I m sure you ve already heard a lot about The Beatles 2009 remasters. They ve got a huge amount of of hype considering that they are essentially re releases of music that most people who are buying them already own.
As someone who grew to love The Beatles music from their 1980s CDs I think that their great song writing and their great performances are far more important than variations in sound quality from one format to another but that doesn t mean that I wasn t excited about the 2009 remasters. After all, I had heard plenty about how the 80s discs were not of the highest quality since digital mastering was in it s infancy at the time and audio engineers of the time just didn t have the same advanced tools and knowledge that they do today.
But hearing the original mono mixes for the first time was even more exciting than hearing those remasters for the first time. Until the new Beatles in Mono box set was released I had never heard some of the greatest Beatles albums the way they were originally intended to be heard. It can be difficult to understand today since we are so far removed from it, but at the time mono was the standard way to listen to music. Stereo was mostly the domain of hi end audiophiles who, for the most part, had little interest in popular music (although The Beatles both directly and indirectly have changed that since then.)
It was (and still is) a really wonderful listening experience to hear Sgt. Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band how the band and George Martin first mixed it (and how the majority of Beatles fans originally heard it) in the 60s. There are easily noticeable differences in these mono versions when compared to the stereo versions that I had previously been used to. It s not so much that they re better (because I often prefer the stereo mixes) but that they sound different. I love being able to hear those differences.
Along with the box sets (stereo and mono) there s also an all digital version of The Beatles in Stereo which is known as The Beatles USB. This is actually the very first release of the legendary band s music in the mp3 format but there s actually something more exciting than just the inclusion of their entire catalog in remastered stereo in high quality mp3s (although that is cool, isn t it?) What is that more exciting thing? That the USB flash drive also includes 44.1kHz/24bit FLAC files.
These 24bit FLAC files are actually of higher quality than 16bit CD files which means that The Beatles USB actually contains the highest quality version of The Beatles remasters available (until, of course, the remastered catalog gets released in 96kHz/24bit or even 192kHz/24bit on DVD and/or blu ray in the future.)
Of course these remasters haven t been only been made available for listening, they ve also been made available for playing with The Beatles Rock Band. And if you re someone who automatically think you re not interested in video games, I beg of you to keep an open mind. This is a really fun game. I am not someone who plays video games normally, but I absolutely love The Beatles Rock Band. It s fantastic.
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