Audiophiles, is there a transient attack in any Beatles' song?

This is highly subjective, is it not? Or will the waveform chart boffins be able to solve this puzzle with a graphic?

Is this an oblique reference to a general policy of limiting at No. 2? Or, do Beatles recordings all sound 'soft' in the transient department?

 

Yeah, what exactly are you looking for? A snapping snare? Or are you looking for peak levels?

 

First one that came to mind was the initial tom/snare thump on "Revolution"..the single version.

 

Try "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey".

 

"I'm Down" off past masters

 

Somehow I also thought about this song. But now I'll try to play DVD-A version from "Love"...

But, IMO, overall sound design of those years wasn't realistic enough, or, maybe, their monitors weren't. After all, even nowadays some speakers/headphones do transient fairly good and other not so good.

 

Here is a waveform of I'm Down from the Singles box set.

 

I think Steve's looking for an event with a high-amplitude, instantaneous rise time.

 

The hard drum hits in "Any Time At All"?

 

The "I saw the light".. part in "No Reply"?

 

I always liked the snare drum snap in the stereo "Blue Jay Way".

 

First thing I thought about!

 

Well for me I like the drums on The Walrus - sounds like all attack to me but I am just going from memory. But those drums seem really lo fi from all the dumping - which added a character to them imo.

 

The piano crash at the end of Sgt Pepper - If you consider piano-forte a percussion instrument this works haha.

 

The anvil on Maxwell's Silver Hammer?

 

Well, compression was used on pop music as a necessity to be able to fit the dynamics of live instruments to the 40db to 60db or so dynamic range of vinyl and tape. Now it is used to cause eardrum bleeding...Just the compression used in recording and mixing alone even before the final mastering process radically affects transients.

Technically, the transients are there, its just that they have been "compressed" into hiding - not standing out as they would live, in person.

Most of The Beatles early stuff was heavily compressed. The later stuff a bit less so.

Steve, as far as this discussion and winning the bet....how much of a peak (in decibels) qualifes as a transient??

BTW, is this thread a subtle way to point out that the lack of dynamic range in the Beatles recordings should be noted so that we can keep these new rermasters in realistic context? However, this is an interesting question.

 

The "THUNK"-chord just before ´Her Majesty´?

 

It´s not an instrumental peak, but maybe John´s final scream in "I want you (She´s so heavy)" qualifies for this, although one might argue that it was left distorted intentionally.

 

Un-Beatle fan here - would The Inner Light qualify?

 

That's what came to mind for me. It's probably too compressed to qualify though.

 

Really anything from them is probably compressed a little. Even if not I bet they tried to play the intruments with uniform dynamics. I think I read Emerick say one of his favorite uses for a compressor was altering the character of the attack.

 

The percussive edge of Johns rhythm guitar on 'Cry For A Shadow' and the pick hitting Georges strings as he digs out the tune. But Johns guitar sound 'real'...

 

That is like finding a needle in a haystack for sure. If there is one, I'd bet it would be on the Get Back/Don't Let Me Down single, recorded and mixed by Glyn Johns at Apple and Olympic respectively. I don't think that'll help you win.

The reason it'll be hard to find one is that every drum track (of The Beatles) recorded at Abbey Road was run through the Altec compressor on the way to the four track, and again when it was mixed. To make it worse, if the four track was bounced to another four track, the engineers left the compressor plugged in, so the signal would hit the compressor AGAIN. Multiple times in a case like Penny Lane or Hello Goodbye (songs that received the most multi-track bounces).

So I'd say if your looking for one, I certainly wouldn't waste time with stuff recorded with Geoff or Norman. You may have a chance with Ken Scott's work of the Let It Be mixes by Peter Bown.

Jake