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Posted by Steve E ****
on 9/21/2009, 1:54 pm, in reply to "Against Remasters"
Message modified by user Steve E 9/21/2009, 2:09 pm
OK, I'm gonna geek out here.
Barry,
The mono box contains vintage 1960's mono mixes that have been unavailable for a long time. It also contains the original stereo mixes for their two 1965 UK albums (Help and Rubber Soul) --the mixes I grew up with-- which were _never_ released on legit CD (except for a mixup in Canada).
Almost every Beatles song from the beginning through 1968 was mixed at least twice in the 1960's. Mono mixes were usually given the most attention, since: 1) most people were listening to these songs on am radio and 2) most people had mono (one speaker) record players.
Stereo was an afterthought, because
1) Most people didn't have stereo (two-speaker) record players, and they were considered sort of a high end gimmick until FM radio appeared in 1968. Stereo records were more expensive and they were for rich people and technical geeks.
2) Pop records, recorded on 2 to 4 tracks for much of the 60's, simply COULDN'T be mixed realistically into stereo.
So the Beatles usually didn't even bother to stick around for the stereo mixes, which were quickly done and sometimes even lacked overdubs and little "fixes" found in the mono mixes. Certain records have great stereo mixes: "Beatles for Sale" and the White Album, for example. Others are inconsistent.
It was only around 1969 that stereo became the standard format. Suddenly, all these thin and sloppy stereo mixes of the Beatles catalog became the standard mixes. So, we've been listening to pretty weak mixes of some of this stuff for the past 40 years.
Then, in the 1980's, George Martin even did lame-o digital remixes of the 1965 albums, which are now the standard mixes. The other albums were just sort of thrown out there, sometimes very poorly transferred from the tapes (esp. Revolver). Two of the albums from 1964 sound unusually great in stereo but they chose only the mono mixes.
So these remasters are a great opportunity to fix some of these problems. Unfortunately, for the stereo releases, they are still using the lame remixes for two albums, and apparently they are compressing the dynamics on other albums, which potentially makes them only sound good at low volumes ("loud" but lacking in dynamics, which means less exciting over time). They are boosting the bass and treble to make the CDs sound better on laptops. I have not heard the results. Potentially, that sucks. Some people are hating the new White Album, especially.
BUT....the mono box is well done. The packaging is great. They didn't do the potentially lame-o compressing and bass boosting that was done to the stereo remasters. The mono White Album is a very different vintage mix and it rocks. I am enjoying the hell out of the whole thing.
Technical, geeky, PS....You can't actually just combine stereo tracks and get a good mono mix. Anything mixed into the "center" of the mix (that is, things that appear in both channels) will be boosted completely out of proportion to the stuff panned hard left and hard right. It will be somewhere between 4.5 db and 6 db too loud. Some 60's stereo mixes sound terrible for this reason--they were actually mixed using only 1 monitor speaker, and when played back on two speakers, everything is off. That's part of why the early 60's Beach Boys stereo mixes sound so thin.
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