Stereo separation differences on various releases?

[Astrogal]

With Rubber Soul you can squeeze the stereo and not wreck the balance.

Any other 3 point stereo mixes it wrecks the balance.

Is this because there is almost no center sound, only hard L & R?
I guess this means the same for Please Please Me too?

[Davenicks]

Narrowing the image means mixing a bit of the left channel into the right, and the right into the left? So these are actually remixes?

I believe, at least for vinyl, this most often happened in the mastering stage by the cutting engineer, so not a change of the mixes in the studio. That's why they vary from pressing to pressing.

Dave in Nashville

If I'm not mistaken, what they did with twin track masters was to blend both channels with a bit of reverb. I'm curious though; did they do that (add the reverb and compression) directly during the cutting stage? So they cut it directly from the master mix and there was not a mastering to tape phase?

I think we're getting off into the weeds. It gets confusing because the term "master" is applied at several different steps in the process. Based upon what I understand about how things were done at Abbey Road at that time:

Blending the twin track recording with a bit of reverb was something that would have been done in the recording studio by the producer and recording engineers in producing a master tape. (Reverb was considered to be an effect; I'm not sure reverb was ever applied at Abbey Road anywhere other than in the recording studio or a room used for mixing, certainly not in the mastering room.) Under standard procedure, that master tape was then passed to the mastering engineer who had some basic tools at his disposal to, within prescribed parameters, prepare the metal parts used to manufacture a professional pressed vinyl disc taking into account the limitations of that medium. Since in analog there is a loss of fidelity each time a mechanical copy is made, they designed a process to make some necessary adjustments directly in the cutting stage to avoid another level of generational loss by making another interim master tape. Doesn't mean it never happened, but they tried to avoid it. He had such tools as amplification, compression, EQ to tame troublesome frequencies and very elementary channel mixing (he could change the balance of the left and right channels, but that's about it) to shape and control the sound so it would work best with the technology of the time.

It would seem that these mastering engineers learned their trade by apprenticing with experienced cutters and by trial and error. If an engineer delivered a manufacturing master, for example, with bass frequencies that were too extreme to allow the stylus to stay in the groove on playback, that would supposedly be discovered by a quality control process involving test pressings and kicked back to be redone. Labels did not want to manufacture large quantities of discs that would not play back properly; it could get expensive. Having your masters rejected for re-doing was considered to be a bad thing for the mastering engineer, so they understandably tended to be somewhat conservative.

Detailed forms were kept of the equipment settings the mastering engineer used in creating each cutting master, so they could be reviewed in the event of problems or replicated when making replacement cutting masters as needed or when making copies to be sent to subsidiary labels around the world. We also occasionally see notations on the master tape boxes giving instruction to the mastering engineer about something that should be adjusted in mastering. If you read the interviews with the Abbey Road folks who have been engaged in remixing/remastering projects over the last few decades, they often state that they refer back to those forms and notations in making their own mastering judgements.

It would also seem that all mastering engineers are not created equal and (for that reason and others) variations here and there would naturally occur; the result is that all pressings of any given recording are not identical in the basic technical respects that the mastering engineer had control over. This is why some collectors search for certain pressings or master #s or engineer initials that they believe are unique or superior to others.

Dave in Nashville

[Lord Reith]

The narrowing seems to have taken place at the disc cutting stage. When they issued the stereo albums on cd in 1987 they used the same master tapes but the narrowing was not present. Ironically I believe this was a major contributor to why people reacted so badly to them. A slight narrowing creates a slightly more powerful sound, so people who don't have the necessary understanding of sound labelled them with meaningless words like "cold", "harsh" etc. The reality is that they were truer to the masters than the records, and since low crosstalk was one of the big selling points of cds originally, it was entirely right and natural for them to do it this way. The sound was only narrowed on records because it makes it cut better.

When they redid the cds in 2009, they DID include the narrowing from the records and people had a fit.

[Kando]

When I got the 80's cd's my only complaint was with the first 4 cd's being all in mono, lol. Before that I had mainly only had cassettes, with a couple of lp exceptions at one time. However, I wasn't knowledgeable about any of THIS STUFF back then, lol. When I eventually stumbled across the SilverDisc MR MFSL beatlegs, and eventually got all of them, I still wasn't aware of the narrowing issue yet. I also got the SilverDisc MR US Capitol series, and still didn't notice a narrowing on them (for the most part, except for Duophonic tracks of course), but of course I didn't play them very much. It wasn't until I saw, and then got the DESS Narrow and Wide Canadian releases that I even realized there were any such entire LP differences on stereo versions. Since then, of course, I have learned a LOT more about all THIS STUFF, lol. But still am way behind a lot of people.

Much later when I started to do a master 'best of' sort of total compilation did I occasionally notice some narrowing differences here and there, but I don't remember noticing a lot, per se. I was comparing track versions of a lot of different sources at this point. Maybe I just wasn't focusing on it that much and didn't notice it, lol. Is there really that much of a noticeable difference in image width on some sources? Or am I like a newly blind person, whose senses just haven't increased in sensitivity that much yet, lol?

As for the '09 releases my only objection was the volume increase and limiting. Apparently not a lot of people are bothered by this, and that is their right. But it was the limiting that really bothered me, lol. However, most people don't even seem to notice it, or at least are not bothered by it, so go figure.

The old maxim 'You can't please all the people all the time', is absolutely true in this case.

[Tex]

With Rubber Soul you can squeeze the stereo and not wreck the balance.

Any other 3 point stereo mixes it wrecks the balance.

Is this because there is almost no center sound, only hard L & R?
I guess this means the same for Please Please Me too?

When you sum stereo to mono the side infomation drops 3 decibels while the center information stays the same volume.

[Lord Reith]

As for the '09 releases my only objection was the volume increase and limiting. Apparently not a lot of people are bothered by this, and that is their right. But it was the limiting that really bothered me, lol. However, most people don't even seem to notice it, or at least are not bothered by it, so go figure.

The old maxim 'You can't please all the people all the time', is absolutely true in this case.

Over time the prevailing view on SHF has shifted towards the 87 stereos being superior to the 2009s. A lot of downright lies and misinformation have been trotted out over the years in regards to the 87s, implying that they were done on the cheap from degenerated tape copies. It's all bollocks. The guy who did them put as much effort into them as the 2009 team did. And he did a bloody good job in my opinion. If George Martin hadn't stuck his nose in, we'd have gotten a perfect set of stereo cds. At least the unfutzed Help and RS escaped later on. But I don't really like the 2009 versions of the first 4. There is tape damage, narrowing, EQ changes and turbo charged low end... and limiting. In my opinion they don't sound as good as a vanilla needle drop.

[Kando]

As for the '09 releases my only objection was the volume increase and limiting. Apparently not a lot of people are bothered by this, and that is their right. But it was the limiting that really bothered me, lol. However, most people don't even seem to notice it, or at least are not bothered by it, so go figure.

The old maxim 'You can't please all the people all the time', is absolutely true in this case.

Over time the prevailing view on SHF has shifted towards the 87 stereos being superior to the 2009s. A lot of downright lies and misinformation have been trotted out over the years in regards to the 87s, implying that they were done on the cheap from degenerated tape copies. It's all bollocks. The guy who did them put as much effort into them as the 2009 team did. And he did a bloody good job in my opinion. If George Martin hadn't stuck his nose in, we'd have gotten a perfect set of stereo cds. At least the unfutzed Help and RS escaped later on. But I don't really like the 2009 versions of the first 4. There is tape damage, narrowing, EQ changes and turbo charged low end... and limiting. In my opinion they don't sound as good as a vanilla needle drop.

Ha, ha, as for the SHF, that site drives me nuts sometimes. If I even begin to defend the MFSL recordings I often get jumped on, and not rather nicely either, by a handful of people who I doubt have ever even listened to them, and are probably just rehashing, or reinventing old unfounded comments about them. And if those have senior membership status they the Gorts help if they think you are remotely criticizing them, lol. SH himself very recently had some of my posts temporarily deleted, and said (in the middle of a thread) that I would be' thread banned' unless I posted my home setup in my personal details. Once I did I eventually got my posts put back up. Funny thing is that not all of my detractors had systems listed at the time either, but they were not publicly confronted like I was.

As for the '87 vs '09 comments, I have seen some of that on the SHF, and as a rule I would tend to say that '09 supporters do get jumped on from time to time. God help you if you criticize anything Giles has worked on, as there are some very touchy people there regarding him, lol. Me, I'm just unhappy with his continued use of having extra volume and limiting on all stereo cd's, whereas they don't do that to any mono ones, or any stereo lp's.

I just want some justice for stereo cd's dammit!

Oh, and as for the unfutzed Help and RS, I bought the bloody mono box of cd's just to get those, and I don't even really care about the mono recordings that much, lol. I thought about selling the mono cd's afterwards, but decided it was better to be a completist, and who knows, maybe I'll even listen to them every once in a blue moon. Stranger things have happened, lol

[tymime]

I remember when I first heard the DESS needledrops through Purple Chick, I thought they were much more dynamic compared to the '87 CDs. I suppose that may have been because the '87 CDs were likely flat transfers (correct me if I'm wrong), but I've sometimes suspected it was also partly due to analog-to-digital technology not being quite up to the task at the time.
I don't have the '09 CDs, but it sounds to me like they fiddled with the sound just a bit too much. I did once listen to Sgt. Pepper on vinyl (the 2012 issue) since my grandma had a copy, and the bass on When I'm 64 made the needle jump.

[Lord Reith]

I remember when I first heard the DESS needledrops through Purple Chick, I thought they were much more dynamic compared to the '87 CDs. I suppose that may have been because the '87 CDs were likely flat transfers (correct me if I'm wrong), but I've sometimes suspected it was also partly due to analog-to-digital technology not being quite up to the task at the time.
I don't have the '09 CDs, but it sounds to me like they fiddled with the sound just a bit too much. I did once listen to Sgt. Pepper on vinyl (the 2012 issue) since my grandma had a copy, and the bass on When I'm 64 made the needle jump.

DESS used eq though, so that skews the comparison. I've compared the 87 cds to flat vinyl rips, and they are exactly the same bar no narrowing. No eq, nr or anything like that was added other than reproducing what changes Harry Moss implemented while cutting the vinyl. The DESS rips of the blue box have bass and treble boost similar to the EP box set. They sound GOOD... just not like the albums actually were originally. I think there was a misconception that Ebbetts didn't use eq (which was never actually stated) and so when comparing the conclusion reached was that the 87 cds had eq. It was actually the other way around!

[Kando]

DESS used eq though, so that skews the comparison. I've compared the 87 cds to flat vinyl rips, and they are exactly the same bar no narrowing. No eq, nr or anything like that was added other than reproducing what changes Harry Moss implemented while cutting the vinyl. The DESS rips of the blue box have bass and treble boost similar to the EP box set. They sound GOOD... just not like the albums actually were originally. I think there was a misconception that Ebbetts didn't use eq (which was never actually stated) and so when comparing the conclusion reached was that the 87 cds had eq. It was actually the other way around!

Can't say I noted DESS eq on the Blue Box series I have, but perhaps that was a difference between his original and the updated version. I was quite pleased when Cliftdean74 posted the MR series of these, as I want to hear if they are any better. Overall I thought the updated DESS sounded rather clean and pleasant, other than a subtle fuzziness in the very bottom bass extensions, but the mid and upper range on them sounded quite nice. However, he certainly did something weird with the MFSL series. The DESS versions don't sound nearly as clean, in any manner, compared to the MR versions that I got somewhat earlier.