Beatles Remasters: Mono vs. Stereo Debate Thread

Shadorne,

Ripped the disks to music server and spent the afternoon servin up the tunes randomly, with a couple original CD masters and "Live at the BBC" mixed in (while watching US football in HD on the tube...I definitely have it too good).

Here are my initial observations

- The sound overall is very good throughout, consistently as good as I have heard.

- The mono cuts have consistently solid and well defined soundstage, better as a whole than the old mono mixes

- the low end fills in which much better weight and punch overall but are done well, not artificially overdone

- I like all the mono versions I have heard a lot. It is easier to focus in on and absorb what is happening.

- the later albums (Pepper through White) is where I notice the biggest differences in actual music content/ mixes from stereo consistently. If you have good ears and are a "White Album" fan, that alone might justify the cost of admission. WA in mono is a huge improvement over the prior stereo mastering. Losing the stereo tricks of the day is a huge improvement.

- The mono disks include stereo versions of "Help" and "Rubber Soul" as well. These also sound as good as I've heard in comparison to earlier stereo masters.

-the difference between this mastering and prior CD are marginal on some cuts, like "I'll Get You", mostly because the old versions are really quite good rather than the new ones being deficient

- the set is worth it if you will be spending time in the future listening to Beatles music and have a good system, otherwise, I still think the old CD masters are largely serviceable. I will nt be getting rid of mine.

Spent some time listening on Stax headphones last night. If you know these recordings by heart having heard them so many times over the years, you can really notice subtle differences and details that way. The stereo remasters in the mono box set are definitely more "fun" to listen to with headphones. The various recording components (tracks I suppose) come in and out quite startlingly the way they were mixed. Hearing three distinct individual voices in harmonies on "The Word" was cool. ANd McCartney's bass in "Norwegian Wood" presented itself quite cleanly and nicely for example.

Also, with the stereo cuts in particular under the magnifying glass of a pair of good headphones, you can clearly hear that a lot of signal processing (compression/expansion/limiting?) was applied to the various tracks in various ways in order to produce the desired results. The result is that yes you hear a lot of differences including new details and nuances among other things (some recording/processing artifacts) that you did not hear before, but the listening experience can be a bit jarring and uneven compared to music played live and sounds very much like various tracks mixed together in a recording studio. Still, a revelation and a lot of fun to hear with these tunes from that particular stage of the Beatles career as well since experimentation in the recording studio is largely what they were about at the time.

Thanks Map - can you be a little more specific about where you heard what you describe in the second paragraph?

Seditious,

More so the "Rubber SOul" stereo tracks in the mono box set, but in the "Help" stereo tracks as well.

"Run For Your Life" as well as the cuts I mentioned, "The Word" and "Norwegian Wood" were places where I recall things sounded a lot different than I recall from the older stereo versions I am familiar with. I believe "The Night BEfore" is another.

I was listening with all tracks from the box set plus all tracks from the earlier "Live at the BBC" release cued up in "juke box" mode randomly for comparisons and these are a few of the cuts that came up where I recall noticing these things in particular. I have not yet listened start/finish to any single disk from the mono set and have not yet heard every song on each new mono album.

Hello mapman, I wasn't sure if you knew the stereo albums contained in the mono box set are the original 60's mixes. It is like stepping back in time.