*UPDATED* Message from Allan Rouse @ Abbey Road BEATLES CD's (SEE POST 84)*

Thanks for this post Mr. Rouse!

 

Ditto!!!
This past month has been like going back to that one special Christmas as a child.
The day after Thanksgiving, the anticipation starts, and it just keeps growing... getting sweeter and more intense by the day.

Finally, the Beatles' catalog is getting the attention it so richly deserves.

It's all I've been able to think about. And this forum is only making it WORSE!

 

Allan, many thks for the message.

 

Thanks! for the update, Allan.

 

Thanks for the information Allan--I think that you've put a lot of concerns (and speculation) to rest. I'm looking forward to both the mono and stereo remasters. All of us here appreciate the hard work and often difficult decisions regarding the work on these masters that you and others have had to make but, ultimately, also recognize that while your expertise was often called upon that sometimes you folks didn't have the final say about things. Thanks for making the original stereo masters of "Help!" and "Rubber Soul" available as well and for your efforts in obtaining a release for them. I realize George Martin's concern about these masters but that's the way they were done and to be honest the mixing of that never bothered me much as a kid (and actually I thought it was kind of cool). I continue to value them the way they were prepared originally.

When listening to the discussion about the remasters via amazon.com to me at least it was apparent (and I'm sure that others felt the same way) that you folks put a lot of effort, creative thought and love into recreating these.

We appreciate it even if we sometimes don't seem like we do.

 

Very much appreciated. Thanks for clearing some things up for us Mr. Rouse.

 

13 more days...

 

I was hoping to find out why they were worried about making the stereo version louder with compression. What was the point?

 

why?

 

Makes no sense to me. Would of been a great opportunity to explain why with some kind of form letter. Oh well, over now and done. Just wanted to know from the people who did it but this is probably why.

 

But why so few mono boxes?

 

This Forum is making a huge buzz in the music business!
Thank you Gary for posting this.

Thank you Mr. Allan Rouse, Mike Heatley and the rest of the Abbey Road team for proposing the inclusion of the original 60's stereo mix in addition to 1987 George Martin stereo remix.
This inclusion is one of the main factors in my decision to get the mono box set in addition to the stereo box set.

 

Just a`quick note to say thank you to Allan for posting here, and another “heads up” for the Record Collector interview where Allan’s sense of humour shines through.

Of note (to me, anyway) in the RC interview:

Analogue EQ and limiting

Noise reduction used mainly on intros and gaps

20 songs have no EQ or limiting applied

100 have 1dB or less of EQ

 

Many thanks Allan for your information about what you and the team did in preparing the re-masters. I really liked the bit where you mentioned the use of the Full Track head for the mono's as it was a great idea!
I have been very impressed with what I've heard personally - you all sure seem to handled the presentation of the catalogue well - and am looking forward to playing the discs.

 

I must say that Allan's message has addressed a lot of my questions about the new remasters and that I will be buying them on 09/09/09 with a lot of confidence.

The one thing I am still wondering about though is what attempts, if any, were made to fix problems with the two most-problematic early tracks, Please Please Me (Stereo) and She Loves You?

 

A friend of mine is a musician who did a few albums on a major label. In this iPod world, it's competing with the other songs on shuffle - your song can't be 6dB lower than everyone else's. That's all it is. Unfortunate though it is...

 

Bloody Ipod's fault, most decent Mp3 players have a 'normalise' button, Apple computers should build more responsable features into there players instead of fancy games and graphics IMO

 

Allan
we all appreciate you taking time out to talk about your impossible task* with the Beatles' remasters, thank you
JohnnyH

*pleasing everybody

 

iPods do have a normalise function called SoundCheck.

Other people use MP3Gain which makes the loudness the same irrespective of what MP3 player is used.

 

In that case there is no reason for Cd's to not be a certain loudness, and the shuffle argument does not hold IMO

 

Actually, each feature can work differently - some calculate a song's peak and adjust level; some a song's average volume. So some fail miserably. Not to mention that a lot of kids listening on an iPod may never even bother to go into the settings to check something like that.

 

It's okay if they made the stereo ones a little louder, as long as they've avoided dynamic range compression, clipping and brickwalling then everyone's okay, which is what it sounds like they've done.

Amazing info from Allan, thanks very much. I completely understand why he can't talk about any other possible format releases over the next 2~3 years (vinyl, Blu-ray 24/192)....one thing at a time.

 

To Allan Rouse and your AR team; you may never be "household names" to the general public but, around this little corner of the Internet, I suspect you will be always held in high regard indeed. Thank you.

And, who knows what tech advances will occur over that time? Blue Ray, 12/192, all these things may be old hat by 2012 or so.