*PRISTINE* 1980's-era US Beatles LP rips 2021 (THE WHOLE BLOODY SET! + BONUS)

[Lemonhead]

Great news Vee-Jay, looking forward to them!

[jpgrcat]

Glad to see this series updated..

Got both the 16-44, & 24-96 Versions...Awesome

Love to hear/see all albums, vinyl or tape rips at 24-96...

[Suzy Parlourphone]

Thank you, Vee-Jay!

[inglis]

Thank you

[ianbuckers]

Hey, Gang -

Well, since the great and generous Lord Reith has successfully completed his BBC set , I figured it was time to create a reason to look forward to Fridays, with the re-release of my complete - and newly revised - set of PRISTINE 1980's-era US Beatles LP rips.

Each Friday for the next 20 weeks ( !), I'll upload a newly "revisited" version of these classic US LPs, drawn from my original BZ rips. I have painstakingly gone through each rip again with a fine-toothed comb and attempted to create an LP listening experience that resembles as closely as possible what you would have heard from your home turntable back in the 1980's, just without all of the clicks and pops and whatnot. That said, please delete any previous versions of these rips that you might already have.

Please note that I have not used ClickRepair or any other software to clean these up. As before, I did it all by hand, but with far more attention to detail this time around. Also new: I have included both a 16-bit CD Quality version AND a 24-bit Hi-Res version of each rip. Artwork was provided primarily by our friends guthera and powerPC, among others.

As I said the last time around (special thanks to Beezer for finding the original BZ thread, which I'll provide in full later):

Back in the '80s, disappointed by the quality of the sound I was getting out of my beat-up '60s and '70s pressings of the US Beatles LPs, I decided to augment my meager collection with a complete, BRAND NEW set of their albums. Slowly, but surely (after all, money didn't grow on trees like it does now! ), I bought them (or was occasionally gifted a few) one at a time. After many months of alternately buying and saving, I managed to "collect them all" (not to make them sound like cheap toys in a cereal box ).

Here's the kicker though - and an unexpected bit of prescience on my part back then - I had become a firm believer in a little motto I'd championed when it came to my record collection:

"You can tape a record, but you can't record (read: REH-kerd) a tape." In other words, rather than buying factory-made Beatles cassette tapes, I'd buy the LPs and play them ONCE, recording them onto blank cassettes for all my future listening. In this way, I'd have both an LP record AND a cassette. Plus, if the cassette ever gave me any trouble, I could go back to my "source" LP and make another one... but that was never necessary.

So, there these gorgeous, new LPs sat in my collection for the last 35 or so years.

Until now.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be unearthing these basically MINT LPs and creating LP rips to share with everyone here on this thread. Even if you already have these US LPs in your collection, I hope you'll enjoy these beautiful 1980s pressings, played for the first time in over three decades!

So, to kick things off, here is my '80s Capitol "Retro Rainbow" pressing of Meet The Beatles! in 16 bit FLAC for your listening pleasure. As before, I have opted to include the actual stylus "drops" and "lifts". Beyond that, I've done nothing to these recordings other than remove major abnormalities by hand and normalize them to -3dB.

So, without further ado, here's the first in the collection... Meet The Beatles!

hxxps://we.tl/t-oSm0GNZvIH

Vee-Jay remind me please. Is my memory correct, you are ripping with an AT turntable with built-in USB DAC?

[Vee-Jay]

thanka again, do we call this version II ?

I've just been calling these "revised" since they're the same audio with better audio clean-up.

Thank you, Vee-Jay. It's my birthday today, and I've been in a funk all day because of it. Just played your rip though-- it was exactly what I needed to feel better. Thank you!

Happy belated birthday! I'm glad that this brought a smile to your face, my friend!

I can't imagine a "new and improved" version as your original ups always sounded great, but I'm looking forward to hearing your upgrades!

Good to see you Vee-Jay, welcome back! Looking very much forward to the updated collection

Thank you, Vee-Jay!

Thank you

You're welcome, Gang. I'm glad that you're enjoying these as much as I've enjoyed melting them... OH, WAIT! That's wrong...

Vee-Jay remind me please. Is my memory correct, you are ripping with an AT turntable with built-in USB DAC?

Here's the lineage I include in the .txt documents all of these rips:

VEE-JAY's Audio Lineage:
103S elliptical diamond stylus →
Signet HiTec 103 (by Audio Technica) P-mount cartridge →
Sears PROformance 564.97990350 (by LXI) linear tracking direct drive full automatic turntable →
Realistic 42-2109 stereo pre-amplifier →
Intel Display Audio & Realtek High Definition Audio →
Audacity 2.1.0 (32-bit float/44.1khz) →
FLAC (16-bit & 44.1khz, shaped dither) **and** Hi-Res FLAC (24-bit & 44.1khz)

[ianbuckers]

Ah okay. I thought I remembered you looking to purchase an Audio Technica LP series turntable? Are you relying on the Realtek Audio to do the A/D conversions?

[hogshead of hellfire]

The setup kind of negates boasting about the condition of the records

A well kept 50 y.o. Thorens 160 jacked-into the phono section of any 1970s-era stereo receiver, with a Tascam DR-07 copying it at 24/96 onto a micro sd card, would yield a more worthwhile result. Upload the sd card then to a MEGA account through a burner phone and it's all good. I don't get all the effort wasted with recycling the signal through (unnecessary) software plugins.

[Vee-Jay]

Ah okay. I thought I remembered you looking to purchase an Audio Technica LP series turntable? Are you relying on the Realtek Audio to do the A/D conversions?

Hi, ianbuckers! I think you may be confusing me with one of the "other" Vee-Jays that have joined this forum under multiple different spellings of the name...

The setup kind of negates boasting about the condition of the records

A well kept 50 y.o. Thorens 160 jacked-into the phono section of any 1970s-era stereo receiver, with a Tascam DR-07 copying it at 24/96 onto a micro sd card, would yield a more worthwhile result. Upload the sd card then to a MEGA account through a burner phone and it's all good. I don't get all the effort wasted with recycling the signal through (unnecessary) software plugins.

Hey, hogshead of hellfire! Thanks for your thoughts. I can't speak to any of that, except to say that I'm doing the best I can with the equipment that I have available. I simply rip them into Audacity directly. I can't be sure what the Intel or Realtek is doing anyway.

I initially transferred these LPs simply so that I could listen to them again. Further, I thought it might be nice to share them here, since I've benefited from others doing the same.

[ianbuckers]

Ah okay. I thought I remembered you looking to purchase an Audio Technica LP series turntable? Are you relying on the Realtek Audio to do the A/D conversions?

Hi, ianbuckers! I think you may be confusing me with one of the "other" Vee-Jays that have joined this forum under multiple different spellings of the name...

The setup kind of negates boasting about the condition of the records

A well kept 50 y.o. Thorens 160 jacked-into the phono section of any 1970s-era stereo receiver, with a Tascam DR-07 copying it at 24/96 onto a micro sd card, would yield a more worthwhile result. Upload the sd card then to a MEGA account through a burner phone and it's all good. I don't get all the effort wasted with recycling the signal through (unnecessary) software plugins.

Hey, hogshead of hellfire! Thanks for your thoughts. I can't speak to any of that, except to say that I'm doing the best I can with the equipment that I have available. I simply rip them into Audacity directly. I can't be sure what the Intel or Realtek is doing anyway.

I initially transferred these LPs simply so that I could listen to them again. Further, I thought it might be nice to share them here, since I've benefited from others doing the same.

Hoghead might be being a tad heavy on you but I think he means your vinyl can be as pristine as you want but it won't be captured well with a weak lineage. Personally I think at the very least you need to put your signal in thru a proper DAC. It will make all the difference.