Beatles to re-release catalog alongside The Beatles: Rock Band

Bwa ha ha ha! Obscure 90's movie references FTW!

booyah! I wasn't that interested at first. Thought the music would be too much with too little variation...aww who am i kidding! I think im going for it!

Their first few albums have only been continually mastered and released in mono because EMI has insisted since the early 60's that the majority of sound system owners only had set ups capable of mono sound at the time that those albums were released.

Some purists still say that those albums are only properly heard and mono and that two track stereo versions of those songs aren't what The Beatles and George Martin ever intended. If you listen to those songs on the earlier masters (The 1 album being a good example), the stereo does sound pretty forced with instruments on one side and vocals on another.

It just comes down to personal preference really. Personally, I don't really care for the stereo versions of those early songs. It's not that big of a deal, but there are audiophiles out there who are pretty passionate about this topic.

Don't most stereos have the ability to force mono anyway? Do you really need the recording in mono?

I'm not a crazy audiophile, so maybe I just don't know if there would be a difference in having the recording in mono versus using a stereo to force it into mono.

I'm no professional, but I do have experience in audio recording and understand a decent bit about that time period and recording techniques (due to my love for Brian Wilson), so this is my theory:

The mixes would still be different in a stereo-forced-mono versus pure mono, even though the audio is essentially mono. When mixed in mono, the engineer has a somewhat limited audio space to fit all the different sounds (drums, guitar, bass, vocals), so he has to mix it a certain way if the end result is to be mono. The way he EQ's the instruments (increasing/decreasing highs, mids, and lows) would likely be different too, again, due to the audio space.

In a stereo mix, you have a larger audio space to fit all the different sounds. You could pan guitar slightly left, boost it a little, pan bass to the left, vocals center, etc.

Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys) preferred recording and mixing in mono for two reasons: one, he became slightly deaf in one ear, and two, because he felt that he had more control over the sound. In a mono mix, no matter where you sit, you get the same audio picture, the same experience, because everything is in a single channel. Fewer factors affect the overall sound (speaker quality, room, stuff like that, would still matter). In stereo, you can get a different listening experience depending on the position of the speakers, whether you're using headphones or not, etc. He didn't want those factors affecting the listening experience.

A great example of this is Pet Sounds (the greatest album ever IMO). If you buy the CD these days, you get a stereo remaster and mono mix on a single CD. Listen to mono versus stereo. You'll hear things in the mono mix that you wouldn't hear in the stereo, and vice versa.

I know for sure they aren't on iTunes yet, but I think they aren't on other digital fownload services either

They have been going back and forth on releasing them to the itunes library for a long time, and no, they are not available.

Oh, they're available online SOMEWHERE. Malaysian children are available online SOMEWHERE. There's nothing those silicon tentacles can't snatch up for you.

If you mean torrets just check demonoid, but if you mean for legal purchase then i don't think they are.

Fuck Paul. The real Beatles are dead.

Actually, Paul doesn't own the Beatles catalog. IIRC, Michael Jackson does.

I'm pretty sure if you're one of the Beatles, you've earned the right to milk whatever the fuck you want from your back catalog.

Ringo For Life!!

I thought MJ sold back his share? Could be wrong. Anyways I'll be buying this game, thus purchasing I am the walrus for the 10th time.

Actually MJ only owns like half of the rights to the McCartney/Lennon songs. Sony owns the other half.

All of the Harrison songs are owned by Dhani and Olivia, and the like 3 Ringo songs are owned by Ringo.

And regardless of who owns them, Macca, Starr, Olivia, and Yoko own the creative control over all of the songs.

I'm pretty sure Michael Jackson no longer has any share in the Beatles catalogue whatsoever.

And I'll probably buy it. :)

http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.asp

He has 1/2

No, Michael Jackson does not own the rights to the Beatles' songs. In fact, he never really did. He just owned the publishing rights, which meant that he had the right to make a profit every time a Beatles song was used. This is what Jackson acquired back in the mid 80s, the Beatles' Apple Records still retained the rights to all the the original recordings. Because of debt problems, Jackson sold half his share of the publishing rights to Sony and and then gave up the rest of the rights a year or two ago b/c he defaulted on certain payments.

So it would be correct to say that Sony and Apple Records will make a ton of money off of this.

Digitally remastered actually fits on the back of the disc cover, so I guess it's more convenient.

Somehow I doubt that Apple Records is going to let that happen, although what you describe happens in most cases. My old unmastered Jethro Tull CD sound so much better than all my remastered stuff, even though they are a lot quieter.