Beatles Remasters: Mono vs. Stereo Debate Thread

Spent some time listening on Stax headphones last night. If you know these recordings by heart having heard them so many times over the years, you can really notice subtle differences and details that way. The stereo remasters in the mono box set are definitely more "fun" to listen to with headphones. The various recording components (tracks I suppose) come in and out quite startlingly the way they were mixed. Hearing three distinct individual voices in harmonies on "The Word" was cool. ANd McCartney's bass in "Norwegian Wood" presented itself quite cleanly and nicely for example.

Also, with the stereo cuts in particular under the magnifying glass of a pair of good headphones, you can clearly hear that a lot of signal processing (compression/expansion/limiting?) was applied to the various tracks in various ways in order to produce the desired results. The result is that yes you hear a lot of differences including new details and nuances among other things (some recording/processing artifacts) that you did not hear before, but the listening experience can be a bit jarring and uneven compared to music played live and sounds very much like various tracks mixed together in a recording studio. Still, a revelation and a lot of fun to hear with these tunes from that particular stage of the Beatles career as well since experimentation in the recording studio is largely what they were about at the time.

Thanks Map - can you be a little more specific about where you heard what you describe in the second paragraph?

Seditious,

More so the "Rubber SOul" stereo tracks in the mono box set, but in the "Help" stereo tracks as well.

"Run For Your Life" as well as the cuts I mentioned, "The Word" and "Norwegian Wood" were places where I recall things sounded a lot different than I recall from the older stereo versions I am familiar with. I believe "The Night BEfore" is another.

I was listening with all tracks from the box set plus all tracks from the earlier "Live at the BBC" release cued up in "juke box" mode randomly for comparisons and these are a few of the cuts that came up where I recall noticing these things in particular. I have not yet listened start/finish to any single disk from the mono set and have not yet heard every song on each new mono album.

Hello mapman, I wasn't sure if you knew the stereo albums contained in the mono box set are the original 60's mixes. It is like stepping back in time.

Rick,

My understanding is that none of the new remasters (including the new stereo remasters) are remixed, so the music content is the same even though the sound is different.

So are the stereo versions of "Rubber Soul" and "Help" included in the mono box set the same as the new separately issued stereo remasters or something still even different from those?

Also, I wonder why only those two albums in the mono box set include stereo versions of the individual tracks?

BTW, though the final verdict on all the box set albums is still out, the one album where I think the monos may be lacking so far in comparison to older stereo versions I am familiar with is "Revolver", which so far my impression is that at least some tracks miss some of the life that stereo helped breathe into the various studio tricks the Beatles cracked open for that particular album. I'm not finding this to be the case so far in general with either Rubber Soul or Pepper, the two albums that preceeded and came after it where the BEatles were most into innovation within the recording studio.