Sgt. Pepper 50th anniversary release

[firedog]

http://bestclassicbands.com/beatles-sgt-pepper-super-deluxe-4-4-17/

 

the interesting part to me is that it includes a REMIX from "original master tapes". Don't know what that means, exactly, in the context of Sgt. Pepper and all of the recording with tracks "bounced down" onto one of the tracks on a 4 track tape, but I think a modern remix is a good thing.

Hopefully it will be the first of the remixes of the rest of the catalog. 

 

[wwaldmanfan]

47 minutes ago, firedog said:

http://bestclassicbands.com/beatles-sgt-pepper-super-deluxe-4-4-17/

 

the interesting part to me is that it includes a REMIX from "original master tapes". Don't know what that means, exactly, in the context of Sgt. Pepper and all of the recording with tracks "bounced down" onto one of the tracks on a 4 track tape, but I think a modern remix is a good thing.

Hopefully it will be the first of the remixes of the rest of the catalog. 

 

 

I have to disagree with you. I have no interest in a "modern remix" of this, or any other iconic album. This is just another money-grab targeting nostalgic, affluent baby boomers. There's a dearth of well-mastered, worthwhile popular music today, so folks are re-buying reissues of the old, classic stuff instead.

I read that they are planning to add "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" to Sgt. Pepper. You really can't improve a piece of classic art by changing it fifty years later, nor should you try.

I've head all the subsequent re-releases, including the 2009 George Martin remasters and the 2014 mono box, but, to me, the original UK vinyl LP's are the most authentic versions of these albums. I have very good needle drops of my favorite Beatles albums, as well as other classic rock that has been "remastered from the original tapes" (volume limited and DR compressed). With a handful of exceptions that were done poorly at first, remixing/remastering the original recordings does not improve them.

[Jud]

https://www.beatlesbible.com/2017/04/05/beatles-sgt-pepper-50th-anniversary-edition/

[firedog]

Obviously it is partially a money grab.

But I'm in favor of using modern techniques to remix. I bet there will be lots of detail and certain textures that will be audible on the remixes that aren't clear or audible on your LP's. 

Certainly the stereo mixes from 67 are far from perfect, and weren't done with the Beatles themselves, so I don't see any reason not to try to get a better result with the aid of 5 decades worth of understanding of how to do a proper stereo mix. 

Doesn't mean the new remix supplants or is better than the original. It's just using improved tools to try to hear/listen to the original tapes in a way that couldn't be done before. If it is truly iconic and great music, don't we want  a chance to hear "everything" on the tapes?

For me it will just add another perspective, another layer of understanding and insight into the music. 

Hopeully it won't be volume crushed....

[wwaldmanfan]

6 minutes ago, firedog said:

Obviously it is partially a money grab.

But I'm in favor of using modern techniques to remix. I bet there will be lots of detail and certain textures that will be audible on the remixes that aren't clear or audible on your LP's. 

Doesn't mean the new remix supplants or is better than the original. It's just using improved tools to try to hear/listen to the original tapes in a way that couldn't be done before. If it is truly iconic and great music, don't we want  a chance to hear "everything" on the tapes?

For me it will just add another perspective, another layer of understanding and insight into the music. 

Hopeully it won't be volume crushed....

 

You are right.  I guess I was a little crochety when I woke up this morning.

I would be interested in hearing it, I'm just jaded from all the "remasters" I've bought that didn't live up to expectations.

Looking through my library, I do have a handful that notably improved on the original release:

 

Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, Raising Sand, Kevin Gray remastered double LP

Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow, MFSL double 45rpm mono vinyl & hybrid SACD

Jethro Tull, Stand Up, Steven Wilson 2016 remix

Jethro Tull, Aqualung, Steven Wilson 2011 remix

Robert Johnson, The Centennial Collection remasters

Steely Dan, Can't Buy A Thrill, 2000 Speakers Corner Records vinyl remaster

Tom Petty, Wildflowers, 2014 hi-res remaster (the original was brickwalled)

Tom Petty, Echo, 2015 hi-res remaster (same as above)

[ted_b]

I used to think of myself as a Beatles purist, but ever since Yellow Submarine Songtrack came out I realized that Beatle remixes were absolutely fine in my eyes (and ears).  Those remixes were not over the top at all, and brought new detail and life to many Beatle classics (the bass in Hey Bulldog, for example). 

 

Then came some movie 5.1 mixes and eventually Beatles Love and the mashups.  While not exactly go-to versions for me, the idea of taking basically non-mashed up songs (Revolver, A Day in the Life, etc) and producing well-intentioned 5.1 mixes was absolutely amazing.  A vision of the later catalog in 5.1 has been a dream of mine for some time.

 

I will buy the larger (incl blu-ray) set the day it comes out (worst case ask for it for Fathers Day).  Do I wish it was offered ala carte, yes!  Oh well.

 

To those who don't believe in this stuff and call it simply a cash grab, keep your cash.  No one is demanding you buy them.  Just make sure on the 50th anniversary you put on one of your fave versions of Sgt Pepper (mono vinyl is a great choice) and enjoy the memories.

[Jud]

9 minutes ago, ted_b said:

Those remixes were not over the top at all, and brought new detail and life to many Beatle classics (the bass in Hey Bulldog, for example). 

 

Hey Bulldog being a favorite of mine, I'll have to take a look at YS Songtrack.

[wwaldmanfan]

8 minutes ago, ted_b said:

I used to think of myself as a Beatles purist, but ever since Yellow Submarine Songtrack came out I realized that Beatle remixes were absolutely fine in my eyes (and ears).  Those remixes were not over the top at all, and brought new detail and life to many Beatle classics (the bass in Hey Bulldog, for example). 

 

Then came some movie 5.1 mixes and eventually Beatles Love and the mashups.  While not exactly go-to versions for me, the idea of taking basically non-mashed up songs (Revolver, A Day in the Life, etc) and producing well-intentioned 5.1 mixes was absolutely amazing.  A vision of the later catalog in 5.1 has been a dream of mine for some time.

 

I will buy the larger (incl blu-ray) set the day it comes out (worst case ask for it for Fathers Day).  Do I wish it was offered ala carte, yes!  Oh well.

 

To those who don't believe in this stuff and call it simply a cash grab, keep your cash.  No one is demanding you buy them.  Just make sure on the 50th anniversary you put on one of your fave versions of Sgt Pepper (mono vinyl is a great choice) and enjoy the memories.

 

I hope that you will follow up here after you get the set, and let us know how it sounds.

Yes, I will spin my original mono Sgt. Pepper LP that I got for my bar-mitzvah in 1967

[Jud]

4 hours ago, wwaldmanfan said:

 

I hope that you will follow up here after you get the set, and let us know how it sounds.

Yes, I will spin my original mono Sgt. Pepper LP that I got for my bar-mitzvah in 1967

 

First LP I ever got.  My Uncle Jacques (Polish-born, but moved to France before a hair-raising escape to the US to avoid the invading Nazis) insisted on buying it for me, then when I played it made a face and said "Cats-music!" (like yowling cats).

[wwaldmanfan]

14 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

First LP I ever got.  My Uncle Jacques (Polish-born, but moved to France before a hair-raising escape to the US to avoid the invading Nazis) insisted on buying it for me, then when I played it made a face and said "Cats-music!" (like yowling cats).

 

Good story. I had an uncle who WALKED from Russia to Paris after WWI, came here, and eventually lived to be 101.

My first LP was Rubber Soul.

BTW, I have Yellow Submarine Songtrack, but I don't listen to it much. It's pretty heavily compressed. "Hey Buildog" is DR 6.

[Jud]

4 hours ago, wwaldmanfan said:

 

Good story. I had an uncle who WALKED from Russia to Paris after WWI, came here, and eventually lived to be 101.

My first LP was Rubber Soul.

BTW, I have Yellow Submarine Soundtrack, but I don't listen to it much. It's pretty heavily compressed. "Hey Buildog" is DR 6.

 

Oof.  OK, good bass or not, I think I'll stick with the CD remaster.  Beatles 1 was also compressed (though many of the songs on it sound the best to me of the various versions I have), so I'm a bit nervous about Pepper.

 

More about Jacques: His last name was Korcarz, for which he adopted a Francophone pronunciation, kor-SAHZJ.  So I had a French uncle Jacques Corsage.   (Edit: I should note he was actually my great-uncle, my maternal grandmother's brother.)

 

The way he told it, he was at work in Marseilles and an office boy was handing him some papers when a bomb or shell exploded nearby.  He woke up in a hole, no sign of the office boy, or the office, for that matter.  He figured that was a sign he should be leaving, so he talked to some Mafia friends who hid him in a brothel overnight to avoid sweeps for Jews, then smuggled him on board a boat and out of France.

[wwaldmanfan]

3 minutes ago, Jud said:

More about Jacques: His last name was Korcarz, for which he adopted a Francophone pronunciation, kor-SAHZJ.  So I had a French uncle Jacques Corsage.

 

The way he told it, he was at work in Marseilles and an office boy was handing him some papers when a bomb or shell exploded nearby.  He woke up in a hole, no sign of the office boy, or the office, for that matter.  He figured that was a sign he should be leaving, so he talked to some Mafia friends who hid him in a brothel overnight to avoid sweeps for Jews, then smuggled him on board a boat and out of France.

 

I know it is off-topic, but I enjoy stuff like this. I have a similar family story.

My dad was a warrant officer at the front during the Battle of The Bulge. A Nazi shell came through the window of his office, and took off his CO's head, just a few feet away. He never told me about this, but my mom filled me in.

After they both passed, my sisters and I were cleaning out the house, and we found three huge scrapbooks of love letters my dad sent my mom from the war, as they were married just before he shipped out. There were over 600 letters, and I never knew they even existed.

Also, my dad's cousin was on Schindler's List. The real one, not the movie.

[firedog]

The last two Beatles albums (Hollywood Bowl and 1+ were around DR  9 or 10. Unfortunately, that's what I'm expecting here, too.

Maybe not. Maybe even if it is, the high res will be less compressed.

I would love to hear this in 5.1, don't know if I ever will.

 

[Jud]

8 minutes ago, firedog said:

The last two Beatles albums (Hollywood Bowl and 1+ were around DR  9 or 10. Unfortunately, that's what I'm expecting here, too.

Maybe not. Maybe even if it is, the high res will be less compressed.

I would love to hear this in 5.1, don't know if I ever will.

 

 

1+ is 8 in RedBook, 9 in 24/96, and 10 in DTS 24/48 5.1.

[ted_b]

2 hours ago, wwaldmanfan said:

BTW, I have Yellow Submarine Songtrack, but I don't listen to it much. It's pretty heavily compressed. "Hey Buildog" is DR 6.

I guess I didn't get my point across at all.  My point was not that this Hey Bulldog, or anything on YSS is the SOTA go-to track today (24 bit USB is the go-to for some of that now), but that when the YSS came out the remixes (Only A Northern Song first true stereo version, Hey Bulldog with cleaned up vocals now centered, etc etc) were revelatory and at the same time not blasphemously done.....i.e point was that remixing the Beatles, once thought to be sacrilegious, was anything but.   Rumor has it that Yellow Submarine (24 bit), the EMI catalog one with movie music, was going to use the newer remixes (but same track order as original) but someone stepped in last minute, which delayed the whole project a bit. 

 

The Beatles catalog is pretty compressed work to begin with (unless you attended one of Steve Hoffman's CES presentations where he plays some original tapes from the White Album that are AMAZING).  However, I found some of the true stereo remixes to unearth detail that had been hidden in some of the early ping-pong stereo from the 60s.  I'm hoping that kind of work has been done on Pepper.

 

Edit:  Try going to All Too Much (Harrison) on both the 24 bit YS and the compressed (but remixed) YSS and tell me which sounds better.

[Jud]

30 minutes ago, ted_b said:

unless you attended one of Steve Hoffman's CES presentations where he plays some original tapes from the White Album that are AMAZING

 

[makes mental note to attend CES and Steve Hoffman presentation]

[firedog]

If you read about the Beatles recording process (try "Recording the Beatles") they used "limiters" (read compression) on just about everything. But the overall results don't sound unnatural or compressed - there's plenty of dynamics. 

 

However, compressing individual tracks when recording  is different than taking a finished mix/recording and volume compressing it so you get something "louder", with the resulting flat wave forms.

 

I thought the 2009 stereo remasters of the Beatles sounded very good. They used a little compression to give the albums a more modern sound, but not so much as to ruin them. The mono releases didn't have any compression added to them. Since they supposedly are remixing Pepper from 4 analog tracks, I can hope they will be similarly "respectful" of the original sound and use no or just a little added compression....At least on the hi-res...

[nicholasg]

Has anyone seen anything about the stereo, remixed, 96KHz, 24-bit version of the album that is on the Blu-ray disc being available as a download? I haven't managed to find any official mention of downloads.

[sphinxsix]

On 5.04.2017 at 5:22 PM, Jud said:

 

First LP I ever got.  My Uncle Jacques (Polish-born, but moved to France before a hair-raising escape to the US to avoid the invading Nazis) insisted on buying it for me, then when I played it made a face and said "Cats-music!" (like yowling cats).

First LP I ever envied somebody (couldn't stop looking at the cover whenever I had a chance) - a friend of mine whose older brother owned it. The Beatles were the first band I was a huge fan of and started collecting when I was about 9-10. I bought both the stereo box CD set (Media Markt Sale) and later 24bit USB version years later - in part out of nostalgia in part out of curiosity, I wanted to check out the sound quality. BTW the 24bit version sounds good to my ears. Yet I wouldn't sell the CD box, I keep both on the top shelf of my CD rack - they remind me where I came from. 

 

@Jud

  @wwaldmanfan

 

Some interesting family stories guys, I really enjoyed them

[TubeLover]

I also find it very compelling that the deluxe box set is  " including no fewer than 33 previously unreleased recordings", and that George Martin's son Giles handled all the remastering, etc. Looks like they will get my $150.00 too.

 

 

https://www.musicdirect.com/optical-disc/The-Beatles-Sgt-Peppers-Lonely-Hearts-Club-Band-Super-Deluxe-Ed-(4CD--plus--DVD--plus--Blu-Ray-Box-Set)

[esimms86]

It's curious that the Giles Martin Stereo and Mono box sets were released in 24.44.1 and now Martin's remixes of Sgt. Pepper, SF and PL are being released in 24/96. Ringo, who obviously has a financial stake in the new release, has been quoted as saying that he loved the remixes for the fact that the drums were brought more forward. In my book, the Hi Res mixes and the presumably redbook 5.1 mixes are reason enough to spend the money. I assume that the White Album is, if not next, is certainly near the front of the queue for the same treatment. After all, they have to get this stuff on the market while there are still baby boomers alive and interested in opening up their wallets.  The White Album and Abbey Road aside, I'm not sure how much interest there is in Hi Res remixes for the other Beatles albums(though I could be very wrong). Incidentally, if Sgt. Pepper costs $150, what will the White Album cost? And there should be a discount for "Revolution #9."  ;  )

[firedog]

Wasn't going to do this, but couldn't resist and pre-ordered (original idea was to wait and see it price for the big box goes down).

Only $186 with overseas shipping (door to door) and taxes...

[esimms86]

Unbelievably, the Super Deluxe 6 Disc set at $150 is #1 at Amazon. #2 is Moana for less than 10 dollars.

 

http://bestclassicbands.com/beatles-sgt-pepper-sales-4-7-17/

 

 

[firedog]

There's a reason this stuff keeps getting released - we buy it and pay a premium.

Wait for the Rubber Soul, Revolver, White Album and Abbey Road box sets....

[ted_b]

Well, the 50th for RS and Revolver are long passed, but I guess if this box set is a hit, there's always some anniversary that can launch the others.