Beatles CD singles & EP boxes - same mastering?

Grab a Capitol Canada Long Tall Sally LP. Might be hard to find a pristine first pressing on the black/rainbow label. I have two copies. A first pressing and one of the last mono pressings in the late 1970s on the purple label. Even though the label says stereo (* mono), the whole LP is still the mono master. The LP was stickered with the wrong labels. This was about the time that Capitol Candad began pressing With The Beatles, Twist And Shout and LTS in stereo for the first time.

Sounds very clean.

The 3 unique Capitol Canada LPs were one generation from the U.K. masters. Similar to the EPs. No Dave Dexter up here.

 

Sure, it's still set up, I'll do it again. Remember, please, I never tried this before, so I do not know what I'm talking about. I'll just tell you what I hear.

Playing monaural UA "A Hard Day's Night", chosen because I believe it to be mono-cut mono. I play this thru a single OOPSed speaker, with L+R summed. Turning my Balance contol the left, or to the right, I have a strong clean signal. In the center, I hear only a very soft clean signal, which I assume is bleedthrough from somewhere, and assume that the near-total loss of volume is a cancellation. This is exactly what I'd expected with a single speaker wired out of phase. Is this what I should hear?

Playing the UA mono AHDN withOUT summing L+R, I hear some surface crackle with the Balance in center, along with a very weak music signal. Does this make sense? To the left & right are strong music signals.

Playing Rarities/Across The Universe (stereo) with L+R summed, nothing comes out of the OOPSed speaker. WithOUT summing L+R, I hear a strong clean signal of isolated performances, the girls singing, guitar and sitar (?) strums, etc. This was the only thing I'd ever heard of doing with an OOPSed speaker before. It is sort of neat actually, hmm. I'd never actually tried it.

Playing Rarities/Yes It Is (stereo-cut mono) with L+R summed, nothing comes out of the OOPSed speaker. Without summing L+R, I hear a strong, phase-y signal of the music with the balance in the center. It sounds like an AM radio that's de-tuned from the station, with a swirling or swishing interference throughout the overall sound. Note that I misspoke last night, and said this was the effect with L+R, when I should have said without. ...that's what we get for staying up late.

The same was true for every stereo-cut mono track on side 1 of my blue cover UK Rarities, as for "Yes It Is". "The Inner Light" is the most pronounced.

And of course, when I play "Rarities" stereo-cut mono tracks on my normal, nonOOPSed speakers, with the mono button depressed, I hear a loss of treble. That's how I got into this mess . Same normal-wired setup, when I play UA mono AHDN LP, with the mono button depressed, I just lose all the surface noise, no loss of treble.

Now that's what I hear, but the only part I truly understand the cause of is the OOPSed genuine stereo signal. I.e the L cancels the R where the signals are the same, and unique L and unique R signals are heard plainly. Thanks guys, for all the explanations, some of it still goes over my head though.

I understand the "Rarities" mono tracks to have that swishing sound I'm bringing out due to the stereo head playing back the mono tape.

I hope this answers your question, it's the best I can express it!

By the way, I still worry that this is crapping your thread. Hope it's O.K.

Do we know yet if an original Parlophone 45 is the only good source for "I'll Get You"? Whether the CD Single has mastering errors? That's the part I'm really interested in! Just trying to get a complete, nice-sounding mono & stereo set of Beatles!

Cheers,
Doug Piero Carey

 

Thanks for the great advice!

Be seeing you,
Doug Piero Carey

 

I just did an OOP phase test on the first few singles (I skipped Love Me Do since those use the wrong tapes anyway). Here is What I found:

Please Please Me - extremely out of phase
Ask Me Why - extremely out of phase
From Me to You - out of phase but less so than PPM single
Thank You Girl - same as From Me to You
She Loves You - not out of phase
I'll Get You - not out of phase
I Want to Hold Your Hand - out of phase
This Boy - out of phase
Can't Buy Me Love - extremely out of phase
You Can't Do That - extremely out of phase
A Hard Day's Night - out of phase
Things We Said Today - out of phase

After that I got depressed and quit doing the test.

 

Thanks, AS. Maybe I'll just stick with the EP box where possible.

 

Other than the obvious bad news, the big surprise to me was that I'll Get You was not out of phase. My guess is that that would make it the best version available.

 

Just as an addendum, I did out of phase tests on several of the tracks from the EP box set, and they are all real mono.

 

as,

I spent a little time on this problem last night and this morning. "From Me To You" is OOP on the singles box, just as you said. On the EP box, it is in true mono, also as you said. I went further and corrected the singles box version by copying one channel into the other channel, thus eliminating the OOP problem.

Now I had three versions: singles box, singles box (corrected), and EP box. I burned all three to a CD-R. Then I listened.

First I compared the corrected and uncorrected singles box versions. I could clearly hear the OOP problem. For example, during the first verse Ringo hits the closed hi-hat on every beat. On the OOP single, these hits are very vague. As you would expect with the channels OOP, you can't really tell where they're coming from and they lack definition. The voices also sound a little phasey.

On the corrected version, these problems disappeared. The hi-hat strikes are clearly defined and dead center. The voices also cleared up. Everything sounded more detailed. Again, this is what one would expect from true mono.

Then the interesting comparison: the corrected singles box version versus the EP box version. The winner: the corrected singles box version. By comparison, the EP version is duller, with less detail, less definition, and less space around the voices; just what you'd expect from a later-gen tape.

Based on the above comparison, I've decided to correct all the OOP singles box tracks and use those.

Of course, this doesn't help where the incorrect source was used to begin with, i.e., the first two singles. For PPM/AMW, I compared my own needle drop with Dr. Ebbetts'. I give the prize to the good doctor in this case. His drop just has better resolution than mine, although it also has a rising top. I attribute both of these qualities to the MC cartridge the doctor uses; I have a MM Stanton cart. (I recently picked up a vintage Shure V15VMR; once I get it set up I'll try again.) As for LMD/PSILY, I haven't compared all my sources yet. I'll post again when I do.

P.S. I checked Dr. Ebbetts' needle drop of PPM/AMW for phase and it is correct. Either the '70s recut 45 was cut correctly (pace Steve) or the doctor corrected for the phase problem the way I did.

P.P.S. I think our phase tests show that on the singles box, EMI did not insert the double Y cable for us. Had they done so, the channels would be identical, albeit incorrect. It looks like they simply transferred the left and right channel outputs of the stereo deck to digital without combining them. And thank goodness for that! Had they combined the channels to mono, the OOP problem would be beyond fixing.

P.P.P.S. I'll also post a complete list of the OOP singles box tracks, following on from where you left off.

 

I take this back. I listened again and couldn't be sure there was any difference in the treble with or without the double Y cable inserted, aside from less noise. Unfortunately I don't have a "mono" switch so I can't do an intantaneous A/B comparison, which would give a more accurate result.

 

RZangpo2,

Did you find that in the end all of the singles (except She Loves You/I'll Get You) were OOP? Did you end up correcting all of them?

Edit: I see in your post above that you will post your results. I look forward to reading them.

 

Whoah! I only did this for one track so far, "From Me To You". I'll check the rest of the tracks and post the results, but it may take a little while. Gotta go visit my Mom!

 

Can't agree with you there, Steve. I think another side and I have proved that the OOP CD singles come from "mono tapes played back over a stereo head and not reduced to mono", to quote MNE's description of the blue cover Rarities album. The key phrase here is "not reduced to mono", i.e., not folded. That means they are fixable, and as a test I've actually fixed one of them.

At least that's what Peak 4 and my ears tell me. Am I still missing something? Another side (or any reader of this thread), could you please duplicate what I've done and report the result?

 

So are you saying, Steve, that there should be no degradation in the sound of a mono track if it is played through a stereo machine without setting the Az. properly providing it is not folded to mono (either by an engineer or by me at home)?

 

So I guess, my error was in asserting that the tracks were out of phase, when it is in fact a different problem (albeit related).

I notice that on that thread (which coincidentally I was reading this morning) you said that the tape will still sound "pretty good", but that does that imply that the track will lose something even if it is not that much. Also what would be the theoretical difference between the left and right channels in this situation (mono tape through stereo machine)? Would it only be a perceived difference in loudness?

 

I think it's a problem with terminology...

If left and right channels are out of phase, when mono'ed they will sum to zero. i.e. you'll hear nothing.

If left and right channels have "phase problems", then depending on how different they are, it will result (when summed to mono) in the mushy sound Steve describes.

.

 

Well, when I do my test it shows that there is a difference between the left and right channels. I was wondering if you knew theoretically what that difference was. A difference in tonality, volume, etc.

 

That makes perfect sense. And I guess I can conclude from that, that if the tape is not worn on one side, then the two should sound virtually identical, even if the Az. is not set properly.

 

Well, after all that I finally had time to post my results. I chose I Feel Fine instead of From Me to You, bacause it is a better recording, and I thought that it would be easier to tell if there are any odd things on the different versions. In the following link I have the regular not quite mono CD single version, a fold down of that version, and the right channel only. Keep in mind that the fold down is a bit louder than the rest, but you can clearly hear the our of phase problems with it.

I Feel Fine out of phase test

 

I would tend to think that if the azimuth is not set properly, then that would be the source of all the stuff you're discussing here... Isn't that where we started?

Really, you can have a true mono record that was made from a true mono tape that was poorly mastered (for example, played back on a stereo tape head that was not calibrated correctly). The record (or cd for that matter) will always stay true mono, but no matter what you do to it, you'll never get rid of that azimuth problem.

The bottom line is... Some Beatles records where mastered well and some were not. If you want the good ones, they tend to be very old and probably very used, and therefore very expensive to obtain. Or maybe somewhat hard to find like the UK or Japan monos. Whatever the case, collecting good pressings of the Beatles catalog is not for the faint of heart.

The sad thing is, the Beatles could change all that, but they either don't care or they are ignorant to this particular problem. I'm pretty certain that they still have (at least at this point in time) very nice condition tapes that are just sitting there waiting to have the breath of life sucked right out of them by a record company with good intentions.

 

I agree. I always thought that that was the cause of the whole issue (poor azimuth calibration or whatever it's called). What was interesting to me in hearing the samples was how obvious the out of phase became when folded down to mono. It was night and day. BTW, I purposely made WAV files instead of mp3's to avoid any file compression issues. The other thing that I thought was interesting was that there is a discernible difference between the original track and the right channel alone, but that it's hard for me to decide which sounds better.