Parlogram "The Forgotten Beatles EP Box Set & Why You Should Own It"

[Tex]

Yes! I've been promoting this box set for years here.

It seems this box set has been forgotten or was assumed to just be the same old 1986 digital transfers repackaged.

The transfers of "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" leap out of your speakers and are much better than the "Past Masters" transfers.

[dascottjr]

Did anyone else notice the live snippet of "All My Loving" at the end of the video?

[harrylime]

I used to be a fan of this release, but I think Mono Masters, especially the 2014 vinyl, improved even further on most songs. I do like She Loves You though, for me the EP CD has the best version (albeit it was a 'restoration' and not a straight dupe).

I btw fail to understand his remark about Long Tall Sally and MMT being 'first generation masters'. Afaik any compilation reel, be it album or EP, would be a dub of each individual RM or RS, so always at least one generation removed from the first generation? Making it 2nd gen for a direct-to-EP compilation and possibly 3rd gen if it was made from an album master?

[Tex]

I used to be a fan of this release, but I think Mono Masters, especially the 2014 vinyl, improved even further on most songs. I do like She Loves You though, for me the EP CD has the best version (albeit it was a 'restoration' and not a straight dupe).

I btw fail to understand his remark about Long Tall Sally and MMT being 'first generation masters'. Afaik any compilation reel, be it album or EP, would be a dub of each individual RM or RS, so always at least one generation removed from the first generation? Making it 2nd gen for a direct-to-EP compilation and possibly 3rd gen if it was made from an album master?

The EPs of Long Tall Sally and MMT should be the actual mono masters. The others are surely dupes. But for the albums stuff duplicated in the EPs did they digitize from the dupes or the actual album masters??

They didn't compile vintage LP and the LTS and MMT EP masters from dupe tapes it's the original mixes literally taped together. Now, later LP masters for compilations like the Red & Blue LPs are from dupe tapes because you can't be slicing out the stereo master for the song "A Hard Day's Night" from the 1964 stereo LP master and inserting it into the Red LP master. Unfortunately other artists have had their masters so sliced and diced into so many compilations the actual masters get lost.

Almost no one does a "straight dupe" of anything everything has some degree of mastering. Even Hoffman who is supposedly the "straight dupe" god often has to heavily tweak stuff with analog EQs in the signal chain. For the Mamas and Papas stuff he even had to use TWO equalizers in series to get them to sound good because evidently the actual unfutzed masters sound like garbage.

[Tex]

I used to be a fan of this release, but I think Mono Masters, especially the 2014 vinyl, improved even further on most songs.

It's my understanding the 2014 LPs actually followed the original mastering notes. In other words they dialed in specific EQ bumps and cuts to improve the sound of the masters.

I'm not sure what you mean about "She Loves You" being a "restoration". They made a better transfer and mastering of the master.

What we don't know is did they use the master of the single stored on the small reel taped to "I'll Get You" or did they just use the dupe already compiled into the EP master. Same with "Hand", "Can't Buy Me Love" and the others that duplicate previously released material.

Regardless, the EP stuff does sound much fuller and crisper. It's NOT a subtle difference either. It makes you question the methodology of the original 1986 transfers.

I'm inclined to think the 1986 transfers were just badly done and what we hear on the EPs are closer to what we would hear if we heard the actual master tapes. The EPs have deeper bass, more upper end clarity, sweeter mid-range and are even more dynamic. I don't know if you can do all that with just EQ.

[Bianju]

Did anyone else notice the live snippet of "All My Loving" at the end of the video?

I think it's just a filtered version of the studio recording. If you set reverb to all-wet, it comes out sounding like that. Pretty cool effect.

[harrylime]

I'm not sure what you mean about "She Loves You" being a "restoration". They made a better transfer and mastering of the master.

What we don't know is did they use the master of the single stored on the small reel taped to "I'll Get You" or did they just use the dupe already compiled into the EP master. Same with "Hand", "Can't Buy Me Love" and the others that duplicate previously released material.

Regardless, the EP stuff does sound much fuller and crisper. It's NOT a subtle difference either. It makes you question the methodology of the original 1986 transfers.

I'm inclined to think the 1986 transfers were just badly done and what we hear on the EPs are closer to what we would hear if we heard the actual master tapes. The EPs have deeper bass, more upper end clarity, sweeter mid-range and are even more dynamic. I don't know if you can do all that with just EQ.

What I mean is that both PM '87 and '09/'14 Mono Masters sound like flat transfers to me, and thus the closest possible copy to the original mono master. Both the '92 EP as PM '09 have a better sounding mix in many regards, but it also seems as if they tried to mask the edits by re-EQ'in each edit part to better align them. '92 EP does it better dan PM '09 though. That's why I call them 'restorations', just like I consider '09 Day Tripper and Eleanor Rigby with the fixed drop-out and ADT respectively 'restorations', not full remixes. It's also true that the '92 EP collection as a whole has an excellent mastering, but apart from She Loves You and Love Me Do I'm not aware of any restorative work they did on the other songs.

I can't consider the option that the EP dub was somehow a better transfer, as how would that magically have a better sounding alignment than the source material. It could only have gotten worse. And it's also not like the original tape somehow 'degraded' or similar, as basically all releases of the song, contemporary (including the '65 Million Sellers itself) as later on, suffer from the same issues, especially with the edits.

[Davenicks]

Pretty sure 1992 was 30 years after the release of the Beatles' first 45...

Dave in Nashville

[Lord Reith]

There's a lot of NoNoise on that EP set though. Magical Mystery Tour is really heavily NNd. That was just when NN came on the scene and sound engineers were going mad with it.

[Tex]

When the Red and Blue CD sets came out a year later EMI actually said everything after that would also be de-noised. It was set policy.

The process then was called NoNoise and the tracks had to be processed by the computer over a long time it wasn't the quick click and remove we have today. Of course it's up to the remix engineer how much NoNoise gets applied.

I actually think the 1993 Red and Blue CD sets sound pretty good. Somehow the 1986 digital remixes sounded nicer to my ears despite the source being digital only and the same as the CD master. It still has the best "A Hard Day's Night" before the beginning got mangled or WTF happened to it between 1993 and 2009. I bet no engineer would ever admit to damaging a Beatles master tape they'd just stick it back on the shelf and hope it's never touched for a LONG time.