"New" Beatles Mono Catalog Release on 180gr Vinyl

Slaw,
"Revolver" may be my favorite Beatles title. Your comment that the soundstage is "closed in" worries me a little. Did you use a dedicated mono cartridge or stereo?

10-05-14: Tonykay
Slaw,
"Revolver" may be my favorite Beatles title. Your comment that the soundstage is "closed in" worries me a little. Did you use a dedicated mono cartridge or stereo?

I have no no modern-day experience with a mono cartridge, and I love the involving effect of great soundstage and imaging. However, when it comes to multi-miked, multi-tracked studio albums, imaging and soundstage can be a crapshoot. When it comes to mono, you know the image is going to center between the speakers. Even so, mono usually has very nice sense of depth and ambienc, which these LPs have.

The most important trait (to me is tonal balance. And in this parameter, these new Mono analog LPs trump the thin, brittle-sounding Capitol stereo versions handily. They have a completely different gestalt. Before I heard EMI/Parlophone LPs, I had thought that Beatles albums had a thin and brittle-sounding tonal balance.

Not so for the mono versions, which are warm, rich, and full-sounding. EMI mixed these albums with mono in mind, and I love them. They re-define what I thought Beatles albums sounded like. Sgt. Peppers reflects the balance I hear on my 1st-run Capitol mono pressing. The engineering team spent about 4 days mixing down Sgt. Peppers to mono and about 4 hours to do the stereo version. It shows. The tonal balance is so much better, I really don't care how wide the soundstage is. I'll take these mono versions over the fake stereo versions any day, where the voices were hard left and instruments hard right.

I listened to Revolver again last night. It really is a superb LP. However, I think it is important to note that since it is mono, it has all of the "deficiencies" of mono. If you reference a great stereo LP against a great mono LP ( like this Beatles reissue), the constriction of the soundstage and the placement of the musicians on the stage is obviously lacking in the mono issue.
On my system, the musicians and all of the 'action' takes place only between the speakers. No left or right stage delineation. ( I am only using a stereo cart, so that may be a factor, although I doubt it).
I hate to say this, BUT IMHO there is a VALID reason why stereo caught on and is generally preferred to this day. Doesn't take anything away from this magnificent set, but just needs to be contemplated.

My enthusiasm over the Beatles mono masters does not mean that I consider mono to be superior to stereo, per se. I like these Beatles masters because:

1) Against all conventional wisdom, EMI listened to the audiophile contingent (Thanks, Michael Fremer), bucked the digitizing trend, and maintained an all-analog signal chain to remaster and release these recordings.

2) In the original sessions George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and the rest recorded, mixed, and mastered these recordings to be mono, and did the stereo mixes more as an afterthought purely for commercial purposes.

So although I prefer good stereo to mono, when mono has the superior mix and tonal balance, I'll take the mono. When the choice is 44.1 Khz digitized stereo or all-analog mono, again I'll take mono.

My all-time favorites are the 3-mic stereo labors of love from RCA Living Stereo, Mercury Living Presence, and the early Columbias (Miles Davis, Bruno Walter & CBS Symph Orch) before they got into close-mic'd multi-track recording.

Mono has no deficiencies. It's just a different sonic envelope, but one that is very coherent, and due to spacial events in the frequency domain, utilizes the room acoustic to provide spacial cues. I find it to be every bit as engaging as stereo, in some instances even more so.