The Beatles Remasters - Part 1

Almost everyone who’s been born into this age knows that the best way to carry around your albums would be in digital format, safely tucked away in your iPod, along with hundreds of other songs downloaded from thenet. I won’t contest that. It’s convenient, and it lets you carry your entire music library in your pocket. Which brings us to The Beatles.

They’re my favorite band, and I’m so glad that I was able to listen to their music because it was easily available. But the thing is, the CD versions of The Beatles songs sound vastly different from the ones originally released in the ’60s. This is because the audio tapes that were converted to CD back in 1987 were not of the best quality. There was noticeable degration of sound quality, and the sound was way too tinny.

Enter the bootleg remasters. The remasters attempt to recreate the original vinyl sound by grabbing the audio from thevinyl discs themselves, and cleaning up the sounds.

Since they do not have access to the original studio master tapes, they have typically gone back to pristine audiophile vinyl releases played back on high-quality turntable and amplification equipment and digitised using high resolution equipment (this practice is commonly referred to as a Needle Drop).

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on various versions of Revolver, Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and here are my thoughts:

Revolver

This has got to be my favorite Beatles album, and I have more copies of this than any other album. I don’t care what they say about Sgt. Pepper, they reached their experimental peak here.

• EMI 1987 Release:  this is the version most people are familliar with. I first heard Revolver via this version, and I honestly thought that it was meh. The sound was tinny, a lot of tiny sonic details were lost, and except for the amazing Tomorrow Never Knows, the album was underwhelming over-all.
• Original 60’s LP Rip, no tweaking (mp3, 280 kbps): This one was so untouched it even had the needle pops permeating the record. Weirdly though, I loved it. It gave the album a warmth not found on the 1987 release. Needless to say, I honestly liked this one better than the 1987 version. A few cons, though: the left and right stereo channels were too separated that you’d hear the entire instrumentation of “Taxman” on the left channel, but the right channel would only contain white noise permeated by the occasional cowbell. The drums on “Got To Get You Into My Life” were practically non-existent.
• den0iZer’s Remaster (mp3):The bass in this version is very good. However, the lead and accompanying vocals tend to get lost in the upmix. This is a very good remaster. I can only wish that den0iZer used FLAC as the audio format instead of mp3s.
• Blue Box LP Remaster (FLAC): “Blue Box” would be a rare box set of the complete official Beatles catalog released in 1978. It contains mixes closest to the 1960s recordings. And Dr. Ebbetts has made, in my opinion, some of the the best remasters I’ve heard. The backing vocals of “Here There And Everywhere” were never so good before. I could swear I heard somebody cough in the background in the solo of “And Your Bird Can Sing”

And there we go. For Part 2 I’ll be tackling Abbey Road’s different versions.