The Beatles In Mono

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In the last few years, I've been listening to a lot more pre-stereo recordings on LP and on 78 disks. The set debuted at number 40 on Billboard's Top 200 chart and the magazine reported that 12,000 copies were sold in its first week of release. However, the mono mixes of " Don't Pass Me By" and " Helter Skelter" had been previously issued in the US in 1980 on the Capitol Records Rarities compilation album.

The CD set also includes a 44-page booklet with an essay on the important role that the mono mixes played in the Beatles' recording career, notes on every track featured in Mono Masters, and a track-by-track listing of the recordings. Accordingly, you don't even really 'choose' to listen to music in stereo; often, it's the only option. The Revolver to white album series of records have the "tubey" cool shimmer of the originals which I lack on the 2014 lp's. Until one day, a schoolmate invited me to his house and made me listen to his father's mono equipment.For a lot of music, especially older music originally engineered to be in mono, a stereo mix can sound strange and off-putting while the mono mix sounds delightfully musical. Surround sound is a real thing and so is spatial audio, that's true, but stereo is still the dominant format.

The remastering project for both mono and stereo versions was led by EMI senior studio engineers Allan Rouse and Guy Massey.The folks at the retirement home can spin their single-channel vinyl all they like, but I was onto bigger and better things. For decades, we've all been swimming in the great stereo sea, enjoying almost all of our audio content in stereo. Unsurprisingly, this is because stereo is a really good audio format, and we know how to engineer in stereo really well by now.

I was amazed at the number of differences I could hear; not just mixing differences, but really big differences, like missing backing vocals on the stereo Fixing A Hole and of course a whole lot of missing special effects from the stereo Lucy. I have lately been listening to the audiobook of Mark Lewisohn's wonderful "The Beatles: All These Years – Volume 1 Tune In" (weird title). I now noticed that it was in fake pseudo-stereo, which I don't think I even noticed when I first got it. I imagine you would need to remaster it from original tapes and then how it was recorded, number of tracks, microphone placement etc. This one I only had one rather taxing problem with--Help was dish warped (played convex on one side, concave on the other!

John Lennon did not like the stereo mix of his song " Revolution" on the 1967-1970 compilation album. It was still to remain a "limited edition", but since it had already been certified platinum by the RIAA it was not limited to 10,000 copies as originally stated.

Your ears are getting more auditory information than you get with mono, but more information does not as a rule make for a better listening experience or even better audio quality. Though, of course, taste is a matter of subjective preference, so there's no shame in enjoying the stereo mixes of earlier Beatles records. What I would like to see are 2xLP and 2xCD sets where the original mono and stereo mixes are each on their own discs, so fans can enjoy both without having to shell out for boxsets or limited run editions. It's also important to note that the stereo versions improved significantly with time, as the studio moved from a 4-track tape machine to 8-track, etc. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform.Alas, I posted this comparison on the now-defunct All About Jazz forum, where it is now inaccessible to anyone, including its author. They've mostly been focusing on selling new digital stereo remixes of the old Beatles albums done by Giles Martin.