Can't Buy Me Box Sets

[rich]

thx, John

I wonder though how they will sound on IPod and not on a stereo system

rich


On 9/2/09, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:
> NP, really, but this (p)review of the forthcoming Beatles Remasters,
> by Alan Kozinn, is very much worth reading.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/arts/music/06alla.html?_r=1&ref=television&pagewanted=all
>
> Requires NYT registration so I'll quote the text here. Apologies for
> wasting space, for those who aren't Beatles fans. Or should that be,
> those who aren't Beatles fans, apologise....
>
>
>
> September 6, 2009
> Long and Winding Road, Newly Repaved
>
> By ALLAN KOZINN
> THE newly remastered CDs of the Beatles’ original albums and singles,
> which EMI and Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, are releasing on
> Wednesday, have less of a gee-whiz factor than The Beatles: Rock Band,
> which hits stores on the same day. But for those of us for whom the
> music is paramount — and who will forever refer to Rock Band as “the
> toy” — the game is a plastic tail wagging a cartoonish dog. And though
> the compact disc, as a format, may be on its deathbed, these
> remastered CDs are really the main event.
>
> The complete catalog, in mono and stereo, has been given a careful
> digital upgrade. These are straightforward transfers of the albums as
> they were released in Britain, rather than the American versions,
> which were reconfigured by Capitol Records (to the Beatles’ chagrin).
> Do not look for bonus tracks: the only extras are making-of
> documentaries on each of the stereo discs. And although the stereo and
> mono mixes could have fit together on single CDs, in most cases EMI is
> selling them separately.
>
> The up side: In most cases this music has dimension and detail that it
> never had before, and the new packaging reflects each album’s musical
> and cultural importance. Over all, the new discs sound substantially
> better than the Beatles’ original CDs, which EMI issued in 1987. The
> most striking and consistent improvements are a heftier, rounded,
> three-dimensional bass sound, and drums that now sound like drums,
> rather than something in the distance being hit. But because each
> album has its own sonic character, due partly to developments in
> recording technology during the Beatles’ career, and partly to the
> growing complexity of their work, some discs are improved more
> radically than others, and some are hardly improved at all.
>
> Probably the most revelatory of the new transfers is the stereo White
> Album. From the opening jet engine effects on “Back in the U.S.S.R” to
> the final orchestral chord on “Good Night,” this album now leaps from
> the speakers. Gentler songs like “Julia” and “I Will” have a lovely
> transparency, and hard rockers like “Yer Blues” and “Helter Skelter” —
> as well as John Lennon’s quirky vision of dystopia, “Revolution 9” —
> have a power and fullness unheard until now.
>
> “Abbey Road” also benefits considerably. The clearer instrumental
> profiles serve this rich-textured album beautifully: “Sun King” and
> “Here Comes the Sun” are unusually supple; the vocal on “You Never
> Give Me Your Money” no longer has a shrill edge, and Lennon’s
> proto-Minimalist “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” has never sounded more
> mesmerizing. Nor has the group’s valedictory jam in “The End.”
>
> And if you are cherry-picking among these reissues, the two-CD singles
> compilation “Past Masters” should be near the top of your list. The
> stereo mixes of these songs are often less hard hitting than the mono
> singles were, but the remastered versions, with their enriched bass,
> palpable drum sound and improved sense of vocal presence, no longer
> sound anemic. You find yourself discovering textural details (the
> percussion overlay in “She’s a Woman” is one such surprise) that show
> how imaginative the Beatles’ arrangements are.
>
> It’s about time. In 1987 the elation of finally getting the group’s
> classic recordings on CD, four years after the format was introduced,
> quickly gave way to disappointment with the discs’ sound quality and
> presentation. Like many early CDs, several (though not all) of the
> Beatles’ discs had a harsh upper range. And except for “Sgt. Pepper’s
> Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which was put in a deluxe package with liner
> essays and archival photos, the 1987 CDs came with minimal, slapdash
> artwork.
>
> Collectors who had long prized both the mono and stereo mixes of the
> group’s albums, which have different attractions (and sometimes
> different vocal takes and instrumental details), and had hoped that
> EMI would find a way to release both mixes on CD, were upset that the
> 1987 series offered the first four albums only in mono and the rest
> only in stereo. In one sense all of the group’s music had made the
> transfer; in another, about half the catalog was missing.
>
> In a way it still is: the stereo recordings are available either
> individually for $18.98; $24.98 for double albums, or boxed (as “The
> Beatles”) for $259.98. But the mono albums can be had only in a
> 13-disc boxed set, “The Beatles in Mono,” for $298.98, which covers up
> to the White Album (the last album the group mixed in mono) and
> includes a mono version of the “Past Masters” singles compilation that
> includes previously unissued mono mixes of “Across the Universe” and
> songs from the “Yellow Submarine” soundtrack.
>
> The Beatles and their producer, George Martin, considered the mono
> mixes definitive, and you don’t have to be a Beatles completist to see
> why. “She’s Leaving Home,” which drags sappily on the stereo “Sgt.
> Pepper,” is faster on the mono album, which also has a decidedly more
> psychedelic sounding “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” a punchier “Good
> Morning, Good Morning” and a sizzling reprise of the title song.
> “Magical Mystery Tour” is far more solid and detailed in mono, and the
> White Album is packed with details you don’t hear in the stereo mix.
> But by making them available only in a collectors’ box, EMI has made
> it impossible for many listeners to sample one or two.
>
> To produce the new CDs, EMI returned to the mono and stereo masters
> prepared for the group’s vinyl releases in the 1960s, which the label
> says have remained in pristine condition. These are the same tapes EMI
> used in 1987, but analog-to-digital technology has improved
> considerably since then, making it possible to get a much more
> fine-grained, high-resolution digital transfer. And where the 1987
> transfers were done quickly, the new set was assembled over four
> years, with different teams working on the mono and stereo recordings.
>
> As in 1987 there are two exceptions to the “’60s masters only” rule:
> the stereo “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” discs use the remixes that Mr.
> Martin made for the 1987 CDs. It may seem inconsistent to present
> these remixes as the de facto standards, given that Allan Rouse, who
> oversaw the project, has said that the goal was to produce a series of
> CDs that sound as close as possible to the ’60s master tapes.
>
> But Mr. Martin’s updates largely match the placements and balances of
> the originals, and because they were made from the multitrack session
> tapes, instruments and vocals sound strikingly fresher than in the
> 1965 versions (which are included in the mono box). Perhaps not
> surprisingly, given their digital origins, the new “Help!” and “Rubber
> Soul” CDs, though slightly louder than their 1987 counterparts — as
> all the new discs are — are identical in matters of timbre and
> definition. The group’s experimental “Revolver” and “Magical Mystery
> Tour,” and its back-to-basics “Let It Be,” if not as lapel-grabbing as
> the upgrades of the White Album and “Abbey Road,” nevertheless benefit
> from the more distinct instrumental and vocal profiles of the new
> transfers.
>
> “Sgt. Pepper,” oddly, is a mixed bag. Instrumental textures are
> crisper and cleaner, and the bass is firmer. And songs like “Getting
> Better” have shed the piercing treble sound that afflicted the 1987
> version. Yet several songs — “Fixing a Hole” and “She’s Leaving Home,”
> among them — now sound flatter, or less dynamically fluid, than they
> did on either the 1987 CD or a good British LP.
>
> Among the early albums I have always loved the wide stereo separation
> of “Please Please Me” and “With the Beatles” — despite its vigorous
> condemnation by Mr. Martin (which is why they have not been available
> on CD) — because it lets you hear exactly what’s happening in both the
> instrumental and vocal arrangements. Those albums sound superb, as do
> the better-balanced “Hard Day’s Night” and “Beatles for Sale.”
>
> Few listeners are likely to replace their CDs for the sake of new
> cover art, but it is a distinct attraction. The stereo discs come in
> three-panel (four for the “White Album”) laminated sleeves, with
> booklets that include the original liner notes and lyrics (if they
> came with the LP), contemporaneous photos and new essays about what
> the Beatles were up to when they made the album at hand and (more
> cursorily) how the recordings were produced. The discs are pressed on
> reproductions of the various Parlophone, Capitol and Apple labels on
> which the albums first appeared.
>
> The video documentaries, embedded as computer-playable QuickTime files
> on the stereo CDs, draw largely on interviews recorded for “The
> Beatles Anthology” (1995) and offer a few surprises. With the
> exception of Mr. McCartney, for example, the group had an almost
> perversely dismissive attitude toward “Sgt. Pepper.” Ringo Starr says
> he preferred the group dynamic on the White Album (even though he quit
> in frustration during the sessions) and “Let It Be” (when the band was
> at its most fractious). The stereo box also includes a DVD compilation
> of these video clips.
>
> The mono discs lack the documentaries (and the DVD) and are packaged
> as copies of the original albums. The covers are accurate down to the
> quaint way EMI LP jackets were assembled in the ’60s (with glued-down
> cardboard flaps on the back). Extras like the White Album poster and
> portraits, and the “Sgt. Pepper” cutouts, are included too, as is a
> 44-page book of historical notes and pictures.
>
> In the 22 years since the release of the original, mediocre CDs, just
> about all of the Beatles’ great contemporaries — the Rolling Stones
> and Bob Dylan among them — have had their catalogs upgraded as
> technology has changed. Beatles fans have been begging EMI to do the
> same, and although the wait has been long, the new transfers are so
> good that this thrice-familiar music sounds fresher than ever.
>
> Now EMI should consider moving the catalog to a truly high-definition
> format, like Blue Ray DVD, adding newly remixed Surround versions like
> those on “The Beatles Anthology.” With the 50th anniversary of the
> Beatles’ first hit coming in 2012, there isn’t much time to waste.
>
>