So, What is the Verdict on the Beatles Box Sets?


I see a WIDE variety of opinions on the new Beatles Box sets; both for the stereo and mono versions. Have you spent some quality time evaluating these? How good/bad are they? Should we run out and get both sets? What about releasing them on vinyl; is that going to happen?
stickman451
I;m always a bit puzzled by the many posters on various fora who complain about the music industry's desire to make money. Isn't that what they do? There is obviously a great desire among many (but not all) people for remasters that improve the sound of classic music -- recent sets by the Beatles and Neil Young (and many others) are examples of music that was readily available but that has been recently been redone with clearly improved sound. People who like this music and care about the sound quality will buy these as their budgets permit; those who don't won't and shouldn't. But why fault the music industry for supplying a product that LOTS of people want?

I'm far more critical of the music industry's decisions to market crap music to the masses and not give more adventurous bands a shot than I am about their occasional efforts to give those who care about sound a bit more quality in their old favorites.

Sure, in an ideal world, music would be free and the artists and those who produce the physical (or digital) product would be compensated in some other way. But we live in a world where money is exchanged for goods and that's not gonna change any time soon.

Re possible future hi-rez downloads, what's wrong with that? And why should the availability of a format that relatively few people are using now prevent people who currently like cds or vinyl from getting the music in the format they currently use? I would agree that it would be preferable for all the formats to come out at the same time. But at least as far as hi-rez downloads, the market for those might not yet be enough to make it worthwhile for the biz to put those out.
Untill ss hard drives have greater capacity and lower costs, I'll stick with CD's. I've just had another hard drive crash, that's 3 in the last 2 years.
SS drives also have a limited lifetime and a certain percentage will fail. There is no free lunch.

Hard drives continue to drop in price, currently around $100 for a Terabyte. I spend that much when I take my wife out to dinner. Personally I don't care if one crashes occasionally. I have backups and it is too cheap to worry about.
I agree with Herman. The cost is so low that putting together large HD's with Raid controlers for auto backup is easy.