Fab! The Beatles to release remastered catalog
Original Beatles Albums to Be Reissued
Finally. After watching the Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, devote the last few years to developing a site-specific show in Las Vegas, a video game and a line of pricey memorabilia, Beatles fans are finally getting something they’ve been demanding for at least the last decade: sonically upgraded reissues of the group’s original British albums, in stereo and mono. Apple Corps and EMI announced on Tuesday that the much-postponed remasters would be released on individual stereo CDs and in two boxed sets – one stereo, the other mono – on Sept. 9, the same day the Beatles edition of Rock Band, the music video game, is scheduled for release.
The main reason collectors have been so intent on reissues of music they already own is that the 1987 CDs, like many discs released in the early years of the format, sound comparatively harsh and brittle by today’s standards. Since then, improvements in digital sound technology and remastering equipment have yielded a richer, smoother sound, and most of the major groups and artists from the 1960s – from Bob Dylan, the Byrds and Simon and Garfunkel to the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd – have had their catalogs refurbished at least once since their first appearance on CD. And the Beatles’ own recent releases, including the “Capitol Albums” and “Love” discs, showed that the band’s recordings could sound vastly better – warmer and with far greater presence – than they do on the 1987 discs.
Even so, remastering can be a dicey business: noise-reduction techniques can slice away the high frequencies of a recording, dulling the treble sound (in return for eliminating tape hiss). EMI’s remastering team apparently took this into consideration: the company’s production notes mention that fewer than five of the 525 minutes of music were subjected to noise reduction. The new transfers were done using a high-resolution Pro Tools system, and each track was compared with both its vinyl LP and 1987 CD incarnations. </em>
Can’t wait for this, anyone know where I can put the stereo box on pre-order?
