Beatles CD's

I am curious, I know almost everyone feels the Beatles CD's are not the best versions released. But do any of you feel one or 2 of them are better than the rest as far as sound quality? I know I feel that Abbey Road seems to sound better than the rest. The bass seems decent, it is extended and clean, you can actually hear Paul's quality here. The highs, although to some may seem bright and brittle, it does not seem as bad as many of the other releases. Again it can be improved upon, no argument there, but tonally it seems good. Any one else have choices of any that are better than the rest?

 

I think Let It Be is decent. Seems better than the rest to me. I like Abbey Road too but there does seem to be a lot more tape noise on this record than the others. Maybe due to it being an 8 track recording but I can't help to think a safety copy (maybe worse) was used as the master.

Revolver (my favorite) is real midrange heavy. Not enough highs or lows for me. The level on the CD is way too low too. This is very compressed record so why do some songs peak out at -6?

 

The problem is that I'm not educated enough to know what exists on the master tape & what is an artifact of the CD mastering.

I think that the "White Album" sounds horrible.

Looking back - a lot of songs were bounced like mad, a lot of the 8-track recordings are bounces down from 4-tracks, and the songs recorded at Olympic and mixed at Abbey Road are unbelievably hissy and seem to have went through some sort of "transfer hell". The bootlegged rough mixes from Olympic sound better than the official mixes made at Abbey Road!

So, does the CD mask this problem or make it more obvious? I say the latter.

 

I think the CD of Help sounds the best of all of them. George Martin remixed it and his work was very subtle. I A-B'd many of the tracks through headphones with other versions, and he did what I feel was a very acceptable job of sharpening up the sound, without making it sound harsh or brittle.

 

Hmmm. Interesting to see the various opinions.

I thought that the consensus in here had been reached that Revolver is all right,
SPLHCB is all right, and The Beatles (white album) was all right (even with it's varying NR),
meaning that they seem to sound recognizably true to the sound of the album masters,
which makes them winners, compared to the others.

People were generally offended by the remixed Help! and Rubber Soul.
I don't remember what the story was with MMT or LIB.

Sure, The Beatles (white album) is all over the place, but believe it or not,
we're supposed to take that to be the surest indication that the album was not screwed with during mastering to CD, right?
For example. have you listened to Savoy Truffle lately? It sounds pretty swell on there.

As always, this is MHO and YMMV.

FFF

 

Well the first four sound like crap, I never could warm up to the two (Help! & Rubber Soul) that George Martin re-mixed. The "White" cd all ways sounded sterile to me. Abby Road and Let it Be are ok. However, Magical Mystery Tour surprised me the most (all though not the German LP) sounded the best to me, as far as CD's go.

 

I thought Abbey Road was the only one which featured noise reduction. Or does NR stand for something else in the above quote?

 

I'm only going by what I recall from older threads so I could be wrong, but this appears to be the consensus here:

The first four albums - improper mono mastering; phasey; lots of digital clicks.

Help and Rubber Soul - remixed.

Revolver - tape was misaligned during the transfer.

SPLHCB - transferred from a safety copy, but otherwise OK.

MMT - ?

White album - flat transfer; OK.

Yellow Submarine - ?

Abbey Road - No-noised; yecch.

Let It Be - ?

Past Masters 1 - flat transfers, but "She Loves You" on the EP box set sounds better.

Past Masters 2 - flat transfers; OK.

Red and blue albums - OK.

Singles box set - early singles (which ones exactly?) improperly transferred; all the rest OK.

EP box set - OK.

 

Red and Blue feature NoNoise and are the first ones (I believe) to be credited to Peter Mew. I haven't heard them, but I would imagine they sound similar to his work on the Anthologies.

 

Yes, that's pretty much what I remember.

And I thought it had said that NR (noise reduction) had been applied
to varying degrees on some (most?) of The Beatles (white album).
Really, shouldn't some tracks be hissier than they are there?

FFF

 

According to all the articles and reviews I have read since the late 1980's ONLY the Red & Blue compilations (and the recent "1") have had digital noise reduction.

Don't the original albums released in 1987 predate digital noise reduction anyway?

If Abbey Road was NoNoised why is it so noisy?

Lance Hall

 

MMT sounds pretty damn good to me.

The White Album is really hissy but the low end is big (even if a bit boomy). I don't think they were the best mixes Geoff and Co. ever did but at least there's low end unlike Revolver and Sgt. Pepper.

 

A crappy-sounding solid state console was used in the mastering, too, and almost all of the recordings were tube recordings. Steve compared it to printing a beautiful three-strip Technicolor movie on crappy Eastman color stock from the 70's.

 

FWIW, I don't think Red/Blue sound bad at all. They're no-noised, but not offensively so.

-D

 

Agreed...my thoughts exactly.

 

Definitely every release from the Red & Blue onwards has digital noise reduction. That includes the Anthologies, the BBC album, and the Yellow Sub Songtrack, in addition to Beatles One.

If I recall correctly, NoNoise first came out right around the time Abbey Road was being mastered, which is why that was the only one of the original group of discs to feature it.

 

Yes, starting with the Red & Blue comps in 1992, it became stated EMI policy that future Beatles releases would be NoNoised.

I still don't believe Abbey Road was NoNoised, unless I see a quote or strong evidence that proves it. I HAVE read that when the digital transfer was being done there was a worry or something about the deliberate white-noise at the end of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)".

The Abbey Road tracks on the Red & Blue comps are obviously NoNoised and sound nothing like the original Abbey Road CD, noise-wise.

I personally think "Come Together" was actually improved by the heavy noise reduction on the Blue comp. It sounds much cleaner and tighter.

Lance Hall

 

Well, the first four need no introduction...don't mind they're mono, just that the sound isn't very good and the stereo versions should have been issued anyway. And as these were overhyped by EMI to start with, the resentment grew from there.

HELP!: Pretty good; RUBBER SOUL: remixed, though I never did get the point; otherwise decent enough. REVOLVER: fair. PEPPER: Good, room for improvement. MMT: Very good but the German vinyl is the keeper. WHITE ALBUM: is what it is; not sure much more can be done without making it worse. Orig. YELLOW SUB: Very good. ABBEY ROAD: Japan EMI/Odeon brighter, more hiss; regular edition: okay, just not as bright. Not NR'd, unless I'm mistaken. LET IT BE: Very good for what it is. RED & BLUE: Very good despite NR.SINGLES & EP: Passable; could be better, obviously. PAST MASTERS: Good, room for improvement. ANTHOLOGIES: Very good. BBC: is what it is. 1: Processed a tad too much. Y SUB SONG: Same, but the mixes are very interesting.

The irony is that, by screwing up the first four, some of us kicked up such a ruckus EMI eventually went NR, all the time. In a way, we asked for it. Be careful what you wish for, you might not get what you want. Oh well...

Remember those custom boxes EMI UK made for these back around the same time? Nice booklets and everything. No upgrade in sound, didn't expect any.

ED

 

FWIW I think all the '87/'88 CD's are pretty lousy overall. First 4 suck big time. 'Nuff said. Revolver is bloody awful, sounds thin and tinny. No bottom end. Help! isn't that good either IMO. Rubber Soul (despite GM remixing it) is actually near OK-ish IMO but still room for massive improvement.

Sgt Pepper isn't really awful but the equivalent songs on the Blue CD from '93 slaughter the versions on the original CD, Abbey Road is passable IMO...I could go on but basically I will maintain that the only way to hear these great albums in a way that do them justice is on vinyl - preferably UK EMI original or lte 60s/70s reissue pressings. All my vinyl copies (even the DMM versions!) are superior to the late 80s CD's.

The best-sounding CD's I think so far are the red and blue. Sure they have some processing and NR applied but it's fairly subtle unlike "1", which had the life sucked out of it by over-use of "modern" remastering and NR techniques.

 

After hearing the Japanese CD of AR I figured the 1987 CD was NR'd, but I'm starting to think the difference is just in EQ (either the JPN CD has a treble boost, or the 1987 CD has a bit of a treble cut - or both). I've got two different disc dubs of AR (I *think* both are from MoFi vinyl), and neither is much/any hissier than the 1987 CD. While I'd agree the mastering on the 1987 CD isn't perfect, I don't think NR is to blame.

The White Album generally gets good marks on CD, but the most of the mixes seem to have a strange midrangy sound that just doesn't sound good. A friend of mine remastered a few songs (from the CD), and the results were a lot better, IMO. A flat transfer is only good if the original tapes sound good, or if you have the ability to tinker!

Some stuff on the Red and Blue CDs sounds quite good, while other stuff is clearly hurt by the NR. I seem to remember Hey Jude sounding a bit thin because of it. I wonder if the singles and EP box sets use NR or not, since some of those same transfers were used on the Red and Blue CDs, notably She Loves You (which sounds a lot better than Past Masters). Can anyone with both the Red CD and the EP box compare the sound of She Loves You? Or the MMT tracks on the Blue CD with the EP box?

 

Overall, I agree with Ed, with the following PERSONAL exceptions:

Help and Rubber Souls aren't "shrill", but they are a bit "thin", lacking the bottom end of my Odeon German vinyl. Revolver is better, and easily fixed by adding about +2db at 60 hz. MMT - I'll clarify Ed's statements with my own logic. The German HorZu is better, but the stock CD is a close second. It's a damned good CD, and it best's all other vinyl I've ever heard except for the previously mentioned.

I LIKE the White album. I haven't heard any euro vinyl pressings (maybe that's why I have this opinion), but it beats any US pressing (Apple initial, Capitol orange label, Capitol purple label) I've ever heard. Abbey Road is very good: the valued early Japanese pressing is only a degree or two better - but I've always suspected that it comes from a second gen "master" (I mean really, what was it mastered from? Did EMI provide them with the first gen? Did EMI do the digital transfer for them? If so, why did they object to it's release?). It's strongest point is a bit less compression, making it a more "pleasant experience" at elevated volume.

Otherwise - I agree with Ed. This maybe just personal preference.

 

I think you're right about that, Al: personal preference. I play everything flat, with one exception: I'm always twiddling that woofer knob, because there's a wide disparity of music I play--whatever the format--and there sure is a wide disparity in the lower ranges. One notorious--maybe egregious is the better word--example on CD is Perry Como's "Catch A Falling Star" from one of the NIPPER comps. Let's forget the NR and other sonic drawbacks of that messy series for a moment, and focus on two things: first-time stereo , and a low register on the acoustic bass that, first time I played the thing, almost knocked me out of the La-Z-Boy: literally. You never saw a man run faster to that damned knob to lower the response. And the thing is, it comes out of nowhere: everything on that original CD which precedes it is either thin or has 'normal' range for '50s pop recordings. But that Como....even now, if I play it, in advance I reduce that woofer a few db just so I won't startle myself. Which brings me back to the Beatles: I think the reason I like HELP! and RS a little better than some is because, when I play those discs, when I hear the thinness in the bottom--which you accurately described, I believe--without even thinking I'll turn the woofer up a few db to add some extra 'oomph.' Just my nature to prefer a little kick, anyway, although not to the deafening, damaging degree most of today's teens and young adults tend to do. I do that with the WHITE as well, and possibly others. I also think Luke may have latched onto something with the Japan AR: could be treble boosting; hard to say for sure. I do agree with one thing: it ain't a first-gen tape source; 2nd at best, and I wouldn't swear to that, either. Somebody over there got called on the carpet for releasing it at all--EMI and Apple Corps were doubtless renegotiating royalty rates or something when it was issued in Japan--thus its scarcity today. BTW, I'll do some A/B'ing in the morning, when I've got the batteries fully charged and the java kicks in.

As for listening, it's usually CDs, but with these vinyl exceptions with Lp only in mind: Any of the first four Parlo stereo pressings; the German MMT; the stereo UK WHITE. Otherwise, I haven't really played the others--unless I get a sudden mono jones--in ages, tend to pick the convenience of the CDs. Having said that, I think either clean 1st or '70s UK reissues, in every instance--including Red & Blue--beat hell out of the CD editions, though I agree that MMT is close to the vinyl, but not so close that I'd take it over the German(I'm not that deluded). I also prefer the US RS mix on boot CD I've got; call me a fool but I can't get over that mix, flawed or not.
I've lived with it since I was a nipper; some things you just can't let go. Or the "Looking" false starts.

ED

 

It wasn't that they were dragging their feet, it was that Apple had sued EMI, and no one (EMI Japan or EMI Britain) could release Beatles CDs until the lawsuit was resolved. That's why the Japanese CD was pulled off the market.

My simplistic (and possibly inaccurate) understanding of the suit was that the record company believed the existing contracts gave them the right to issue CDs. The Beatles maintained that the existing contract only applied to LPs and tapes, and that a new contract had to be negotiated for CDs. Central to the issue was that record companies wanted to pay the same royalty rate per CD sold that they had for LPs and cassettes. The Beatles maintained that since CDs cost more, they should receive a higher royalty rate per unit sold for CDs. I believe creative control over future releases was also at issue, with the Beatles not wanting the market to be flooded with CD compilations of the sort that Capitol had been issuing for years on LP (Beatles Movie Medley, anyone?) The Beatles won the suit, opening the door finally for the 1987 CD releases. And the suit was what prevented Capitol from just issuing their existing catalog (including the American version LPs, Hollywood Bowl, etc onto CD).

 

For me, the two best sounding "official" Beatles CD releases are the original Japanese Abbey Road and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack (*not* to be confused with the Yellow Submarine Songtrack).

It's ironic that the best sounding currently available EMI Beatles CD is probably their least popular .