News
The Beatles Entire Original Catalogue Remastered & Released
Today (09-09-09) the entire re-mastered Beatles back catalogue was released. The collection is a must for any Beatles fan and a wonderful reminder of the work of one of the most innovative and influential bands the world has seen.
The Beatles’ entire original recorded catalogue has been digitally re-mastered for the first time and was released on the 9th September 2009, the same date as the highly anticipated “The Beatles: Rock Band” video game.
Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original UK album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written linear notes and rare photos. The albums have been re-mastered by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London over a four year period utilising state of the art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment, carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings. The result of this painstaking process is the highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release.
The collection comprises all 12 Beatles albums in stereo, with track listings and artwork as originally released in the UK, and ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, which became part of The Beatles’ core catalogue when the CDs were first released in 1987. In addition, the collections ‘Past Masters Vol. I and II’ are now combined as one title, for a total of 14 titles over 16 discs. This will mark the first time that the first four Beatles albums will be available in stereo in their entirety on compact disc. These 14 albums, along with a DVD collection of the documentaries, will also be available for purchase together in a stereo boxed set.
Within each CD’s new packaging, booklets include detailed historical notes along with informative recording notes. With the exception of the ‘Past Masters’ set, newly produced mini-documentaries on the making of each album, directed by Bob Smeaton*, are included as QuickTime files on each album. The documentaries contain archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-heard studio chat from The Beatles, offering a unique and very personal insight into the studio atmosphere.
A second boxed set has been created with the collector in mind. ‘The Beatles in Mono’ gathers together, in one place, all of the Beatles recordings that were mixed for mono release. It contains ten of the albums with their original mono mixes, plus two further discs of mono masters. These albums will be packaged in mini-vinyl CD replicas of the original sleeves with all original inserts and label designs retained.
Re-mastering the Beatles catalogue
The re-mastering process commenced with an extensive period conducting tests before finally copying the analogue master tapes into the digital medium. When this was completed, the transfer was achieved using a Pro Tools workstation operating at 24 bit 192 kHz resolution via a Prism A-D converter. Transferring was a lengthy procedure done a track at a time. Although EMI tape does not suffer the oxide loss associated with some later analogue tapes, there was nevertheless a slight build up of dust, which was removed from the tape machine heads between each title.
On considering the restorative process it was agreed that electrical clicks, microphone vocal pops, excessive sibilance and bad edits should be improved where possible, so long as it didn’t impact on the original integrity of the songs.
In addition, de-noising technology was to be used, but subtly and sparingly. Eventually, less than five of the 525 minutes of Beatles music was subjected to this process. Finally, as is common with today’s music. Overall limiting – to increase the volume level of the CD – has been used, but on the stereo versions only. However, it was unanimously agreed that because of the importance of The Beatles’ music, limiting would be used moderately, so as to retain the original dynamics of the recordings.
When all of the albums had been transferred, each song was then listened to several times to locate any of the agreed imperfections. These were then addressed by Guy Massey (recording engineer), working with Audio Restoration engineer Simon Gibson.
Mastering could now take place, once the earliest vinyl pressings, along with the existing CDs, were loaded into Pro Tools, thus allowing comparisons to be made with the original master tapes during the equalization process. When an album had been completed, it was auditioned the next day and any further alteration of EQ could be addressed back in the mastering room. Following the initial satisfaction of Guy and Steve Rooke (mastering engineer), Allan Rouse and Mike Heatley then checked each new re-master in yet another location and offered any further suggestions. This continued until all of the albums were completed to the team’s satisfaction.
*Bob Smeaton was series director and writer on the Grammy award winning ‘Beatles Anthology’ TV series which aired in the UK and USA in 1995.
To celebrate the release of the re-mastered CDs Glasswerk has a complete set of all 14 titles to give away to one lucky fan. To be in with a chance of winning follow this link and simply answer the question.