George Martin quotes re: stereo vs. mono

100 % with you. Mono Beatles are now beginning to bore me. The mono box doesn't make me change that stand. However, I'm blown by the stereo remasters of LPs like Beatles for sale, which I previously didn't spin much. Stereos are made for listening on a set up, not with headphones. Mono sounds boxed in. I wish they spent some real time mastering the mono, bringing them to sounding as good as the best LPs pressing out there. As they are, the monos sound old.

 

moins un.

 

I like all the mixes - Mono, original hard-panned stereo, 1987 Stereo remixes. Only I can't listen to the original stereo through headphones, where Paul is standing right next to you and singing right into your ear.

 

Hey Grant!

I appreciate that I'm the only person in the world that likes twin-track, nevertheless I hope that you will understand that it gets somewhat wearing to find it dismissed all the time (by default) as inferior.

I wouldn't even think of dismissing your mono as inferior.

We like things differently.

 

Lewisohn's comment about mixing times today vs. yesterday is not exactly apples and oranges.

Songs released today are recorded with boatloads of tracks, each with independent panning controls. Mixing even 1 modern song recorded like this in stereo in half an hour would be quite an accomplishment with all the sound and position choices available. The Beatles recordings were on 4-tracks.

The Beatles For Sale sessions were also tracked with expedited stereo mixing in mind:
Track 1: full rhythm track (or half rhythm track with just bass/drums)
Track 2: additional instruments (or half rhythm track with guitars)
Track 3: vocals
Track 4: more vocals, solos, etc

The REDD.51 desk panning arrangement had Tracks 1 and 2 panned hard left/right with Tracks 3 and 4 pulled to the center with a "spreader" control. With this desk configuration and the above tracking layout, any of the tapes could be played through the desk pre-panned and ready to go. All that was required was to adjust EQ and volume levels for each track and most of this had been established during the mono mixing.

 

Man truer word's have never been written!Where's the bass?

 

Less time to spend 'fixing' the sound, hence the relatively unprocessed results which appeal to our ears now. With extra time, I guess they'd have worked more to match the tonality of the mono mix.

 

I feel that way about the whole WTB album - the stereo mix is very lively and dynamic, while the mono mix pretty much just lays there.

That said, I find the 2009 mono remaster to be a tremendous improvement over the 1987 disc. It has fuller sound and the icky top end found on the 1987 is much more tame on the 2009.

 

Uh, what exactly is dangerous about mono?

 

If they did remix the whole catalogue & had used these for the stereo box I'd have bought it. Meantime I'm still in the throes of a mono box frenzy.
Where did you hear about a comprehensive stereo remix Mark?
Reliable source(s) or just rumour/hearsay? Hope you're right!

 

As a kid when I discovered the "stereo separation", I thought it was cool. In the pre-internet, pre-Lewisohn era, it was a popular misconception that the fabs DELIBERATELY recorded it that way!

However, in the walkman thru Ipod era, where listening on earphones became the way the majority of folks listen to music - myself included - this became a major annoyance.

So when the new mono remasters arrived, I listened with great interest to hear it properly - and it brought me back to the birth of my interest in the Beatles - I was hearing the mono clearly again for the first time since the early 1970's! Until then, ALL my Beatles albums were the "high fidelity" capitol albums (unless there was no mono version) - as they were less expensive.

While the stereo remasters do sound better, and I enjoyed the nostalgia of the Capitol Stereo sets, the mono is my preference now - and I am MORE excited at the prospect of NEW REMIXES that bring the Beatles into a more modern sonic landscape, spreading the instruments across a greater spectrum than we've ever heard before.

With the exception of Abbey Road and Let It Be (which they likely had ZERO input regarding the stereo mix), the mono mixes are absolutely what the fabs intended - and I daresay, that these stereo remasters (which have mono counterparts) should be permanently retired when the new remixes come out - but the mono's should be kept in circulation for eternity.

 

That's a bit harsh no? While sometimes he gets the facts a bit mixed up, he has consistently answered questions on the Beatle's recordings with intelligence and pride. He is another great bearer of the Beatles flame. He also has admitted he does not listen to the recordings after completion, so you need to forgive him for sometimes forgetting things that were done 40 years ago. To us Beatles music is art and magic and defined our youth, to him it was a job that he did superbly.

 

News Flash! These mono recordings are between 40 and 47 years old. They are old. If you were a 13-year-old who bought Please, Please Me on the day of its release you'd be 60 today. These are mono recordings. Practically no one has made mono recordings in 40 years. These albums are not going to sound like the latest U2 or Green Day album. They are not supposed to. The stereo mixes, even with cleaning up and "modern" mastering sound dated in different ways. The music is still great. Enjoy it!

 

Sorry, too simple, too clear-cut.

 

The first four.
Please Please Me- Mono please

With The Beatles- Weird. I had the mono LP. Thought the stereo sounded weird. Like PPM I called it "Beatle Stereo", but when I got the Capitol Box the first thing I did was reassemble the Stereo albums. Maybe its the American mixes but THAT is my preferred version.

Hard Days Night- Stereo All the way. My VHS tape sounded better than the mono.

Beatles For Sale - Stereo. I loved those mixes on Beatles 65.

The decision to release AHDN and BFS in mono was one of convenience. They disliked the "on the fly" stereo mixes but didn't want to have to remix, so they claimed "historically accurate".

 

Question: For those of you who can't stand the mono remasters (too bass-shy, not lively, too "old"), what do you think of the original stereo mixes of Help and Rubber Soul on the mono box set from a mastering perspective? Are they better than the monos to your ears?

What I'm getting at is, do the monos suck because they are mono, or because they are less EQ'd than the stereos? Do the '65 stereo versions of Help and Rubber Soul (which I assume lack limiting and additional EQ like the monos) underwhelm you in the same way the monos do?

In other words, is it stereo=good - mono=bad, or EQ+limiting=good - flat transfer=bad?

This is NOT a question about the '65 stereo MIXES v. the '86 stereo MIXES, just the mastering.

 

1. Put on the PEPPER mono and see if anyone notices.
2. Play the stereo PEPPER everyone is familiar with.
3. REPLAY mono PEPPER.

The listener should leave loving both.....



ED

 

I'm curious about this as well. I'm also curious, what, specifically, they think should have been done to the mono mixes that wasn't done? Not just a generic statement like "I wish they had mastered them like the stereos" (something which for a variety of technical reasons explained by Allan Rouse in interviews was pretty much impossible anyway).

So what is it? Should the monos have been compressed to make them louder? There's not a lot of dynamic range in these recordings anyway, but perhaps people feel there is too much as it is. Should they have been EQ'd to pump up the bass and treble?

 

You pick....PICK what you like? Say Brother, what are you one of those "original thinkers"....bucking the herd? You better get in line before it's too late and this all goes on your permanent record!

...and I suppose next you'll tell us you have actually "just listened" to some of the music with your favorite beverage in hand instead of a pen and paper making notes!?

 

I am not sure why people pick on the early releases as having "bad stereo". Sure, the first 2 LP's had very dodgy stereo mixes, but Hard Day's Night has a lovely stereo mix, with vocals often centre and a good spread of instruments. This can obviously be attributed to the move to 4 track recording. I Want To Hold Your Hand has great stereo, including some nice guitar "pinging" around the stereo stage.

Another George Martin quote (getting back to the OP), this time from an interview done round about 1987 after the first few CD's:

ALLAN KOZINN: Still, even as late as the "White Album," you've got a different violin solo in "Don't Pass Me By," the airplanes coming in at different times in "Back in the USSR." They were clearly still entirely separate mixes.

GEORGE MARTIN: Yes, we were still doing different things then, but I was still working towards the compatibility, and in fact my attempts on "Rubber Soul" were to find a decent mono result from a stereo record. As you know, if you put something in the center, it comes up four dB louder in mono than it does in stereo. But if you tend to balance your things between one side and the other....And also, I was aware in those days that the majority of record players in the home were built into kind of sideboards, where the speakers were about three feet apart, and the stereo picture was a very near mono one anyway. So I exaggerated the stereo to get a clearer effect. These were experiments. It wasn't a question of rushing, I really was trying all sorts of things. (http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/kozinn.htm)

It's a jolly good job people don't do that now - given the tosh people play CD's on - they never had portable CD players and laptops in the 60's!

But I actually don't find those mixes all that offensive - although obviously it sounds like the mid-60's releases from about Help! to Pepper were an experimental blip. The guitar on the stereo Norwegian Wood is so lifelike on the stereo vinyl I can almost see fingers strumming the strings. The late Beatles stereo releases were a return to proper balanced stereo images.

Some of the mono differences are interesting though - for example on If I Fell, Paul's throat cracks on the words "sad if our new love was in vain". This was repaired via an edit on the mono, and left on the stereo. Also on that LP, there are more McCartney sore throat bits audible - there is a Woooah, cough, splutter on the stereo (not mono) When I Get Home, and elsewhere some of the vocals were double tracked for mono.

I am disappointed in the vinyl mono Revolver - the bass is terribly uneven on H,T&E, and YS is really badly compressed - much more open in stereo.

I have never heard a mono White, but I won't be buying the mono 2009 box set just for this!

 

If you think your mono box sounds bass-shy, turn up the bass on your amplifier. It's the same logic we toss out when others complain about well-mastered cds not being as loud as the maximized/brickwalled variety.

 

It's just an educated guess on my part but I bet that while they spent a lot of time perfecting the balance of the vocals, instruments, and effects on the mono mixes, they probably just had some fun experimenting with the stereo mixes, panning the separate tracks, utilizing wild effects and sweeps, bordering on unconventionality as long as it sounded coherent and fairly balanced. They couldn't have been too concerned with perfection considering the abrupt track transitions that occurred and the various dropouts and mistakes along the way. After all stereo was still considered somewhat of a novelty, not so much in the comical sense but more as a new and novel approach to hearing music.

 

I quite agree. He's 70+ years old, a lot of this stuff occurred years ago. How many of us can claim absolutely perfect "fidelity" when it comes to memories. For the most part most of his observations and memories have been pretty accurate overall.

 

The mono for the White Album sounds quite good and while there are some differences (Helter Skelter is a minute shorter and without "I've got blisters on my fingers" from Ringo), "Don't Pass Me By" is faster with a different solo (as noted) and there are other minor differences.

Some songs sound better in mono some better in stereo. It's a pity they weren't released as two disc sets so fans could choose but EMI recognized that most folks wouldn't have any interest in the monos...