IT'S ALMOST HERE!!!

Both myself and my blogmate have been anxiously awaiting the release of The Beatles remasters box sets, particularly the mono set since they were announced. For those not aware the mono boxed set is limited to 10,000 copies in the United States and amazon.com is already sold out. Now being "limited edition" means nothing in and of itself however, since it is of limited appeal there is every chance that it will go out of print. So why all of the the excitement for the mono set?

George Martin and The Beatles spent days, sometimes weeks mixing the mono version of most of their albums. The stereo mixes were done usually by an assistant engineer. Sometimes it was even worse, the stereo mix was done by an apprentice engineer. Paul McCartney briefly mentions this in the extra material on The Beatles Anthology DVDs. Saying roughly, "the stereo mixes were done one day while we (George Martin, the producer and The Beatles) were at lunch." With the exceptions of "Yellow Submarine", "Let It Be", and "Abbey Road" the mono mix was the baby. The stereo mix was the bastard redheaded stepchild at best.

At first blush this sounds like a massive oversight. But as Mr. McCartney goes on to point out ". . . ninety-Eight percent of people were listening in mono." Stereo was new, many thought it was a fad and wouldn't last. Many Hi-Fi enthusiasts resisted it in the beginning. It meant a serious amount of money needed to be spent. They were forced to buy another amplifier, another speaker, a new preamplifier, and a new turntable.

Will the sound live up to the expectations? If the review on Tone Audio is any indication the answer is a resounding YES! Also of interest is an ongoing thread on the Steve Hoffman forum. Amazon has some interesting podcasts on the remasters on the right hand side of the page. In addition to two 10 minute interviews with two of the engineers involved in the 4 year project there are there are numerous half minute samples of various Beatles songs to enjoy until the sets ship. September 9th can't arrive fast enough!

Compression and conspiracy?

The most damaging change to recorded music currently being perpetrated by the record industry is dynamic range compression. Dynamic compression is the reduction of the volume difference between the softest and the loudest passages on a recording. Record companies feel that an album or song that is consistently louder than others will “punch” through on the radio, thus increasing sales. However, other record companies are doing the same, thus it has become an arms race of sorts. The losers aren’t the record companies but us, the music buying public. We are forced to suffer music that is uninteresting and uninvolving, a relentless assault on our senses. Removing dynamic contrasts destroy the nuances in a musician’s performance, taking away one of their most important weapons to convey emotion to the listener. The following video is a powerful illustration.



Unfortunately, even older recordings are not safe. Many recent remasters of older material have been dynamically squashed too. The newest Elvis Costello greatest hits package, “The Best of Elvis Costello The First 10 years” is so “hot” it is un-listenable. His 2002 album “When I Was Cruel” is also dynamically challenged. Fortunately, his excellent 2003 album “North” was spared. Most likely because it was on the German Classical label Deutche Grammophon, thank you DG. For the most part Classical and Jazz haven’t befallen this same kind of wholesale destruction because they don’t rely on air play for sales.

If one were cynical they could see all of this as a conspiracy by the major labels to open the door to selling us “remastered” versions of all of these new releases with less dynamic compression in a couple of years time. One of the biggest cash windfalls in the history of the music business took place as consumers converted their collections from vinyl to first generation CDs. Perhaps the second largest boom in their business history was the remastering of those first generation CDs because they hadn‘t done it properly the first time. How many businesses get to make money off of their mistakes? Surely, this didn’t go unnoticed by record executives. Why sell an album on a given format once when you can sell it twice and double the company profits? If record companies really cared about their customers, they would give discounts or rebates to customers who upgraded to a new version of an album. Why not reward hard core fans of a particular band or artist, instead of penalizing them? Never mind the long term good will it would create with customers, something that they are really short on right now. Unfortunately, the small loss in short term profits would be unacceptable.