The Beatles Remastered Stereo Box Set Review
If you already own all of The Beatles albums in stereo on CD already then you may be wondering if it’s really worth it to buy them all again because they’ve been remastered and repackaged in The Beatles In Stereo Box Set.
The appeal of The Beatles Mono Box Set is easier to understand. This is the first time these mono mixes have ever been released on CD and in the case of mono version of The White Album, it’s the first time it has ever released in the US in any format.
Sound quality is the big draw with The Beatles Stereo Box Set but you don’t have to be an audiophile to appreciate the improvement in sound quality. The improvement is so obvious that sometimes it almost sounds like the songs have actually been remixed as well as being remastered (”Long Long Long” is a great example of this huge improvement.)
To describe the difference in clarity between these new stereo Beatles CDs and the old ones I’ve read the example of going from DVD to Blu-Ray on a movie. You don’t really know how much better it can look until you see the high definition version. It’s sort of like that when you hear these remastered CDs for the first time.
But with music I think sound clarity is even more important than video clarity is to a movie. Why? Because with a movie you can still follow the plot and know what’s going on just the same whether or not it’s perfectly clear or not. But with music, the added clarity can actually allow you to hear parts in the music that you may have missed when it wasn’t as clear.
Hearing these newly remastered Beatles CDs is like hearing them for the first time. Yes, the improvements in warmth & clarity are that big!
I’ve read that they worked on these remasters for years to get them just perfect and that work has really paid off because they managed to capture all of the original analog warmth of the original master tapes while also managing to make them more clear so that all of the parts of the music are easier to hear.
The sound of the bass and the drums are the biggest improvements with these remastered stereo CDs but they are not the only improvements. Everything really sounds clearer including the vocals. Never before have I been able to hear every voice in the harmonies so clearly before.
There were a lot of potential mistakes that they could have made when doing these remasters. They could have taken part in the “loudness wars.” They could have taken out all of the analog ambiance that helps give the music it’s “life.” They managed to avoid all of the mistakes and really do The Beatles music justice. They’ve never sounded better before.
