Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

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LessThanZero
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Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by LessThanZero »

Blue,

I am just a poor boy and my story is seldom told...

How much better do you think the remasters are going to be?

You know that I already own every CD...what do you think?
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by BlueChair »

I guess I have to respond to this, don't I? :P

I'm eager to hear what other people have to say, but here it goes...

The Beatles CDs currently on the market were released in 1987, when the compact disc was still a relatively new technology. One thing they had figured out how to do right away was make the sound of CDs crystal clear. However, they still had a lot to learn when it came to EQ levels and the overall range of sound. This is why when you compare anything off of the proper Beatles albums on CD to most of the stuff on Anthology or Love, you can tell a pretty huge difference.

Now, I haven't done any A > B comparisons, and obviously I can't until they're out, but take a look to this and try to listen on either stereo speakers or headphones:
http://www.thebeatles.com/core/home/

This is a preview of the "Making of Revolver" short film that will be included with the Revolver reissue. Even though the audio has probably been compressed, this sounds pretty damn good to me.

I also stumbled upon this article, written by someone who was lucky enough to preview some of the remastered catalogue. His assessment seems pretty fair:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/ ... l-the.html

So in the end it's your decision to make. If you listen to The Beatles a lot and think the CDs currently out leave something to be desired (I certainly do), buy the new ones. But don't feel compelled to buy both stereo and mono box sets, or buy them all at once. Get them slowly. Absorb them as if they were new. See if you notice a difference. And if you do, buy the rest of them.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by alexv »

I love the Beatles. That is an understatement. Practically every worthwhile song they wrote (that's 90% of what they did, roughly) is embedded in my memory. The Beatles' attack on my brain started sometime in 1967. Their music is so ingrained that I never need to hear it again. Now that's greatness.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by LessThanZero »

90%????? I guess you don't love The Beatles as much as I do alex. :)

I'll start the bidding at 96%.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by alexv »

I was trying to cover my bases, LTZ. Let's say "in the 90s percentile".

Let's start another list:

Beatles songs I don't like:

Birthday
Doctor Robert
Everybody's Trying to Hide...
For You Blue
Good Day Sunshine
Her Majesty
Rocky Racoon
Bungalow Bill
Yer Blues
Dig A Pony
Glass Onion
Good Morning
Hey Bulldog

That was tough...
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by Who Shot Sam? »

alexv wrote:I was trying to cover my bases, LTZ. Let's say "in the 90s percentile".

Let's start another list:

Beatles songs I don't like:

Birthday
Doctor Robert
Everybody's Trying to Hide...
For You Blue
Good Day Sunshine
Her Majesty
Rocky Racoon
Bungalow Bill
Yer Blues
Dig A Pony
Glass Onion
Good Morning
Hey Bulldog

That was tough...
So I take it the White Album is not a fave?
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by bambooneedle »

I marvel at alexv's depth of knowledge and authoritativeness... he really knows what he's talking about....
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by sulky lad »

Judging by alexv's post "Lennon's worst is worse than McCartney's worst - discuss"
There are enough Harrison songs for me to put them in the 90 percentile also
my bete noires include
Within You Without You
Love You Too
Act Naturally (yes I know they didn't actually write this)
The Word
Yellow Submarine (except does Lennon shout "Bostick adhesive " ? in the instrumental bit before "Drop Anchor" ?)
Doctor Robert
Getting Better
Fixing A Hole
Wild Honey Pie
Revolution 9

Anything before Beatles For Sale is harder to judge because there wasn't much else around to compare them to
ie they weren't just rock'n'roll or rockabilly or a boy harmony group
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by LessThanZero »

I love the Beatles unconditionally...Revolution 9 is the only one I skip.

But, I'll try to put together a list of songs I like the least, and might skip if pressed for time...

Wild Honey Pie
Savoy Truffle
Revolution 9
Good Night (sometimes)
German She Loves You
German I Wanna Hold Your Hand
Los Paranoias
What's the New Mary Jane?
Last edited by LessThanZero on Mon Jul 20, 2009 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by BlueChair »

I'm shocked by the disdain for "Doctor Robert."
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by LessThanZero »

Me too! Shocked and appauled.
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LessThanZero
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by LessThanZero »

Who Shot Sam? wrote:
alexv wrote:I was trying to cover my bases, LTZ. Let's say "in the 90s percentile".

Let's start another list:

Beatles songs I don't like:

Birthday
Doctor Robert
Everybody's Trying to Hide...
For You Blue
Good Day Sunshine
Her Majesty
Rocky Racoon
Bungalow Bill
Yer Blues
Dig A Pony
Glass Onion
Good Morning
Hey Bulldog

That was tough...
So I take it the White Album is not a fave?

I think Dig A Pony sounds REALLY GOOD.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by Who Shot Sam? »

I like "Hey Bulldog". :?
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by mood swung »

Me too! Shocked and appauled.
he said appauled. :lol: :lol:

nice to see you, LTZ.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by Boy With A Problem »

Two that come to mind are Hey Jude and Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

Love Dr. Robert and Everybody's Got Something to Hide - in fact just about everything on AlexV's list - and am a big fan of Act Naturally.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by LessThanZero »

Boy With A Problem wrote:Two that come to mind are Hey Jude and Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

Love Dr. Robert and Everybody's Got Something to Hide - in fact just about everything on AlexV's list - and am a big fan of Act Naturally.
BWAP!!

My 3 year old's name is Jude, and Jody wants to name our baby boy due in September....Maxwell.

What do you think?
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by Boy With A Problem »

Jude and Maxwell are excellent names. I just don't like the songs much.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by LessThanZero »

I like you BWAP.

I'll Concede the Silver Hammer I guess...except the Moog...BUT then again...that's one man FORCING the sounds in his head out, without ANY help from Lennon...and it sounds good!

Hey Jude though...I think this one is on a definite higher plane.

The way it builds, and comforts, and reassures...it goes through the ups and downs, and then triumphs in the end. It makes for a perfect lullabye too. :)
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Blue

Post by LessThanZero »

Jude loves the new trailor for Beatles Rock Band. His favorite right now is WITHIN YOU, WITHOUT YOU! Can you believe it? What a kid.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by Poppet »

i'm getting ready to order the mono box set.

i've already missed it at amazon and b&n.

i need both sets. i would give up all my elvis cds if that were necessary to own the beatles catalog. i might not even cry if i had to do that.

the beatles are my most favorite.

god damn reissues. but YAY REMASTERED BEAUTY!


EDITED: $250 US at amazon.ca, shipping in 1-3 days. done.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.recordcollectormag.com/

Image


Pete Nash
talks to Allan Rouse , co-ordinator of the remasters project.

(extract)


How did the engineers at Abbey Road go about the remastering?


Allan Rouse: The process started with choice of equipment. We spent two weeks eliminating and choosing tape machines. Because EMI is good at keeping things, we have "test tapes", which are alignment tapes for getting the best frequency response out of the machine. We had three of these, one circa the early 70s, then a later one and a more recent one. We had three tape machines, three test tapes, two or three A-To-D (analogue to digital) converters. We already knew we were going to load all of this into ProTools at 24-bit 192 kHz. After a long period of loading things in different variations, we did a blind test, and that gave us the choice of machine, A-To-D and test tape. When we listened to the straight transfers from the master-tapes and compared them to the 1987 releases, they sounded better already. After 20 years, digital technology had vastly improved. Initially, that gave us a very good start.

Guy Massey would transfer a title at a time. Though EMI tape doesn't suffer from the oxide dropping off, unlike certain other brands, we weren't going to take any chances. In between each title, the rollers and tape heads would be cleaned, then the next ride, until he completed an album. Then he would sit and listen to each track upwards of three times to ascertain imperfections that we had agreed. Once an album was listened through, he would go to another room in Abbey Road, where restoration engineer Simon Gibson would either repair, remove or simply make them sound better. Once he'd done that, those little bits would be cut back into the master.

That was a lengthy process but, once done, it was taken up to the mastering room with Steve Rooke in the case of the stereos, and Sean Magee in the case of the monos. First they would sit down and listen and decide what to do, and spend the rest of the day EQing it. The next day they would go into Studio 3, where all of The Beatles remixing has been done since 1997, as Paul and Guy are both really familiar with the room. They would listen again and decide if they had gone too far, or whether they could push it a little more. Then back rip to the mastering room the same day to redo it. The following day would be back into Studio 3 to check what they had done.

Once that sequence of events had been gone through, they then passed it to me. I, along with Mike Heasley, would sit and listen to it in a different room, different acoustics, and do the same as Paul and Guy had done. We would then discuss our opinions with them, and they would go and do it all over again. That's why each album took upwards of two weeks to remaster, whereas most albums would be a day or two to do. That was the level of seriousness we put on this.

The two most crucial things are de-noising limiting, both of which have become controversial in the last few years. We agreed that, if we were going to do any de-noising, there had to be a bloody good reason for doing it. In the end only did five minutes' worth of de-noising across the whole catalogue (525 minutes of music) mainly on intros and gaps. The restoration engineer gave us two samples: one that was subtle and one that was even more subtle. All we wanted to do was pull the level of tape noise down a little.
Limiting was the other controversial thing. Everybody wants their disc loud — that's what it’s all about. The major bands today are being "limited" to death, and you destroy dynamics with everything at the same level. Today; bands may look at this the same way as we looked at phasing- it's a gimmick and has an effect. In the 60s, compression and limiting was used in mixing, but it's not the same thing as it is today. So it wasn’t completely out of character with today's CDs.

How are the original master-tapes treated today? Are they like the crown jewels, kept in a climate-controlled room of their own?

Allan Rouse: They're in a room solely dedicated to The Beatles. Highly secure. Highly alarmed. The temperature and humidity are monitored and fall into line of what's required. It's an interesting point: the mono tapes hadn't been played in donkeys' years. There was no cause for it. When you store a tape, you always store it tail-out, which is at the end of the tape. So you have to run it back through to the beginning of the tape. It was a technical thing to improve pre- and post-echo. I'm not sure if it even worked, but anyway... So the tapes are all tail-out, and you have to get to the front of the tape. But every time we got to an edit, or the white leader separating the songs, it all came apart. Because they hadn't been played in such long time, all of the glue on the editing tape had dried out. It took hours to get from the beginning. Every time Guy Massey did that, he had to put them all back together again with new tape. It took him half an hour to get back to the top of the tape, because every single one of them dropped off. Whereas the stereo tapes have been played more recently, the same thing had happened to them, but they had been repaired already.

Is this a real conservator's white glove type of process?

Allan Rouse: Absolutely. They're pretty important, these tapes! We're very lucky that the actual original blank tape — EMI tape — was a very good quality recording. And they haven't been played a lot. We only use them when we need them. If we're doing any research on them, we use the digital copies. Once we've done that, only then would get the actual masters out and start playing those.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by VonOfterdingen »

Almost everything I listen to is inspired by The Beatles. But I am not that much a fan of the early stuff and I only know a couple of albums in full (Sgt. Pepper, White Album). To make up for this im going for the remastered box set in stereo.

Is that a completely wrong thing to do and should I get the mono box set instead?
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by pophead2k »

I already broke my 'two at a time' vow and picked up Please Please Me, Rubber Soul and Revolver. They sound fantastic. I'll never get sick of these songs.
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Re: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Went whole hog and picked up the Stereo box set for a mere $169 with my Borders coupon-have only listened to a few-Revolver, Rubber Soul and Beatles for Sale- at this time-love the fullness of the sound-the fact that you can really pick out the bass lines and that the vocals just jump out of the speakers-tried a few of the imbedded mini-docs- they are nothing special but still a nice extra-what I really find nice is the extra photos in the individual packages-they make a fine visual compliment to the music on the disc with shots from the same time span as the music-a nice touch.
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