Red & Blue Albums

[Ronson]

"I Am The Walrus" remix was pretty strange too, I lost my hope of any proper stereo mix of this song. Why Giles Martin decided it was a good idea to recreate that awful fake stereo effect?

On the other hand, the other MMT tracks are quite nice.

I agree with you, we will never have a proper Stereo mix of “I Am The Walrus”
I thought this time we would have an interesting mix of this song on this new release.

My only real interest in this Red/Blue was a full-on stereo mix of "I Am The Walrus" from beginning to end, with the middle segue reinserted. Heck, they could have even left out the King Lear bits. Oh well.

[alphabeatles]

Here's my attempt at remixing I am The Walrus... let me know what you think!
hxxps://we.tl/t-mVRiXCeBI4
-RubberSolof

Mike, I love your work as always! Fun and quirky.

Minor technical notes on this one:

•At 4'04.6397 there is a stray bit of untrimmed audio (I've done this myself by not selecting quite all of a bit or maybe too much)

•At 4'12.3078 there is an obvious change of audio quality at the halfway point during the silence between speech. Easily fixed and doesn't affect the pace at all

[ExDalek]

I’m apparently the only person who hasn’t heard the new red and blue yet.

Really? I've seen it in quite a few shops this week. I don't think retailers care about that stuff these days. And a hell of a lot of people got their postal order early too.

It could be worse, my wife has bought me the albums for Christmas, meaning I will avoid listening to any sources till then

Also, I love reading on here the comparisons between the old and new versions, mainly because I'm going deaf. I don't hear some frequencies anymore - I awoke one morning and thought I had some sort of ear infection in my left ear. After doctors and hospital tests, it turns out to be sudden deafness syndrome. Down to about 40%. Since then both ears have worsened. I was in my 40s when this happened and now at 54, I take out my hearing aids to listen to music through headphones as the hearing aids sound rubbish and whistle when covered. So with the balance heavily turned left, I have to turn the volume to a point equal to a live concert! The point is I don't hear a lot of things others can. I hope they get on with releasing the other albums on Super Deluxe Editions while I can still hear. Pardon?

[Lord Reith]

Also, I love reading on here the comparisons between the old and new versions, mainly because I'm going deaf.

Like probably 70% of the guys on SHF. They list their equipment... but what they don't list is whether they can still hear anything above 10khz.

[Albert Grove]

What a weird choice to include Roll Over Beethoven and You Really Got A Hold On Me!

A wink to The Beatles Second Album.

[kirkenshrir]

I just had a chance to check out the new Red/Blue albums and found out something really strange:

Although it is still brickwalled, Now and Then has better dynamic range on Blue than it does on the single... and somehow, the opposite is true for Love Me Do; it has better dynamic range on the N&T single !!


Weird.

I'm quite tired now and I can't be sure what you are compairing. What I have seems to indicate the Red&Blue downloads are usually watermarked resulting in slightly higher peak/RMS ratio compared to unwatermarked files. There seems to be further tweaks done to the releases individually: de-clapping LMD (album), de-esssing NAT (single) - both probably reducing some peaks and lowering the calculated DR value.
There are clicks at 1:58 (before stay), 3:21 and 3:54 on Now And Then on album and video but not on the single.

Yeah, the things you mentioned might have something to do with it but the overall volume and compression is still completely different...

Here's how foobar2000 sees them

dr.jpg (54.1 KiB) Viewed 1004 times

And in RX, Love me do NAT single vs red 23:

Love Me Do (N&T Single).jpg (64.33 KiB) Viewed 1004 times

Love Me Do (Red 23).jpg (61.45 KiB) Viewed 1004 times

So as you can see, LMD is visibly more compressed on the album than on the NAT single.


As for NAT itself, single vs blue 23:

Now and Then (N&T Single).jpg (34.49 KiB) Viewed 1004 times

Now and Then (Blue 23).jpg (40.82 KiB) Viewed 1004 times

This one's a tougher call (and yeah, the things you mentioned might come into play a bit more here). Yeah, they are both completely brickwalled. ...and the album version is at a lower volume, but I still think it might also mean it's SLIGHTLY less compressed than the single. It does sound better -- to my ears anyway (after applying replay gain)


Either way, I wasn't expecting such a variation between versions released a week appart...

[beatlbay]

Also, I love reading on here the comparisons between the old and new versions, mainly because I'm going deaf.

Like probably 70% of the guys on SHF. They list their equipment... but what they don't list is whether they can still hear anything above 10khz.

I think you two have nailed it for me. I'm almost 60 years old, ran heavy equipment half my life as well as spent a lot of my late teens and early 20s at Ramones concerts and various punk bands in small places. Not to mention a great deal loud stereo blasting. My wife has no problem pointing that I can't hear any more.... So I guess that is why I don't get that excited about remixes.

Don't get me wrong, overall, I really appreciate the remixes from the PEPPER box on... Hell maybe I should include LOVE or NAKED in that.. but I do get more enjoyment from the outtakes. Even the early stuff from PLEASE PLEASE ME. I love listening to 10 takes of "Seventeen" or "Help" breakdowns and all because, unless I use headphones. I really don't pickup on mixing variations, volume changes, etc.

So I guess I am being selfish. I really don't need another copy of RED and BLUE... even though I think my kids are getting it for me for Xmas.. I want more deluxe sets with everything they can fit on a minimum of 5 full CDs per set with the Hi-Res Blue Ray. No more money-grabs like the REVOLVER set... 2 CDs worth of material spread out over 5. Maybe Apple should put Sean in charge of overseeing the Beatle releases because his Lennon sets are the best... other than running scared on SOMETIME IN NYC.

Anyway, thanks for helping realize how old I am.... now where is that UNSURPASSED VOL 1, I need my multiple take fix of "Thank You Girl"!

[DarkHumour]

Ahhhhhh, the advantages of being a young whippersnapper with studio headphones...I CAN HEAR!

On release day, I took a quick listen to several of the remixes, and they weren't all that bad, really. I still prefer the remixes by one Prof. Stoned for the early stuff, though.

[MrMurphMcgee]

I really want an Atmos mix of the A Hard Day's Night LP now after hearing these tracks. Rubber Soul as well. We Can Work It Out and Day Tripper sound like your in the room with head-tracking enabled on the Apple AirPod Max.

[Lord Reith]

I think you two have nailed it for me. I'm almost 60 years old, ran heavy equipment half my life as well as spent a lot of my late teens and early 20s at Ramones concerts and various punk bands in small places. Not to mention a great deal loud stereo blasting. My wife has no problem pointing that I can't hear any more.... So I guess that is why I don't get that excited about remixes.

Yeah, unfortunately hearing loss is the plague of the past 50 years. When I was a youth I had a horror of losing my lugs because both my parents were hard of hearing. So I copped a lot of flack (flac?) from peers for not going to loud rock concerts or wearing earplugs. But now because my hearing is pretty well preserved it seems like every one in two people over 30 I meet have hearing loss. Some of these new mixes sound incredibly harsh to me, peaking at exactly the same frequencies that are most affected by deafness. Having old guys who spend most of their days exposed to high sound levels mixing this stuff is one thing, but they need to run it by some young guys before issuing it!

I think the worst "deaf aid" cd I have ever heard is the original Anthology disc 1. That cd is unbelievably harsh. And 100% of the reason for that is that it was mixed by two old blokes. Fortunately when Giles remastered it in 2011 he dialed back the harshness, but now the current team seems to be heading down the same path.