Red & Blue Albums

[chescowx]

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.

The Atmos mixes are really the real reason for these remixes and where they clearly shine! What a great job by Giles M and team! I am so excited to now here all of the remaining albums (and The White Album) get the Atmos treatment. Old boring stereo and mono listens are a thing of the past. The future is Atmos all the time!!

[kirkenshrir]

Speaking of subtle differences in sound quality...


The earlier comparaisons got me thinking: What about the OTHER mixes? What about all those 2015, 2017 etc mixes we're all taking for granted because they're all just the same remixes we already have... What if they're not?

What if they're the same remixes but their mastering is different?

So I decided to compare Pepper, one of the loudest, most compressed of the remixes series, and this is what I found:

pepper.jpg (97.78 KiB) Viewed 1922 times

Haven't a/b'ed it yet, but on paper, it seems like they've improved it quite a bit! These tracks should sound better... Now I'll have to compare ALL the other "old" remixes from the set and see which ones I should be replacing/upgrading... Fun times ahead!

[alphabeatles]

Speaking of subtle differences in sound quality...


The earlier comparaisons got me thinking: What about the OTHER mixes? What about all those 2015, 2017 etc mixes we're all taking for granted because they're all just the same remixes we already have... What if they're not?

Great post! I was wondering this as well. Please report your complete findings when done!

Also, is there any reason to favor the CD releases over the stereo HD 24/96 (not Atmos) or vice-versa?

[Lord Reith]

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.

The Atmos mixes are really the real reason for these remixes and where they clearly shine! What a great job by Giles M and team! I am so excited to now here all of the remaining albums (and The White Album) get the Atmos treatment. Old boring stereo and mono listens are a thing of the past. The future is Atmos all the time!!

I would like to get an Atmos system now that there are so many albums mixed for it. It'd be great to hear these songs that way.

Also, for some strange reason the Atmos mixes folded down to stereo I've heard nearly always sound much better than the actual stereo mixes. What is going on there?!

[Track06]

Despite what I wrote earlier, I now think LMD is more dynamic on the single. I also checked A Day In The Life (RM2017) and confirm it is mastered differently in 2023. Less limiting and bass(I think).

There also also may be up to 4 different masters of NAT. It has some further tweaks on the single and is not watermarked (CD and most downloads I've seen). On most downloads of the album it's watermarked and potentially unpleasant noises are untouched.
If you substract one waveform from the other (equal loudness), no indication of different dynamics remains, just signs of Universal's watermark and some sonic tweaking.

nat.jpg (955.68 KiB) Viewed 1789 times

EDIT: mixed up LMD album/single. corrected above.

[Lord Reith]

I was listening to Nowhere Man on the red cd today. I straight away noticed that the entire hi hat cymbal part is desynched from the rest of the drums.

I then listened to the atmos mix and the drums are fine.

To make sure I wasn't having some sort of episode, I recorded the atmos mix to mono and put it in the left channel of a stereo file with the red cd in mono on the right. As you'd expect, everything is in mono... except the hi hat! I then demixed the drums to see what was going on and you can see the kick and snare drum are in the same places in both versions, but the hi hat cymbal has accidentally been advanced (ie: moved to the left) by 22 milliseconds.

This is a damned shame as it makes Ringo sound like he was a bad drummer who couldn't keep time. Hope they intend to fix it for the RS SDE. I hate to think of this being permanent. It ruins what was a really great song.

Here's a bit of the audio seen below: https://tinyurl.com/4p5bk4ax

No-No Man.jpg (119.52 KiB) Viewed 1715 times

[Fred68]

I was listening to Nowhere Man on the red cd today. I straight away noticed that the entire hi hat cymbal part is desynched from the rest of the drums.

This is a damned shame as it makes Ringo sound like he was a bad drummer who couldn't keep time. Hope they intend to fix it for the RS SDE. I hate to think of this being permanent. It ruins what was a really great song.

There's no excuse for shit like this to happen. Remix decisions are subjective, but this is simply poor quality control.

[brainwashed]

I was listening to Nowhere Man on the red cd today. I straight away noticed that the entire hi hat cymbal part is desynched from the rest of the drums.

This is a damned shame as it makes Ringo sound like he was a bad drummer who couldn't keep time. Hope they intend to fix it for the RS SDE. I hate to think of this being permanent. It ruins what was a really great song.

There's no excuse for shit like this to happen. Remix decisions are subjective, but this is simply poor quality control.

Indeed poor quality control, but makes one think just how fast they must be remixing these songs. It's one thing to accidently mis-sync a track, but that no one on the team or at Apple could hear this... be it Giles, Sam, Paul, RINGO! is indeed puzzling. Maybe they concentrate more on the Atmos mixes? The other issue is with Old Brown Shoe. How on earth could they "forget" to add on the first guitar riff TWICE after the first verse. The answering riff is fine, but the first two are almost missing. It's like they kept one guitar track ultra low and the other quite high in the remix. Yet, this is not apparent on the Atmos mix. And after the second phrase there is a sorta thud (missed note?) that isn't obvious on the standard stereo mix. Just a couple of strange issues that should never have made it past the early remixing stage. So many of the remixes are quite good, it begs the question why a couple of issues, anomalies, etc... always seem to pop up on each and every new release. Ron

[dannysonar]

I was listening to Nowhere Man on the red cd today. I straight away noticed that the entire hi hat cymbal part is desynched from the rest of the drums.

Yes, there is some talk going on about this in the SH Forums, the usual well-mannered way. "The hi-hat is late !" "No it isn't, and I'm a pro drummer !"
I listened to the mix for the first time yesterday and it sounds wrong, very wrong indeed. First of all, what's the point of demixing the hi-hat and separate it from the rest of the drums, and make it so loud ? It's awful, and of course if it's also slightly out of time it's even worse.
I think most of the mixes from the Red album are quite enjoyable, if they're not to everyone's taste, at least they bring something new, but this one is a complete failure. It makes you wonder about quality control indeed.

[Tex]

It's proof they are separating hihat from snare which is insane.

Previous demixing showed they were separating the kick drum out so they make it louder. It's obvious on the 2015 mixes for "1" which I pointed out at the time.

They had spectral demixing tech since 2009 in the form of Cedar Retouch.