polytourist97 on 13/9/2009 at 23:56
My local (and awesome) record store had a listening party with side-by-side comparisons of the 87 releases and the new remasters, from that experience I can say:
1. The new releases are MUCH LOUDER than the old ones
2. Others may disagree, but I found the new ones did lose some dynamics due to the massive volume increase
3. The new releases still can't hold a candle to a good vinyl copy
PigLick on 14/9/2009 at 00:20
Yeh I still have a lot of Beatles on vinyl, even have an old bootleg of one of their Japan concerts on vinyl. The only track I have heard from the new stuff is 'Back in the USSR', it was really crisp and separated, but yeh, just not the same as the vinyl. Actually, nothing is the same as vinyl.
also overuse of word vinyl in this
Aja on 14/9/2009 at 02:24
did they lose the original tapes?
Why didn't they just transfer the vinyl masters onto the new CDs? In my experience, a well-mastered CD won't sound much different than a record on a nice stereo.
BrokenArts on 14/9/2009 at 03:14
I'm still pissed at my brother for taking back his *white album* from me.
Paz on 14/9/2009 at 18:49
Quote Posted by polytourist97
1. The new releases are MUCH LOUDER than the old ones
2. Others may disagree, but I found the new ones did lose some dynamics due to the massive volume increase
3. The new releases still can't hold a candle to a good vinyl copy
Which ones did you hear man? I don't think they've really upped the volume all that much - there's certainly no obnoxious clipping or anything like that.
The only thing I'm not thrilled with is the hard stereo panning, but that's 60s stereo mixes for you.
Quote:
Why didn't they just transfer the vinyl masters onto the new CDs?
I'm pretty sure they have been using the master tapes (I listened to a cool BBC radio programme where they were isolating different channels from the master tapes, like just the bass from "Come Together" and stuff.)
As far as I know just doing "straight rips" from master tapes to CDs doesn't always go that well. All the Prince CDs use this method, and they sound kinda crappy; although oddly enough the audiophile community love 'em because you can still hear the tape hiss and all that.
Unfortunately we don't all have £50,000 systems to play them through so they mostly sound baaaaad. Albeit pure.
I'm kinda basing this on second-hand stuff I've heard from people who actually know what they're talking about though.
Turtle on 14/9/2009 at 22:16
The ones I've heard so far sound much brighter, but not overly loud.
Although the loudness is the first thing you notice when comparing them side by side.
Aja on 15/9/2009 at 02:30
Quote Posted by Paz
As far as I know just doing "straight rips" from master tapes to CDs doesn't always go that well. All the Prince CDs use this method, and they sound kinda crappy; although oddly enough the audiophile community love 'em because you can still hear the tape hiss and all that.
From my own limited comparisons using admittedly lower-end equipment, the major difference I've noticed between vinyl and CD (besides the obvious surface noise) is that records have pronounced upper-mids, while CDs tend to emphasize treble and bass.
I do have one album, though, that I own on both CD and vinyl—Zappa's "One Size Fits All"—that was supposedly transfered to CD from the original master. When I compare the two I can hardly tell the difference. So it's certainly possible to get a close-sounding replica across formats. Other albums that I own on CD and record tend to sound different, but I think that difference is almost always attributable to a different mix or master, which is the case here with the Beatles. Maybe they thought they were improving upon the original versions.
Paz on 15/9/2009 at 12:28
Well obviously a lot of the Beatles stereo mixes are different because they previously didn't exist. Uh, I think anyway ...
It gets confusing as hell because you have some which were only in mono but are now in both, some which were mono and George Martin did a stereo remix in '87 for the CDs, some which were both at the time of release and then some which are ONLY in stereo.
And then
Help! which has a mono mix, an original stereo mix (in the mono box) and an '87 stereo mix which is the one on the remastered stereo release, aaaarrgghh
Pitchfork put up some (
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13425-stereo-box-in-mono/) side-by-side waveforms of the '87 CDs vs '09 CDs (stereo/mono), and it looks like the new stereo ones do up the volume further than I thought. They're skirting close to the edge in some cases, but mostly still have space to spare.
Aja on 15/9/2009 at 18:15
Some of those waveforms (especially near the end) look like they're clipping.
Stitch on 15/9/2009 at 18:49
Some compression and limiting is expected in any competent mastering job. These remasters actually look very tastefully done, and their loudness over the original masters is to be expected considering the latter weren't even normalized to peak at zero.
From a waveform inspection angle, this is the best these songs have ever looked.
Also: building on what Paz said slightly earlier, I would gladly sacrifice authenticity in the name of competent stereo mixes, but it would appear that crazy shit like hard panning the rhythm section is here to stay.
