Excellent analysis of the Albums! I really never managed to understand the very serious error that occurred in John's voice in the song Help in mono. It sounds muffled and without "s". Certainly for this reason they added the stereo version of the album to the mono box. Great video.
Thank you very much, really. It means a lot people like or even just watch. Regarding Help... indeed. Now obviously I am not a Beatles scholar. Nor did I have the opportunity to own many Beatles records before recently, so imagine my reaction when people had been praising the Mono Box so much, and I put in Help for the first time. 🤣
I disagree on Help, personally. I remember the first time I heard this album in mono was when I bought the LP re-release in 2014 and I was also shocked, I thought I was playing it at the wrong speed or something, but over the last 10 years or so I've really become accustomed to this version and I don't think it's bad at all, just not what we're used to. Overall I think the Help album is essential in mono personally, mostly because Ringo's drums are mixed so much better. I'm borrowing this line from somewhere, but on the stereo mix of "Ticket to Ride," it sounds like Ringo is playing a set of paper cups. Really enjoying this series!
Thank you. I also would not say I dislike this mono version of the album, but the main track sounding so... weird is off putting. And the 65 Stereo sounded surprisingly adequate. But we are all definitely linked to our own prefferences, and some tracks I would prefer in mono as well.
@@takubo Not only that, I would prefer to hear Yesterday in Mono because to me the vocals there are what I want to hear centered and clear and warm, and the guitar I would prefer to have centered as well, and the Mono does that. Overall I did not have a general problem with the Mono mix of the entire album, the Help! song mix was the big issue for me.
Some facts if you care: There are 2 stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber because in 1987, George Martin heard the original 1965 mixes and didn't like them. This was the year that The Beatles were getting their premiere release on CD. Yes, EMI waited a long time since the 1982 debut of the Compact Disc. Martin called the original Stereo mixes 'wooly' and remixed them in '87 for their CD debut. The 2009 remixes stem from the '87 mixes, so the original '65 mixes have never been updated. They were just transferred to the Mono CDs. And for those who are interested, ALL CD's are stereo. So the Mono CDs is just the mono mix on each channel. 100% identical. Sgt. Pepper was when the Beatles actually started climbing the stairs to the control room and having more of a creative input on the mixes. For a month, The mono mix was worked on with ALL Beatles present whenever they were there. The Stereo mix was done in....a week? a few days? much shorter and only Ringo has confirmed to be present. The Stereo mix has very interesting choices (like removing the phase shifting effect on John's Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds vocal or the pitch being lowered in She's Leaving Home) but nonetheless weren't as much a Beatles creative input as the mono mix. Also, for the 2017 Giles Martin/Sam Okell remixed the album for it's 50th anniversary using the mono mix. That and the fact the Beatles were creatively involved with the mono mix tells me how definitive the mono mix is. Revolver objectively has different elements in each mix. John's "A LIFE OF EASE" line in Yellow Submarine is present in the mono mix, along with two acoustic guitar chords at the beginning, whereas the stereo mix has silence when Ringo sings "In the..." then music comes in at "town". There are different backwards guitar solos I think in I'm only sleeping and a different fadeout in Tomorrow Never Knows (one fadeout is longer so you hear more music) Paul's Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) error is fixed in the mono mix, but that mistake is present the first time he says Eleanor Rigby. All 4 of these albums were recorded on 4 track tape. Most of these songs feature Ringo's drums only on the left channel and different instruments specifically on one side of your speaker/ear. The stereo mixes are better. George Martin went independent from EMI in 1965, and I believe Rubber Soul was his first outing from that. Why he went back to the Rubber Soul stereo mix by HARD panning the instruments on the far left side and the vocals on the far right with SILENCE inbetween is beyond me. His 1987 mix rectified this a little, but you CAN'T listen to Rubber Soul in stereo. It's mono all the way (like Please Please Me and With The Beatles).
Yeah, I mention the alternate mixes for Rubber Soul and Help in later videos when I had both to compare. Well Rubber Soul is still pending. To be honest in headphones some of these mixes are jarring. In speakers at a certain distance they sound quite nice, but I have to say I slightly prefer the 2009 CDs to the original 87 ones, at least for some albums. Also tend to prefer some of the recent new mixes by Giles.
@@BurgundySkies I'm not surprised. with a fresh new set of ears, George Martin put more dimension and fullness into those '87 mixes. Add the 2009 touch for the modern speaker set and bam! The best way for me to listen to The Night Before is the 2009 version!
This!!! You mention The Night Before, but it goes for almost any song, meaning if you put all versions of a song side by side, I doubt anyone would ever choose one year/version of the album/pressing/cd. You have songs that sound excellent on the 2009 remasters, some which sound pretty nice on the 87 cds, some which sound better in Mono, some in Stereo, some original mixes still stand, but Giles did an excellent job on some tracks and made more recent versions of albums the go-to for me (vinyl and CD). One one hand it's nice, multiple versions can sometimes mean different but still pleasant experiences. One the other hand... having to own "n" versions of an album just to get the best variations is a big frustrating.
t's a pity we can't actually listen to the songs to have a real full comparison. Good analysis though. Now, speaking of digital and streaming music platforms, although I know it is proven that the difference between the sound of an original CD and an mp3 used on those platforms is not audible to the human ear, I still feel a drop in sound quality on Spotify for example
It is a shame. The thing is... if I were a bigger channel I probably would not even mind having a few videos with actual track pieces playing properly, even if those videos would not contribute to the channel growth. But with Beatles music, in most cases YT just brings it down. I saw people either upload 2-3 seconds pieces (which tbh seems pointless), or longer pieces but just interrupted every 3 seconds with jumps, which I find very off putting to the ear. Regarding differences in quality I tend to agree. I think generally people overdo the arguments reffering to what the human ear can pick up. Especially when moving beyond late 30s. But between mixes, remasters, various pressings there most definitely are differences and I find those interesting to identify. It's also interesting to me how certain things (on same versions of songs) just sound differently to different people.
MP3 compression doesn’t handle the wide stereo mixes of the Beatles well. On songs with extreme panning you can hear artifacting of the instruments-the higher frequencies are almost out of phase. Surprisingly the algorithms don’t handle clean electric guitars played through a vox either. When you get good speakers you can really hear how the sound of those guitars are destroyed.
@@BurgundySkies sorry wrote this late at night haha yes sgt peppers onward's to past masters all great I'm glad see you got the EP set too All sound incredible and sgt peppers in 1987 just perfection for cd buyer's I think the only modern remix I prefer is let it be which is funny as that's the remix with the less work but the original cd sounds little hollow to me
Got that early let it be, but ironically that is the only one I did not test yet. I was planning a comparisson of all my let it be editions and was waiting for that.
Revolver onward is great on the 87 CDs. 87 BFS isn’t bad either. Also Past Masters 1 and 2 are great on the 87 cds. People say they’re out of phase but doing a simple null test reveals they’re sometimes in better phase than the 2009 remasters.
I was not aware of it, never having had the actual record. I guess there are many people who already knew about this and were not surprised, but I most definitely was. 🤣
Help! and Rubber Soul weren't remixed in 2009. They were remixed in 1987. They were remastered in 2009.
If I said remixed it was just a slip-up. Thanks!
Excellent analysis of the Albums!
I really never managed to understand the very serious error that occurred in John's voice in the song Help in mono.
It sounds muffled and without "s".
Certainly for this reason they added the stereo version of the album to the mono box.
Great video.
Thank you very much, really. It means a lot people like or even just watch. Regarding Help... indeed. Now obviously I am not a Beatles scholar. Nor did I have the opportunity to own many Beatles records before recently, so imagine my reaction when people had been praising the Mono Box so much, and I put in Help for the first time. 🤣
I disagree on Help, personally. I remember the first time I heard this album in mono was when I bought the LP re-release in 2014 and I was also shocked, I thought I was playing it at the wrong speed or something, but over the last 10 years or so I've really become accustomed to this version and I don't think it's bad at all, just not what we're used to. Overall I think the Help album is essential in mono personally, mostly because Ringo's drums are mixed so much better. I'm borrowing this line from somewhere, but on the stereo mix of "Ticket to Ride," it sounds like Ringo is playing a set of paper cups. Really enjoying this series!
Thank you. I also would not say I dislike this mono version of the album, but the main track sounding so... weird is off putting. And the 65 Stereo sounded surprisingly adequate. But we are all definitely linked to our own prefferences, and some tracks I would prefer in mono as well.
plus, the version of Yesterday in mono without the reverb of the stereo mix is divine
@@takubo Not only that, I would prefer to hear Yesterday in Mono because to me the vocals there are what I want to hear centered and clear and warm, and the guitar I would prefer to have centered as well, and the Mono does that. Overall I did not have a general problem with the Mono mix of the entire album, the Help! song mix was the big issue for me.
Some facts if you care:
There are 2 stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber because in 1987, George Martin heard the original 1965 mixes and didn't like them. This was the year that The Beatles were getting their premiere release on CD. Yes, EMI waited a long time since the 1982 debut of the Compact Disc. Martin called the original Stereo mixes 'wooly' and remixed them in '87 for their CD debut. The 2009 remixes stem from the '87 mixes, so the original '65 mixes have never been updated. They were just transferred to the Mono CDs.
And for those who are interested, ALL CD's are stereo. So the Mono CDs is just the mono mix on each channel. 100% identical.
Sgt. Pepper was when the Beatles actually started climbing the stairs to the control room and having more of a creative input on the mixes. For a month, The mono mix was worked on with ALL Beatles present whenever they were there. The Stereo mix was done in....a week? a few days? much shorter and only Ringo has confirmed to be present. The Stereo mix has very interesting choices (like removing the phase shifting effect on John's Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds vocal or the pitch being lowered in She's Leaving Home) but nonetheless weren't as much a Beatles creative input as the mono mix.
Also, for the 2017 Giles Martin/Sam Okell remixed the album for it's 50th anniversary using the mono mix. That and the fact the Beatles were creatively involved with the mono mix tells me how definitive the mono mix is.
Revolver objectively has different elements in each mix. John's "A LIFE OF EASE" line in Yellow Submarine is present in the mono mix, along with two acoustic guitar chords at the beginning, whereas the stereo mix has silence when Ringo sings "In the..." then music comes in at "town". There are different backwards guitar solos I think in I'm only sleeping and a different fadeout in Tomorrow Never Knows (one fadeout is longer so you hear more music) Paul's Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) error is fixed in the mono mix, but that mistake is present the first time he says Eleanor Rigby.
All 4 of these albums were recorded on 4 track tape. Most of these songs feature Ringo's drums only on the left channel and different instruments specifically on one side of your speaker/ear. The stereo mixes are better. George Martin went independent from EMI in 1965, and I believe Rubber Soul was his first outing from that. Why he went back to the Rubber Soul stereo mix by HARD panning the instruments on the far left side and the vocals on the far right with SILENCE inbetween is beyond me. His 1987 mix rectified this a little, but you CAN'T listen to Rubber Soul in stereo. It's mono all the way (like Please Please Me and With The Beatles).
Yeah, I mention the alternate mixes for Rubber Soul and Help in later videos when I had both to compare. Well Rubber Soul is still pending. To be honest in headphones some of these mixes are jarring. In speakers at a certain distance they sound quite nice, but I have to say I slightly prefer the 2009 CDs to the original 87 ones, at least for some albums. Also tend to prefer some of the recent new mixes by Giles.
@@BurgundySkies I'm not surprised. with a fresh new set of ears, George Martin put more dimension and fullness into those '87 mixes. Add the 2009 touch for the modern speaker set and bam! The best way for me to listen to The Night Before is the 2009 version!
This!!! You mention The Night Before, but it goes for almost any song, meaning if you put all versions of a song side by side, I doubt anyone would ever choose one year/version of the album/pressing/cd. You have songs that sound excellent on the 2009 remasters, some which sound pretty nice on the 87 cds, some which sound better in Mono, some in Stereo, some original mixes still stand, but Giles did an excellent job on some tracks and made more recent versions of albums the go-to for me (vinyl and CD). One one hand it's nice, multiple versions can sometimes mean different but still pleasant experiences. One the other hand... having to own "n" versions of an album just to get the best variations is a big frustrating.
t's a pity we can't actually listen to the songs to have a real full comparison. Good analysis though. Now, speaking of digital and streaming music platforms, although I know it is proven that the difference between the sound of an original CD and an mp3 used on those platforms is not audible to the human ear, I still feel a drop in sound quality on Spotify for example
It is a shame. The thing is... if I were a bigger channel I probably would not even mind having a few videos with actual track pieces playing properly, even if those videos would not contribute to the channel growth. But with Beatles music, in most cases YT just brings it down. I saw people either upload 2-3 seconds pieces (which tbh seems pointless), or longer pieces but just interrupted every 3 seconds with jumps, which I find very off putting to the ear.
Regarding differences in quality I tend to agree. I think generally people overdo the arguments reffering to what the human ear can pick up. Especially when moving beyond late 30s. But between mixes, remasters, various pressings there most definitely are differences and I find those interesting to identify. It's also interesting to me how certain things (on same versions of songs) just sound differently to different people.
MP3 compression doesn’t handle the wide stereo mixes of the Beatles well. On songs with extreme panning you can hear artifacting of the instruments-the higher frequencies are almost out of phase. Surprisingly the algorithms don’t handle clean electric guitars played through a vox either. When you get good speakers you can really hear how the sound of those guitars are destroyed.
I would recommend heavily getting the 1987 cd the stereo is still of course not perfect but the sound quality is incredible
For which albums you mean? I did get the ones starting with Sgt. Pepper upto and including the Past Masters.
@@BurgundySkies sorry wrote this late at night haha yes sgt peppers onward's to past masters all great I'm glad see you got the EP set too
All sound incredible and sgt peppers in 1987 just perfection for cd buyer's
I think the only modern remix I prefer is let it be which is funny as that's the remix with the less work but the original cd sounds little hollow to me
Got that early let it be, but ironically that is the only one I did not test yet. I was planning a comparisson of all my let it be editions and was waiting for that.
Revolver onward is great on the 87 CDs. 87 BFS isn’t bad either. Also Past Masters 1 and 2 are great on the 87 cds. People say they’re out of phase but doing a simple null test reveals they’re sometimes in better phase than the 2009 remasters.
If you know the 45 version of help mono is different in the stereo version. Anyway vocals are different
I was not aware of it, never having had the actual record. I guess there are many people who already knew about this and were not surprised, but I most definitely was. 🤣