You’re right about building a CD collection. So many people are donating their CDs to charity shops and you can pick them up for cheap. And unlike a second hand record or cassette their sound quality does not decline unless the disc is damaged.
@@brenthooton3412 I’m the late 90s I was picking up LPs for pocket change. Basically in a two year period of 1999-2000 I would find some for as little as around 70c in today’s money. The quality was hit and miss. Now of course Beatles records were not cheap then and for that money you’d just buy the CD anyway, but I promise you only 60s original issue records were commanding a premium. Back in the 70s in Australia, Parlophone records had an orange label revertting to black in the 80s. But records could be had for cheap. At the time what I was truly looking for was a US Veejay issue of a Beatles LP but I couldn’t find one at the time.
Totally agree and it’s quite fun to pick up some of your favorite music for cheap, as opposed to buying used vinyl records at inflated prices. I do collect both CDs and LPs though 👍
The e.p collection from 1992 gets over-looked once again.I can't remember if it contains the same mono mastering as the 1987 editions.I'll have to check.
As far as i know, the E.P Collection had different remastering in some songs, for example She Loves You sounds much better than the 1988 remaster from Past Masters, the Red Album CD from 1993 includes the 1992 remaster
"to be fun to compile what I think is the best sounding set of CD's using just these three official sets" - and then you choose the Toshiba black triangle "Abbey Road"
First reissues CDs were usually mastered the no bullshit way. Same goes for the Beatles. No fancy EQing, no brickwall limiting. The 2009 are kind of OK, but a little bit too bass heavy and with slightly altered dynamics. I'm still waiting for good transfers of the original stereo mixes in HD format. I also hate that you can only get the mono albums in the box set.
i'm working my way through your work reverse chronologically, so kindly disregard if i'm just late to the party...but if you haven't done these "ultimate collection" lists for other formats, i'd love to see you do them someday! vinyl, of course, but even cassette too
I have ONLY ever listened to The Beatles on CD, I became a die hard fan when the 1 CD came out in 2000, and subsequently bought all The Beatles albums afterwords and have thousands of dollars worth of Beatles (except Vinyl records) memorabilia...and I'm huge die hard fan to this day so the CD'S must have done something right
There is something wonderful about listening to the Beatles on CD which sounds a lot better than the digital downloads being old-school than I am I want to see something physical like CDs or vinyl. What is interesting is I think the track revolution nine I think is a fold down of the stereo mix as it appears on the white album I even have the unofficial released CD versions of the rock band albums and I think they’re great especially hearing the non-faded versions of songs like helter-skelter and Lucy in the sky with diamonds.
Ironically trying to explain to a post-millennial how vinyl is like a '3-D printed sculpture of the sound waves of a recording' seems to make it more relevant to them.
I am sooo glad you touched on the cd life of The Beatles. I have been a big collector of the Japanese sets from late 80’s. I hope you can touch on that a bit. Plus of course the debacles with the first Capitol cd releases. I also believe there was an error on the English version of MMT cd ( maybe a myth) of extra radio vocal bits on I Am The Walrus...wereas the cd pressed in the US did not have the particular audio in question. So many cd questions!😅...Thanks for the very informative program. Brilliant!
I'm so glad you mentioned the muffled sound at the opening of the song "A Hard Day's Night" on the 2009 stereo remaster. How could they let it be released like that?!?!
You're not the only one working in a record store who got 'Brothers In Arms' burned into your brain by too many in-store plays. Ha! :) (And I was astounded at the number of copies we moved of that album weekly in Waco, Texas.)
On Friday I went to a local charity shop. I was browsing through the CDs while a man behind the counter was sorting through a batch of CDs that had been donated that day. Amongst the CDs he was checking I spied a copy of Please Please Me without a case. The man picked up the CD and told me that he had never liked the Beatles despite being English and alive during the height of Beatlemania. He regarded the CD for a few moments and admitted that he didn't know any of the songs and I assured him that he would recognize some of the songs if he heard them. By then I had picked out a few CDs and placed them on the counter, but before I coukd offer to buy Please Please Me he put it in one the cases of one of the CDs I was buying and told me he was going to throw it out anyway and I could have it for free! Case or no case I'm glad I went to that shop last Friday. Incidently it's a 1987 copy made in Australia. It's in mono and I have yet to hear it, but it will be fun to listen to it in the car while I drive around town.
I bought my copy of that disc in Australia in the 1990s. It’s a solid mix. I would say that the recording techniques of the 1960s did not anticipate the S/N ratios possible today, so it doesn’t sound as full as modern recordings, but it does reveal what the producers wanted to drop on vinyl, so it sounds adequate. It’s a good look into the minds of 1960s recording artists, as if these records were being mixed on modern equipment we would have something much different.
In my opinion, Please Please Me is the album that fared the best from that initial batch of '87 Mono Beatles CDs. Something about the 2-track recordings doesn't sound too bad to my ears being a bit smoothed over by the tape transfer. It has some sentimentality for being my first Beatles CD but for a full listen I would still reach for the 2009 Mono CD first.
I have the original 1987 CD of Sgt. Peppers and the 1995 CDs of the Red/Blue albums. They both sound great. CD is truly the best overall medium for audio recordings.
@@DimitrisDr3am CDs are never compressed. Vinyl is better if played on a laser turntable, and the vinyl was brand new and never played before. They also have some of the mono songs on the CDs. I never herd horribly mixed songs on CDs.
Many people prefer the CD because it’s harder to scratch it or get dirt on it, they’re more durable, they take up less room in your home, and usually they could put more songs than vinyl. If there is such a demise of the CD how come they are so expensive on Amazon? They should be giving them away
I think you’re right I love vinyl but I love the CDs more because they have more tracks you can put in them and I think they should be sold at lower prices including big huge box sets.
Trouble is when a CD gets scratched a whole track or two can be rendered completely unplayable, skipping and sticking irretrievably - something which CAN happen with vinyl but is much harder to do without doing heavy deliberate damage to the disc.
CDs have a good balance of portability and durability whilst still retaining the album at work (albeit smaller) and notes. And they can accommodate extra tracks and videos. They have the added advantage of being able to skip tracks etc without damaging.
I personally prefer the Mono Masters compilation over Past Masters, simply because the singles sound much better with their mono mixes in most cases. There isn’t a direct correlation, so you need Past Masters to get a few of the later singles tracks, but it’s worth the extra cost to get both. I will also give a shout-out to the CD singles and EP collections from the early 90s. These were a big improvement over the 87/88 CDs for many of the tracks… especially for the early catalog. I think I might even prefer them over the 2009 CDs in many cases.
I don't know if you still read comments on this video, but I wanted to mention something weird I noticed with a particular CD over here in the United States. Our 1987 CD of Rubber Soul still used the American cover artwork. It has the brown letters, and even the Capitol logo in the corner. What's weird is that even though it has the Capitol artwork, it has the same tracklisting as the canon version of the album, and underneath the tracklist is the parlophone logo and the EMI copyright information. It's just a really weird release, and I'm pretty sure this only applies to Rubber Soul because my copy of Help! from 1987 uses the canon artwork and lacks any mention of Capitol.
Before they released the official Beatles cds in 87 I bought the 1st Beatles related cds, they were : Beatles First (Polydor), Wings Greatest (Japan),and Milk and Honey (Polydor). This was around 1984. Great video, thx!
I also bought the first-ever Beatles CDs back in '87 here in the US....like you, I bought a CD player, but mine cost just several hundred dollars US. I think that in the UK CD players cost more because tech overseas was always a bit more backwards than in the States...in any case, I did hear the "squeaks" in Ringo's drum pedals! Keep in mind that, at the time, compact discs were all the rage and I had all of the US Beatles albums on compact disc (which I played on my Walkman) and the sound was horrific! A the time record stores were 100% vinyl and stores CDs were so rare that they (the jewel boxes) were packaged in these very long cardboard boxes (?), presumably to prevent people from pinching them from stores. I still have them 30-plus years later, although I threw those stupid cardboard boxes away. Yeah, I remember the SGT. Pepper cutouts...I was thoroughly confused by them since I never actually owned the vinyl with the original sleeve. Having the proper UK albums instead of the cobbled US versions was a real plus as well. I had Yesterday & Today on vinyl and the cover was super boring with the Beats sitting around a large piece of luggage? (steam trunk, I think) I tried to peel the cover off to see if the original "butchered babies" cover underneath was there but, alas, I just ruined the sleeve to no avail.
The 2009 remaster sounds fine to me in the mid-range and the high end with the one obvious exception of "She Said She Said" which was butchered. Also the beginning of the song "A Hard Day's Night" sounds like the tape has been horrifically mangled or the oxide has fallen off. It's sounds like an old cassette. The master tape sounded perfect on the 1992 "Red" CD set. Also the entire "A Hard Day's Night" ALBUM seems to be rolled off on the high end as well. My ears keep expecting higher frequencies and a more open sound stage but instead it sounds blanketed and claustrophobic. Did they mis-transfer the whole master tape or has it degraded?
I totally agree with your choice of the 1987 transfers for the later albums. They are more visceral-sounding than the remasters. However, there is one tidbit worth mentioning: in 1986-87, Canada got sent by accident digital transfers of the original stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul, not the George Martin remixes. In pre-Internet days, nobody noticed the mistake and those versions made it onto CD there and remained in print well into the 1990s. These are my favourite versions of those two albums, having the edge over the transfers on the '09 mono box, in my opinion. Check them out if you get the chance.
I don't know man, when I bought for the first time the 1987 Cd versions of certain Beatles albums I felt that there was something missing when it came to the quality of the sound and I couldn't wait for the moment when they were going to be remastered after such a very long time. After I finally got them I got so much more pleased with the sound quality overall, maybe not so much with Abbey Road which didn't sound to me that much better. And I love how the Mono remasters sound. It's all subjective I guess
MrDustpile 1 second ago Tell you what, the mono Magical Mystery Tour CD from the late-90s ep box set is so rich, deep, clear, straightforward and upfront that it easily takes top billing for quality alogside any pic-n-mix of tracks from all three 2009 collections. I prefer a huge bulk of Past Masters from 1987, being much crisper and brighter. I think too much overthinking went into the 'feel' in 2009, leaving many tracks sounding wooly - even if they are deeper. Love he stereo of all four first albums though, sweet alongside old Japanese releases of the same stereo albums.
Speaking of which (Canadian '87 CDs), we got them with "Stereo" on the cover despite being those same Mono CDs. In the case of 'Please Please Me', I can't listen to that one any other way, that CD was my first Beatles album at the tender age of 5. Also, 'Rubber Soul' used the Capitol Records cover with gold lettering, but it was the UK Parlophone track listing. Funny
It's good that you noted that the 2009 Mono Help! and Rubber Soul contain their original Stereo Mixes. I have a 1987 German CD of Revolver that I swear blows away the British and U.S. versions. It just has so much depth and detail that it's almost shocking. After watching this video I'm glad that I held on to all of my 1987 Beatles CDs. How does the Japanese Abbey Road handle John Lennon's blood-curdling scream in I Want You (She's So Heavy)? It clips on the 1987 CD but they managed to have corrected it on the 2009 release. There were also special editions of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album in mini-LP reproductions. Also, who manufactured the Beatles Singles Collection and EP Collection CDs? How about a review of The Beatles USB Box?
When the first 4 1987 CD’s came out, bootlegs CD’s featuring the UK stereo stereo mixes started appearing, as well as session bootlegs that sounded like they were ripped from the master tapes! People speculated that while compiling his “Beatles Recording Sessions” book, runners between the EMI vaults and Mark Lewisohn’s listening station were diverting the tapes to bootleggers. Also around this time, the individual MFSL Beatles albums were circulating on the market, giving diehard fans a listen to the stereo versions they were being denied on CD.
I'm sure that was happening. No way it could not have been, despite anyone in charge's "best" intentions. Mind you, it's telling that even after the XDR mono cassettes came out, EMI were STILL manufacturing the brown-top, stereo editions of the first four albums on cassette, well into June 1989. This anomaly was masked throughout the supply chain and sales returns by virtue of them both having the same barcodes as each other. They didn't do the same with the vinyl I believe, because during 88-89 there were still many pre-digital stereo copies in back-stock, which it seemed record shops found perfectly easy to order from EMI upon request.
I remember feeling angry and outraged by the massacre they made to Beatles music in the 1987 CD's. I completed my CD set between 1989 and 1990, and too well do I recall the indignant feeling that all those new mixes had been done by incompetent people who neither loved nor cared, nor even knew about the impressive Beatle legacy. In particular, most of the fadeouts in the earlier records were mercilessly butchered, and I remember my rage at listening to the "Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey!" CD rendition where Paul's screaming fadeout had been brutally cut off, just as the falsetto "la-la-la-la-la" in "Misery" 's coda. Memory fails me now and I don't have the records at hand, but I remember how nasty and disrespectful the treatment to Beatle music in most CD's sounded and felt back then. I also missed the charming little anomalies/errors I had grown with, such as the brief cut in Lennon's harmonica at the beginning of "I should have known better" which was listlessly smoothed over in the spurious CD rendition, and Paul's voice cracking in the second ".... was in vain" in the sweet "If I fell". I felt that the system had not had enough with murdering Lennon, they had to murder The Beatles themselves in as many ways as they could. Now it's all really over and, at 62, I don't care that much any longer, but I still believe that a sinister cabal of idiots, oblivious of any notion of history and heritage, had taken over the music industry. The same happened in England overall, a country I used to love and admire, but I feel so embarrassed about and so sorry for today. The show can't go on, and this "curtains" time is bitter and sad indeed......
Glad to read the truth, I grew up with cd versions and it's a shame idiots can't release the real versions. Idiots shouldn't touch they couldn't understand
If you read Mark Lewishon’s Beatles Sessions book when it came out in the late 80s like I did then you would have discovered that those songs differed between their mono and stereo mixes. In the mid 60s more time was spent creating the mono mixes then time spent creating the stereo mixes as mono was more popular with the general public at the time. This is why a lot of Beatles fanatics prefer the mono mixes as heard on the original releases as this was how the songs were meant to be heard.
@@thefonzkissthe mono mixes were edited, the stereo was not, so you hear the vocal error in “If I Fell” only in stereo, just like the harmonica part was corrected in mono, but not stereo.
I agree on most of your choices for the ultimate Beatles CD box. When the first four CDs came out in 1987, the only one I bought was A Hard Day's Night, and it certainly didn't make me fall for the new CD format. My US LPs sounded much better so I knew something was very wrong. I was very selective with the following Beatle CD releases I bought. The early Sgt. Pepper and MMT discs are still my go to versions. I've never been pleased with the White Album on CD until the most recent remix, and I still don't really like any Abbey Road CD. Nothing seems to sound as good as my 1970s UK LP pressing. It was fun hearing your memories about the arrival of the Beatles on CD. I remember those days hanging around the record store discussing new releases and how they sounded.
I always find the CDs made in the 1980s not only analogue and mixing problems etc, it usually has strong digital jitter effects because of bad digital clocking. And as far as I can remember none of the Beatles CDs from That time make a difference. So I usually prefer the versions from the newer times. My favorite Stg. peppers eg. is the 50th anniversary version, it‘s unbelievable good.
Wow, that's news to me. I thought that only vinyl suffer from bad pressing issues. After all, when a vinyl record is pressed, we have to consider: the quaility of the pvc used, how clean were the pressing machines, how many copies were done using the same mother, the quality of the mother, lacquers, stampers, the quality of the master tape used and some more. To me, CDs were just a copy from the approved final digital file and the only thing that would differ from different CD pressing would be the quality of the packaging (booklets, digipacks...). I thought that, soundwise, an original UK Let it Be from 1987/88 would sound exactly the same as a Brazilian copy.
Interesting that CD sales are also rising again now. And although they were outsold by vinyl that is in monetary terms. In unit sales CDs are still ahead because they are roughly half the price (a neat reversal of 30 years ago). It's nice to have your favourite material in both formats actually because each reveals something slightly different about the music and, as Andrew says, CDs are currently terrific value.
Quite right - CDs still outsell vinyl in every country in the world; in the UK, 11.6m CDs were sold in 2022 against just 5.5m vinyl records, but the BPI and others have unscrupulously tried to suggest the opposite by only referring to revenue rather than sales, no doubt to boost sales of the much more expensive format. Funny, that...
Also, CD is much smaller than aa LP. Plus, if you take care of it then it will last more than 40 years of playing. CDs are the best overall audio medium to have/own as compared to LP, tape, MP3, Flak, and any kind of steaming.
I remember when the final sale 8 tracks were on a "sale" to make more space for cassette titles. Part of the reason I think vinyl bounced back is clear. If you see the CD spinning, you just see a fast spinning disc. A regular vinyl record will just spin reliably within view. It's all old and familiar, too. This adds to the appeal. No matter the format, each of them has something unique in all of them making for something enjoyable.
I like the 87 mixes for Help and Soul. Not a fan of the bass boosted 09's nor the packaging especially the white band slapped on the sides.And just because Giles last name is Martin doesn't mean he automatically gets to remix anything.
Actually yes he does because if every Beatles album was remix it would be great because it brings you closer to the recording studio and that’s what I love about the Beatles being remixed and remastered they sound a whole lot better than the 87 version which was very murky at the time but to each his own.
When did they have high manufacturing costs for CD's? As far back as the very early 90s, the cost of CD manufacture was £1.00 and the typical price of a Beatles CD was £16.49! I'm sure you can see the profit margin there! If manufacturing costs for CD's WERE high (which I'm very skeptical about) it must have been in the very early days. Record companies made an absolute killing with CD's.
I also recall a urban legend going around at the time in the US that a record company only needed to sell 5K CD units to financially break-even. In other words, if a CD title was released, and not a _farthing,_ or in the US, a _penny_ was used for marketing or advertising the CD; just the sale of 5,000 units would recoup the expense it took to manufacture and distribute the disc.
@@bloqk16 I think his assertion of high manufacturing costs for CD's is way off the mark. At their height, the average cost over here was £12 - £15! As I said before, Beatles CD's were even more expensive at £16.49!! I remember reading a newspaper article from years ago saying that manufacturing costs were £1 per disk. £1 manufacturing versus £12 - £15 profit was obscene. I believe that later on, the manufacturing costs were even lower than that! That urban legend probably has a very big ring of truth to it.
During the first 5 years of Compact Discs, manufacturing costs were significantly higher than for LP records. At the format's inception, there were only two (2) CD manufacturing plants for the entire world, one in Japan and one in Hannover, West Germany. This was an advanced technology, and start-up costs were enormous. Also, the failure rate for manufactured CDs was very high (perhaps around 50%), and with the inception of video Laserdiscs ("Discovision") which launched in 1978 there wasn't really any history of mass-manufacturing a consumer product of this type before. At great expense and financial risk, a number of companies built such CD manufacturing plants and by 1990 manufacturing capacity started to catch up with consumer demand. At that point, there were some (alleged) efforts within the industry at "price maintenance" racketeering for CDs. Somewhere after 1990, the per-unit manufacturing cost-basis for cassettes, CDs and the vanishing LP format became near-equal. However, a messy part of what consumers experienced wasn't just greedy record companies but greedy artists who at the time could demand and get higher per-unit royalties on CDs compared with cassettes or LPs. In retrospect, for the vast majority of performing artists the period from 1985-1999 was the last time they could actually earn decent royalty revenue from album sales. As for the companies investing in developing new CD manufacturing facilities from 1982 through 1992, financially their risk taking was handsomely rewarded. And finally, you are right that for the enormous financial risk entailed by record companies themselves with a new audio format, they did obtain massive profits for quite a few years. Alas, the industry's fat-profits years became a memory after 1998.
I grew up in the 90s/2000s. CDs were common and cassettes were somewhat common too. Records felt old fashioned and out of touch. Don't get me wrong, I love vinyl (I own over 500 records and all of the Beatles UK albums) but CDs are to my knowledge, the best physical format. It wasn't until I got into vinyl, cassettes and shellac discs, that I realized how excellent CDs sounded. Being born into the CD era presented them as standard. Shouldn't all music sound as good as CDs? I was very wrong. It took me years to realize this.
The 1983 Toshiba "Abbey Road" is still the best version. The bass guitar is almost 3D on that transfer. Just make sure you play it through a real CD player than can properly decode the pre-emphasis. Don't trust the supposed "de-emphed" boots they don't sound right in my opinion.
I have two of the 1983 Toshiba "Abbey Road" CDs, and they indeed sound incredible! Better than the version in the '88 wooden rolltop ('bread bin') set and the 2009 versions.
@Mike P People don't need to compare with inaccessible studio materials to make a valued judgement comparing publicly-available releases of things to say which of the latter they think is best. Of course an original master tape is going to be a completely different listening experience - but apart from boasting about it, what does your opportunities to listen to them really amount to in such a debate? Not much.
On first listening to the 1987 CDs I remember thinking certain songs faded out a second or so earlier compared to the vinyl versions I was familiar with. I'm guessing they did this to avoid obvious hiss from the tapes. Now I'm so used to the CDs when I listened to an original vinyl single last week I noticed it *did* fade a fraction later so I wasn't imagining it!
I can't stand any of the early Beatles albums in stereo. The weird panning of instruments absolutely kills it for me. It makes it hard to listen to, especially on headphones or in the car. I go mono all the way up to, and including, Sgt Pepper
It really doesn’t matter which pressing you purchase. The quality of one compared to another is just a figment of the imagination. The consumer was hoodooed into buying copies of the same recordings only as a sales gimmick that they are too ashamed to admit. It is reminiscent of the audiophile delusion.
Very good history background... I have a lot of the cd's. I should see what I have. I DO have the mono cd box. Also, I don't like, Brothers In Arms, either.
I bought my first CD player near Christmas time 1988. At the same time, I bought the entire Beatles catalog---the 13 studio albums, and the two Past Masters. These were the only CDs I owned for nearly two years, playing them over and over. I since have built up a collection of close to 1000 CDs, and I still have them all. Although I have dubbed most of them onto a hard drive,, I still listen to CDs quite a bit, as there is a nostalgia that you only get from hearing them as I did all those years ago, either on my stereo system, or even just an old boom box.
Please Please me (mono version, 2009) With the Beatles (mono version, 2009) A Hard Day's Night (mono version, 2009) Beatles for Sale (stereo version, 2009) Help (stereo version from mono set, 2009) Rubber Soul (mono version, 2009) (alternatively, stereo version from mono set, 2009) Revolver (mono version, 2009) Sgt. Pepper (1987 version) Magical Mystery Tour (1987 version) The Beatles aka The White Album (1987 version) Yellow Submarine (1987 version) Abbey Road (Japanese promotion version, 1983) Let It Be (1987 version) Past Masters (1988 version)
Does any have a copy of the early 80s japanese pressing of Abby road ? I heard they yanked it pretty quick I do have a few Japanese pressings of early Beatles....compilations ....most stereo
Love your videos. They are very interesting and informative. One note about vinyl sales outselling CDs in the U.S. This is in dollars, not units, which makes sense since the average cost for an LP in the U.S. is $24.99 while the average cost of a CD is $12.99, almost double the price.
Another great video Andrew. I've always been a big supporter of the CD format for numerous reasons...far too many to list here...but long story short. ..if you take care of your CD'S you will have a fantastic sounding version of the albums you love. ..with no popping. .clicking or need of record cleaning...plus the fidelity of a CD is much greater then vinyl. I own the complete 2009 Beatles catalog in stereo ...but I also own quite a few of the US album versions on CD...those came with both the stereo and mono versions of the songs. Personally I like the stereo versions of Hard Days Night. .Beatles for Sale and Sgt Pepper but the first 2 are a must in Mono. ..same with Rubber Soul. But again...this is all personal taste. Great stuff..looking forward to your next video.
They all sound nice but i still prefer the vinyl analog sound digital has to much done to it that makes you think that it's better then analog vinyl sound but it's not
I like the 2004 and 2006 stereo versions of the Capitol albums released on cd. Did you mention these? Like them or not. They are a big part of Beatles history and is how a large number(more than the UK) heard them.
Perhaps you can add the 'LOVE', '1' and 'Yellow Submarine - Songtrack' releases to the Beatles' CD history Andrew.....along with the Japanese SHM CD releases and mastering....
@@phillipanderson7398the original 1 CD from 2000 sounds loud, Penny Lane and Come Together are the worst sounding in this remaster, the 2015 remix by Giles Martin Is a hit 'n miss, Get Back sounds terrible, the best for me is the 2011 edition with the 2009 remasters
Got a Phillips CD player and a copy of Def Leppard Hysteria around 1987, sounded so damn good was impressed with the technology, plus you could dub some damn good sounding cassettes from CDs using dolbly C and metal tapes.
Ah. So many memories with those classic CDs. So many car rides with "Sgt. Pepper's" and "The White Album" and "Abbey Road" blaring from my dad's broken speakers. I could punch my younger self in the face for losing my Beatles collection, then punch myself with the other hand for losing my Pink Floyd collection.
Great video. I have all three sets and my favourite is the mono for all the albums. The music sounds more immediate to my ears. I also have the U.S. box set and it is soooo much fun. BTW, alot of people are making comparisons to vinyl here. I love cds, but a well mixed, well pressed album on good quality vinyl played back on a high quality system sounds more dynamic and lively than digital formats to my ear. CDs, as great as they are, sound more compressed to me (this is a broad genralization and doesn't always hold true, and sometimes I prefer the cd version...and yes the surface nose on some vinyl is too much!).
How could anyone dislike the Brothers In Arms album not only is it brilliant songwriting and musicianship it's also a very well mixed album particularly the drum solo intro to Money For Nothing and So Far Away
The tracks that got radio play were overplayed and now ruin the album for me. The same goes with Van Halen's 1984 and U2 's Joshua Tree. They were inescapable and while I initially loved them, they now are like fingernails on a chalkboard.
First of all, how you managed to switch to producing video every week AND increase your production quality at the same time is astounding to me so well done there. Second of all, this was a phenomenally informative video, as always. It’s interesting, I was born nearly ten years after the first CDs were released but I’d never purchased a Beatles CD until 2009 when Please Please Me (of all albums) caught my eye. I was obsessed from that point but I also fell into the hype of the remasters and completely negated the existence of those original CDs. Now I think it’s worth taking a listen. Thanks for the great video!
In my opinion, the only *real* way to judge the different editions of Sgt Pepper's is by how they handled the high-frequency "dog whistle" tone at the end of the album, before the looping inner groove! ;) Seriously, they do have differences. When I first heard the 2017 mix, I noticed that the tone sounded different from the 2009 CD I was used to. So I used Audacity to take a frequency spectrum plot of that tone on the 2009 stereo CD, and found that though it has a peak at 15kHz, it's not a pure tone - it's a very wide peak, very noisy, with several other peaks at other frequencies. This means that it's quite loud even below 15kHz, making it quite easy to hear. Then I took an equivalent frequency plot of the 2017 version, and found that it's a nearly pure 16kHz tone (not 15!), with an extremely sharp, narrow peak. This higher frequency and less noisy peak means that 2017 is a lot harder to hear than 2009. (I don't have the 1987 CD, or an original vinyl LP, to compare it to.) IIRC, from digging around a few forum discussions on the subject (Steve Hoffman forum etc) apparently the dog whistle tone on the original vinyl LP was never recorded onto tape, but was generated at the mastering stage. (The post I saw cited Lewisohn's Recording Sessions book here, so that *should* be reliable info.) So for the 1987 and 2009 CD, they took the sound from a vinyl copy instead, hence the noise. So presumably for the 2017 edition, they must have generated the pure tone again from scratch. (But at 16kHz instead of 15?) Not sure if everything in the above paragraph about the origins of accurate, but it's what I saw people talking about when I looked into it at the time!
Totally agree that now is the time to be building your CD collection before they become the next big collectible thing. I buy hundreds of CDs from charity shops of albums you would never find cheap on vinyl. You can discover great albums on CD in shops where the only vinyl to be found is Val Doonigan and Englebert Humperdinck.
I need to get out all my 1st press UK original albums, '87 cd's, 2009 boxes, and 2014 mono lp's and compare all of them. It'll be fun, so we'll see. I run a tube amp and love toggling back and forth between lp and cd. We used to collect the Dr. Ebbett's cd's which we thought were better than the '87's. When the 2009 boxes came out Dr. Ebbett's put on his web page he is retiring since he can't replicate the 2009 boxes which to him were vastly superior. So I guess many fans thought the Ebbett's cd's were better than the '87 cd's, but worse than the 2009 boxes.
In general I'm not big on remasters, but I was impressed with the Beatles 2009 stereo remasters. I found it had a pleasing mix with more detail than the previous versions I'd heard, but I found relative to a lot of remasters I was less aware of the compression. The 1987 remasters were okay, some were better than others, but I can't remember which ones off the top of my head, in general they were more lifeless as compared to the 2009 masters. For money reasons I decided not to go with the Beatles in Mono remaster, although it looked great and I was very tempted. I also originally listened to the Beatles on various vinyl releases although I never kept track of the specifics. The Beatles sounded great on the vinyl's I had, which were mostly from the 60's and 70s. I also had the White Album on cassette, which was actually pretty good.
Barclay James Harvest had similar phasing problems remastering the albums they recorded at Abbey Road. EMI still had the original machine they had been recorded on and the tapes played fine on that which reduced the complexity of remastering them. I wonder if it was the same machine?! Might well be as they were recording at Abbey Road from 69-73.
Very enjoyable video Andrew! The release of the Beatles on CD in 1987 prompted me to go out and buy my first CD player - it was a Sony Discman which I bought in 1988. My first CD purchase was Past Master Vol 1 and Band On The Run. I eventually bought all of the Beatles discs within the next few months and while I was disappointed that the first four were in mono I completely understand it with hindsight. I have to admit I was more excited about the mono box in 2009 so I made sure I got that the week it came out. Watching your video will inspire me to do a A/B comparison between the 87 and 09 discs. Thanks again for sharing this!
Thank you for your mention of the 1983 Japanese release of Abbey Road on CD. I've always been curious about its sound quality. It's just too bad copyright prevents you from doing a 1983/1987/2009 comparison. I was very disappointed when I bought Abbey Road on CD back in 1987; I found it to be very hissy and muddy. The 2009 is somewhat of an improvement, in my opinion.
I managed a used CD store from 1992-2001 and I prayed every day that someone would trade in a Japanese black triangle 'Abbey Road' but of course, that's an album when once purchased STAYS in your collection.
@@cdpetee Actually sometimes collectors do sell. I got mine (CP35-3016-1 1A1 Toshiba) when the owner upgraded to an earlier, more desirable matrix number (CP35-3016 31A1 Sony). Gotta love the collector mindset.
I visited Korea in early 1992, and bought a Beatles compilation cd that seemed legit, despite being on a Korean label. The sound quality is quite excellent.
I remember waiting years for the Beatles catalog to come out on CD and was livid when they did come out and sounded horrible even George Martin was disgusted by the sound.Around the release of the remastered Yellow Submarine songbook and the Love CD the sound vastly improved.
I'm not familiar with the 1987 issues as it was before my time. All I know is that having got stuck into both 2009 boxes, it's mono for me all the way for the first four albums and Sgt Pepper. In fact, the 2009 stereo pepper wasn't good at all to me, but weirdly the 2017 remix (especially the 5.1 mix) have turned it into my favourite beatles album. On a similar note, I like how this channel recognises how much sound quality affects the enjoyment of music!
I vividly remember buying a Japanese pressing of Help! vinyl on Apple label. The sonic fidelity quality was stunning, in many ways surpassing digital. The Japanese vinyl quality seemed to always surpass all other domain versions.....
I sold the 1987 cds when I bought the 2009 ones but recently bought the 1987 cds again. Thanks to this video I realized I should have just only rebought the later albums on the 87 cds.
Cds are great , i have loads on Lps and have built the vinyl up to about 60 records but i need a clear out, i have cleared out about 40 cds , so probably the same for vinyls !
I really like this video. I wonder where, in this constellation, the 2014 American cd collection would fit in (if anywhere), and also the discs in the various anniversary box sets?
the mono box set from 2009 sounds the best on cd, and I think the sound on those sound more authentical like the first UK LP's from the 60's, while the sound on the 2014 vinyl box sounds really great, but a little bit altered to me. my 2 cents.
I have the 1987 issue of Magical Mystery Tour. I bought it in 1994 when I was starting my CD collection. I never liked its sound quality much, especially on Baby You're A Rich Man. I think on the vinyl that song was mono, but on the CD they made it a very poor sounding stereo. Hello Goodbye was also messed up in the ending part where they sing Hey lie Hey hello, on the first hey the volume is low but on the 2nd lie they turn it way up.
Andrew I bloody loved this video. A1* mate. The retro introduction was incredible. And your memories of Our Price and of buying your CD player ready for the Beatles on CD releases and going home with your first 4 albums was just great (I loved Our Price and still have a few vinyl, CD and cassette with the Our Price stickers).And then what a great collection you put together which I find is spot on with my own preferences. Bang on mate. There is subjectivity and then there's just right, lol. And yes there's something clear and honest about those original 1965 stereo versions of HELP! and Rubber Soul instead of George Martin's 1987 rethink although again it's still MONO for Rubber Soul. And is that why the 1987 Revolver sounds a bit strange then? How could they be so careless as to use a misaligned machine to do the transfer? And then using a stereo machine to transfer the first 4 MONO albums was bad too, although I did know that one. But just incredible little video mate, genuinely. For some reason this one just really touched me. Thank you. Peace and Love.
blah blah blah; forget all this; get the 2009 Beatles remastered mono box set; the recent White Album & Abbey Road remixes and Let It Be…Naked (the only way to listen to that material) the band & their production team intended us to listen to everything up through 1967 in mono (and that includes Sgt Pepper)
You want to hear the ideal mix of "and I love her"? At the very least the most unique. Then go to the US album of "A hard Day's night" and play the mono track. 👍
Back in 2005 I happened upon a independent used record/CD store near Tacoma, Washington, where I found a unique Beatles CD, and upon closer examination, it was strongly hinted as being a bootleg, or what some would term a _pirated_ CD. That CD was the replication of the US Capitol Records vinyl release of _The Beatles' Second Album._ How did I come to the conclusion it was a bootleg? In small print on the back of the CD was the URL for a website with the "ru" prefix, denoting its origin being from Russia. The novelty of the CD interested me enough to buy it. I played it for a friend that was a fanatical Beatles fan, and he was impressed by the mono audio sound. That same Beatles fanatic was not aware of any legit Beatles releases coming from Russia.
Those 1987 releases do have a charm that I felt were missing in the 2009 issues, even though the packaging in 2009 was fantastic. I do have the Parlophone Bread Box UK issue , alongside the US issues that came out in a longbox Capitol designed. I also own both stereo and mono box sets of 2009.
Hey Andrew, great video as usual Sir.. I agree with your choices here, George Martin must’ve been going deaf in 86 when he remastered Help ! & Rubber Soul. I’ve got the original 1965 Stereo CD versions and they’re much better in every way. Also, I have the, Apple USB 24bit versions and they sound excellent except for the slight limiting etc. I totally agree, they went too far in trying to remove things like mic buffing and, Amp buzz… You & I would’ve done a better job mate 😎👍
