1

by

The Beatles

Edit

Woah, woah, woah... for all of those who dismiss this CD because these songs are already available elsewhere, or because it doesn't contain certain tracks let me explain something here. The purpose of realeasing this disc the way they did was to showcase, in chronological order mind you, all of the Beatles singles that went to #1 in either the UK or the US. Also, you can't ignore the fact that these tracks have been digitally remastered (spectacularly I might add... especially the earlier tracks!) In my opinion, this CD is worth purchasing merely for the marvelous remastering job of "Love Me Do" alone! In addition, the obvious dropouts towards the end of "Day Tripper" have been edited back into proper audibility. However, I do have one caveat with "She Loves You." In the original version, there is a nasty edit where the phrase "pride can hurt you too, apologize to her" is dropped in (apparently from a 45, due to a mangled or missing tape.) The engineers attempted to fix this in the remaster, and they succeeded in bringing that section back down to the same level volume-wise, but right before that phrase they've created an unintentional drop-out that, all in all, almost makes the new edit worse than the original!! Regardless, as an avid Beatles fan/collector, I deem this CD an essential purchase. And that's my two cents. Peace.

I must say I am disappointed with this new collection. For a new or casual fan this may seem like a terrific CD BUT to a die-hard fan or audiophile this collection is terrible. The music itself is terrific but I am afraid this will overshadow what is the most important thing about the Beatles, the albums. Yeah we get all these BIG "hits"(hits 30+ years ago!) but casual fans will be led into to thinking this is the "Best of the Beatles". It most certainly is NOT.

Bad sound:

The liner notes claim these tracks were remastered from the analog tapes. "Help!" and "Ticket to Ride" are in fact from digital mixes done in 1987 and "Day Tripper" has infact been slightly digitally edited to fix a dropout. I honestly think these were all simply copied from the existing digital transfers done in 1987 and fiddled with digitally. The good news is the sound on the CD is mastered at a higher volume than the original CDs but that is just a matter of turning up the volume knob during mastering for the CD and NOT a product of supposedly remastering from the original analog masters. The BAD! news is that all the songs have been processed using the "NoNoise" process to remove tape noise. "NoNoise" is an absolute scurge and a trajedy. In the attempt to remove tape noise the high end details and ambiance get's stripped off, cymbals and tamborine loose their color, echo and reverb gets muffled, and the silibance of the vocals increases dramatically. The resulting sound is harsh, glassy, and plastic sounding. Why do this to songs that have little tape noise to start with. What is the purpose of "re-mastering" if the resulting sound is worse and less acurate than before. A pox on re-mastering staff at Abbey Road Studios for doing this!

I have been assembling my own Beatles MP3 collection and remixing all the tracks and when it came to chosing between using the songs on the original CDs or the songs on this new CD in every case I went with the original CDs. Granted the original CDs are poorly mastered to begin but in every case the original version sounded warmer and more natural. Yeah, those old 60's stereo mixes are really bad but the music shines through. Hopefully we get real quality "remasters" sometime soon and eventually modern remixes of all the Beatles songs.

Better Music elsewhere:

Im my opinion the best stuff is on the albums, especially Revolver and the "White Album". There are many tracks on those albums that should be heard by today's young listeners to see what the Beatles were up to inside the studio in the mid 60s. On Revolver which paved the way for many of the sounds we here today we get the sycopated hard rock of "Taxman", the hypnotic guitars of "I'm Only Sleeping", the pre-metal sounds of "She Said She Said", the glorious dense guitar work of "And Your Bird Can Ding" and "Doctor Robert", and the unbelievable drone of "Tommorrow Never Know". The latter is awash in pre-synthesiser tape-loops, a driving drum beat, a tinny filtered vocal(and you thought that was a 90s trend), and the icing on the cake an unbelievable backwards distorted guitar solo. On the "White album" we get the hipnotic plucking of "Dear Prudence", the classic "While My Guitar Gently, the relentless rythm of "Birthday", the funky electic "...Me Any My Monkey", the cool guitar of "Sexy Sadie", the original heavy metal tune "Helter Skelter".

Lance Hall