This is a promo video for the remastered Beatles CD’s that I grabbed from Amazon.com.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/SEP/BeatlesAmazon.flv 480 360]
These CD’s are sort of a stand against the grain of lossy, compressed MP3 digital audio, but they’re still limited to 16-bit/44.1 KHz CD sound. I wish there were a standard, higher quality lossless digital format for consumers.
Some fannish things that matter to me:
- These are remasters of the original mixes (yay!), with two exceptions.
- The stereo “HELP!” and “Rubber Soul” are George Martin’s 80’s remixes (boo!).
- I hope the splices in “She Loves You” are smoothed over.
- I hope the quick channel fade-out in “Day Tripper” is fixed.
- I can almost live with the splices in “This Boy”
The first four titles were available on CD only in mono until now, because the stereo versions are said to not be true mix-downs. But that’s precisely why I want the stereo versions — they make it possible to hear exactly, in detail, how Norman Smith engineered the sessions.
I’m not happy that “HELP!” and “Rubber Soul” aren’t the original 60’s mixes. This greatly undermines the spirit of the set.
Some first impressions of individual tracks on the new Beatles CD’s are available from picky listeners who were congregated in a high-end audio showroom in the city of my birth, Evanston, Illinois.
