Technically, The Best Sounding Beatle Albums Are...........

[Paperback Writer]

To my ears, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper.  The albums most to benefit from re-mastering are Abbey Road and Help.

Agree? Dis- Agree? What do your ears say?

[mervap]

Abbey Road, followed by the White Album. My main issue with most all of the albums prior to these was that, as they were recorded on four-track tape, bounce-downs became inevitable. With each reduction mix (bounce-down), fidelity is lost. As they began to explore more artistically, they added still more ingredients, resulting in further reduction mixes.

I should mention that in NO way does this diminish the incredible worth of these recordings, but with the switch to eight-track, sound quality and fidlity improved.

[2 of 3]

I'm not sure is this is cheating or not, but I'd have to say Yellow Submarine. The remastered version is just stunning. The louder the better.

[Kylenz]

Yeah I've got to agree. Yellow Submarine sure got one heck of a spruce-up.

[MeanMrMustard]

Abbey Road, followed by the White Album. My main issue with most all of the albums prior to these was that, as they were recorded on four-track tape, bounce-downs became inevitable. With each reduction mix (bounce-down), fidelity is lost. As they began to explore more artistically, they added still more ingredients, resulting in further reduction mixes.

I should mention that in NO way does this diminish the incredible worth of these recordings, but with the switch to eight-track, sound quality and fidlity improved.

great synopsis.

(I'm the least qualified, technically speaking, but the way you described this brings great aural anticipation for a really pristine experience when we eventually hear them like this!)

[Kylenz]

The best-sounding record to me, is the 'Hey Jude' album that came out shortly after the breakup. The vinyl is thick and the grooves are deep, and tracks like Paperback Writer and Rain sound awesome recorded so 'hot' (loud) into the record. Everything on it sounds huge and warm. The older songs (like I Should Have Known Better) benefit from it and later songs like Lady Madonna and The Ballad of John and Yoko sound full and bigger than they ever did on the Past Masters cds.

As far as legitimate studio albums go, you can't go past Abbey Road, but I also enjoy Magical Mystery Tour productionwise - very warm bass sound, and the way the bass, drum and piano chime in together so clearly on tracks like Hello Goodbye, it's like building on the 'Good Day Sunshine' sound from Revolver. Plus you have the far-out arrangements of Strawberry Fields and Walrus and the flangers going haywire on Blue Jay Way. Fantastic stuff.

However, possibly the worst production job ever on a Beatle track exists in my opinion on the MMT soundtrack - Baby You're A Rich Man. Whose strange idea was it to create the 'fake stereo' mix to make it sound like your ears are recovering from a loud concert and drunk hangover from the night before! Why not just balance the instruments properly and give them their own appropriate eq settings, like any normal engineer would do! It's one of my favourite songs on the album, but I think the recording of the song was very poor. Such a pity because the vocal performances are great, and the weird sound from the mellotron (?) is great too, but why not pan it out hard on the right channel and not have it dominate the entire recording!? I guess the master tapes no longer exist - it could do with a proper remixing, not just a remastering.