Remastering The Beatles

Getting back to the Beatles, here's a discussion we've had over at the other forums I deal with.

Ok, we all know Sgt Pepper was miraculously done on 4 track. However most of the tracks were "bounced" from other 4 track machines, about 4 I think. So the theorey goes about doing a reconstruction of all existing seperate tracks to a 32 track master. If each track had been preserved in their seperate element.

I know some purists think it's best not to tamper with and just "let it be". But when the Beatles were recording SP, they should been upgraded to at least 8 track by that time. Hendrix was using 12 track then and I think EMI was just being tightwadish. In fact there was later discovered an 8 track machine in the basement of Abbey Road around '69. It had been there for 2 years 'til the Beatles and Geoff Emerick discovered it and had it finally installed. Hence why Abbey Road is the only full 8 track album the Beatles ever did. Baby You're A Rich Man and a few songs on the White Album were done at either Trident or Olympia Studios on 8 track.

Besides, reconsructing SP would give more leeway for doing a 5.1 mix. I listened to the 5.1 mix on the Yellow Submarine DVD and it sounded like crap. Everything was so out of balance.

Anyway, it's just food for thought.

oliverstoned wrote: If so, they did the same mistake that people believing marketers claiming that CD is perfect.

Rather the opposite. Some people believe everything that "technicians" say - some don't believe a word. And some others are in between ...

I'm sure that 50 years ago people rejected analog electronic amps for a long time, arguing that such a device must by definition sound "artificial" or "harsh".

oliverstoned wrote: SACD and DVD audio are theorically better cause the 24 bits technology (instead of 16 bits for the classic CD)enables better performances: which results in a wider bandwidth (it goes further in low and highs) and is simply superior on all criterias.

Actually the additional bits increase the dynamic range, not the frequency (lows and highs). The sampling frequency has also been increased (doubled) to 96khz, and that means that it is now more than four times more than what the human ear can sense (20khz).

oliverstoned wrote: Overall, numeric is crap and sound is trafficked, remixed, bumped, even more in the rock field than in jazz or classical i.e.

In the end everything is numeric. After all, even on analog equipment you have quantification errors introduced by the magnetic head that reads/writes the information. People often claim that tape is superior to CD because there are much more magnetic particles which store the information than th number of bits on a CD. But they often forget that the magnetic head has a much lower resolution than that.

Is SACD/DVD Audio any good??

There no synthetic sound or unoriginality??, be good if there wasn't.

Is any of the sound tweaked to get these formats spot on, or can they reproduce superb sound without harming the sound content in any way, like the original mixes and layout left alone??, which should be the case not tweaked at all!!

Sorry I'm getting to technical!!

Is High Defination CD any better??

To be honest I can't always tell the difference between a Original CD and a Remastered CD.

There's something fishy about the new War of the Worlds - Jeff Wayne remaster, it could my imagination

...

The Sound of Vinyl:

My view: The drums and bass sound good on vinyl, strong sound!!.

Mates View: Oh vinyl is to quiet it's all the sound is in the back!!.

CD Remaster:

Doesen't always sound original, but a good sound!!

good things include no hisses, but watch your back some are rerecorded and tweeked a bit!! 

PROGMAN wrote: Sometimes Vinyl is better!!

Not sometimes, always!

holy sh*t...i didnt think it was true.....thats so screwed up. Ozzy....that sucks man.