpoint. Of course, the mono mixes would be interesting, too. Will this ever end!?
