Remastered Beatles!

Marty_J

I don't know if this will interest anyone, but the whole Beatles catalogue, both mono and stereo, has been digitally remastered and will be available on the 9th September. The original CD transfers of their albums were absolutely awful, so as a big Beatles fan (I've even got the same birthday as John Lennon - how's that for dedication?), I'm so glad that 20 years later they're finally getting the release they deserve.

I am guessing this also means we'll see the Beatles in iTunes before long, which will mean that it's possible we could be seeing a few Beatles numbers ones.

Anyhow, if you're interested, check it out:

http://www.beatles.com/

John_Gray

Sounds like a good way of encouraging you to buy the same album for about the eighth time!

Marty_J

I remember that scene from Men In Black: "guess I'll have to buy the White Album again".

DatabaseError

not sure about the beatles being on itunes...I thought there was an issue with Apple (music publisher) getting a bit peeved when Apple (pretty (expensive) thing maker) started publishing music

Marty_J

DatabaseError wrote: »

not sure about the beatles being on itunes...I thought there was an issue with Apple (music publisher) getting a bit peeved when Apple (pretty (expensive) thing maker) started publishing music

That's all been settled now; Apple bought Apple Corp's trademark rights for a rather hefty sum of money with many many zeroes in it, and agreed to licence some of it back to Apple Corps.

The individual Beatles' solo music is available on iTunes, and Steve Jobs used The Beatles' music when he introduced the iPhone, so I don't think there's any acrimony between them.

I remember reading a while ago that they were waiting on the tracks being remastered before they allowed them to be digitally distributed.

buglawton

A most interesting audio documentary which gives up a few secrets on how the remastering was done - just 1 day left to hear it in iPlayer!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mc0cc/The_Record_Producers_31_08_2009/

see you noticed my other post, bat999, well for everyone else here's the link to the 2 hour version that's available for another 6 days or so:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mkgzx/Record_Producers_The_Extended_Cut_Sir_George_Martin/
...will wait for a nice rainy day to hear the extended version (have stored it like you...)

bat999

buglawton wrote: »

...just 1 day left to hear it in iPlayer!

Got it as mp3 now, will listen later. :rolleyes:
I also heard Bob Harris discussing this with some of the people involved.
Also, I agree that those original CDs were not so good to listen to.
I'm looking forward to hearing the new mixes.
:cool:

KimYeovil

£370 for 13 albums - that's more than £28 per album. Nice way to treat your fans. It is not just the groupies who get...

harryharp

Any idea whether stero or mono is best for the new releases?

Marty_J

It depends. I have the mono mixes of a few albums (Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's), and I prefer them to the stereo mixes. I'm not too keen on the crazy panning with the drums on one side and the vocals on the other. With the mono mixes, everything is in the centre, which makes it a lot more pleasant to listen to on my iPod.

Not having heard the remasters yet though, there's no telling. I'll probably get both.

buglawton

I heard examples on the Beeb program where in the Beatles remastering, they had used clever filtering to separately extract drums, guitar etc from single tracks of the 4 track then redistribute them more evenly across the mix (so sounding more like a 16 track mix). The result was convincing technically but I am not sure if artistically, really better.