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The Beatles / Analogue mastered Mono Vinyl Box coming in Sep

By Paul Sinclair

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43

mono_image
Mono Vinyl Box: “Mastered with out the use of digital technology”

Apple/ Universal will release The Beatles in Mono, a limited 14LP vinyl box set in September with all the music within being newly mastered for vinyl from quarter-inch master tapes at Abbey Road Studios.

The CD Mono box from 2009 was created from digital remasters but this time around these new vinyl versions have been cut without the use of any digital technology.

Abbey Road Engineer Sean Magee (with mastering supervisor Steve Berkowitz) has again been in charge of the remastering process. The two men employed the same procedures used in the 1960s, guided by the original albums and by detailed transfer notes made by the original cutting engineers. They even worked in the same room where most of the albums were cut.

 

 

The box set comes with an exclusive 12-inch by 12-inch 108-page hardbound book and features new essays and a detailed history of the mastering process by author Kevin Howlett. The book is illustrated with rare studio photos of The Beatles, archive documents, and articles and advertisements sourced from 1960s publications.

All the vinyl has been manufactured for the world at Optimal Media in Germany and every mono album is available to purchase separately as well as together in the box.

With the mastering methods as described above, these records will be as close as you can get to listening to an original near-mint mono pressing from the 1960s, and despite the cost of the box, much cheaper to obtain than the originals!

The Mono Box and the albums will be released on 9 September 2014.

mono_vinyl_box

Mono 14LP vinyl box set with book

Individual Mono vinyl LPs

ppm

Please Please Me

with

With The Beatles

hard

A Hard Day’s Night

sale

Beatles For Sale

help!

Help!

rubber

Rubber Soul

revolver

Revolver

pepper

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

magical

Magical Mystery Tour

white

The White Album

mono

Mono Masters [3LP]

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43 Comments

43 thoughts on “The Beatles / Analogue mastered Mono Vinyl Box coming in Sep”

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  4. FYI: on amazon Italy this box can now be pre-ordered at 303,25€ (free shipping within Italy), it is about 46£ cheaper than amazon UK

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  6. Last year my wife offered to buy me the stereo LP box. Having read comments on pressing quality I opted for the Moody Blues mega-CD/DVD box instead.
    I did purchase Magical MT separately and will probably do the same when the single mono LPs are available.

  7. Ah Brian, now a 5.1 release of some of the albums would be quite a thing to hear, the LOVE 5.1 was incredibly well done…tho I kno u were being sarcastic…

  8. Well, they’ve corrected two things that were problems with the stereo box. Firstly, this is straight analog. I didn’t see the point in using digital masters on the stereo box. Second, they’re not pressing the vinyl at Rainbo. I can’t understand how Rainbo is even in business anymore given their low level of quality control. I didn’t buy the stereo box (I have the old Mobile Fidelity vinyl box which is fine for me.) But since they’ve corrected two of the things I didn’t like about the stereo box I may just take the plunge on this one.

  10. Seems very interesting, quite interested on buying it. What keeps me from pre-ordering it is the price, for my pockets still (more than a bit) too high. Hope there will be a price drop in the next weeks/months.

  11. Each to their own I say…bought the stereo cd boxset and US Boxset (still wondering why…and looking for a reasonably priced mono CD boxset)…and those will do me very nicely. If vinyls your thing (and it is lovely, but I’m not a completist) and you have the money and the desire, buy whatever you want or as Mr Lennon once warbled…whatever gets you through the night!

    1. ….for clarification, still wondering why on the US boxset…will they I wonder release those in mono/stereo vinyl editions of the US and the new Japanese boxsets, for those European completists out there?!?!…that was a rhetorical question, as I’m sure we all know the answer!

  12. Ok, I see that not every post is a complaint. My post above was a response to the very first comment after the article, the one about “money grubbing monkeys”.

    I mean seriously.

  13. Jiminny christmas in a chicken basket, they could include a bonus free time machine with free tickets to the Beatles concert of your choice, and people here would still bitch and complain.

    Why do so many of you frequent a site dedicated to super deluxe editions when you hate them so much?

    Jeebus, seriously. Find a new hobby.

  14. Nope Marky, there wont be warped pressings as the 2012 Stereo Vinyl EU-boxset (pressed at Optimal, Germany) was error-free and pristine.

    It seems that Amazon.de has currently the best price in EU-area and at the moment it is 355,75€ (~£283.88) whereas Amazon.co.uk is £304.69 (381.83€).

  15. I wonder how many warped pressings there’ll be of this like the stereo vinyl box? If it’s the same pressing plant it don’t bode well. These boxes are a lot of dosh for poor quality control.

  16. Well, I am glad that I used my spare Beatles money for the 62 CD, 10 DVD Beatles Complete Anthology box. It cost the same as the stereo and mono vinyl sets, but has roughly 1300 out takes, demos, etc…. Just what the Beatles SHOULD be releasing. But they aren’t. It will be released by the Beatles once their original fan base are gone…… Swell…….They want you to buy the same stuff, in “new” formats, over and over again! LPs? Really?

  18. Why not Pallas or QRP?? I hope this isn’t a “German”- Rainbo?
    Can anyone enlighten me on Optimal??
    I haven’t any pressings by them.
    Cheers.

    1. Pallas has their hands full with the job of pressing the Led Zeppelin vinyl. Optimal is the 2nd best choice. They pressed the European stereo Beatles vinyl.

  19. Finally!!!!! The Beatles have come back to Analog!

    Most of knew this was coming. People need patience to not play the greed mongers game. I sent my Amazon vinyl back, as soon as Michael Fremer explained the process. I did buy the Mono and stereo boxes. You can’t wait forever. You may pass away, like Tony Gwynn did today. R. I. P., Mr Tony Gwynn. A truly nice man on and off the field of Baseball.

  20. Wow they invited columnists/reporters to witness the process did they. Must have been crowded in Abbey Road 40/50 years ago. Get a life man. Anyone prepared to fork out $400 for a set of albums recorded in the 60s and tweaked by a set of anoraks in 2014 has more money than is required in normal life. That seems to be the problem with Beatles “fans”, they can’t (or wont) move on!

    1. ken, by your own words you are not a Beatles fan so what the feck are you doing here, dissing anyone who is happy to be a fan and looking forward to these LPs?

      1. I’ve enjoyed The Beatles since their first album and bought their catalogue in various forms over the years. But I know when enough is enough. Millions of families in this country have to live per week on less than the price of this unecessary release. And we thought The Rutles were a joke!

  22. And thank God Rainbo isn’t pressing these!
    Baward, I think we can believe them: they invited various columnists/reporters to witness the process, no doubt we will be seeing more video in the coming months.
    Ken, good thing you don’t run the world and the only things manufactured are thing YOU like. geez..

  24. There must be a market for this but really its a load of old b######s. We don’t need any more Beatles music in any shape or form! Still Paul must be short of a bob or two after cancelling his last few concerts.

    1. ken, you may not need any more Beatles music in any shape or form BUT The Beatles in Mono from the original tapes, oh yes this is what I`ve been waiting for!

  27. 1/4 inch tape is very small for masters surely?!? I worked with quarter inch as a student studying film and tv production and it’s not great quality!

    1. 1/4 is very common for masters. Remember a master is generally only the final stereo mix down from a larger format multi-track, say 24 or even 48 tracks. If you think of 24 tracks on a 2-inch tape its less tape per track than 2 tracks on 1/4 inch. In the case of the Beatles, they recorded most of their stuff on only two tracks, or later four. Pepper was recorded on only four tracks and ping-ponged back and fourth to accommodate overdubs. It meant that sending, say bass and drums to a single tracks from two seperate tracks really committed the recording engineers as it was often an irreversible process once you had decided you got it right. The tracks originally used for the bass and drums would then be erased, recorded over and so on.

      Also, the speed of the tape recording makes a huge difference to sound quality – doubling record and playback speed (speed of tape passing the heads, not speed of the songs :-) improves sound quality hugely because you have twice as much tape carrying the signal.

  28. This is a propos of nothing in particular, but in reading this post, it occurred to me that we definitely take what record companies say at face value. So in this case, we only have their word that these releases are indeed “newly mastered for vinyl from quarter-inch master tapes”; impossible to prove that what they say is in fact the case…

    Not that I’m paranoid! :-)

  29. Wow. Since taking over The Beatles catalogue,Universal seem to be finding different product to part us with our cash every six months or so. Each one getting progressively more expensive than the previous one. At the current price of US$410 I think I’ll pass. The cd version will do me fine.

    1. Amazon.com was initially gouging at $410($30 over list price) as a test, to see what they could get away with. They’ve backed down to $374.95, while other dealers are already offering preorder at a 10% discount. Don’t rush to preorder.

    2. Hey, Stephen. Guess what? The beauty is, no one, not even Universal is FORCING you to buy the product. If you don’t wish to obtain it, DON’T BUY IT. Just because it is offered doesn’t mean you HAVE to “part with our cash” as you said.

  30. I never bought any Beatles music until the “1” CD came out. The music was everywhere when I was a kid, so I never felt the need. I bought a few of the 2009 remasters and was disappointed with the stereo. I like the look of these and may well save up for the box but I’m sure to be buying at least the mono masters set and a few of the pre Sgt Pepper discs. I would have got the mono CDs if they were available separately, but these look even better.

  32. Money grabbing monkeys. It’s nice to see them coming out, but a shame that this wasn’t available to choose (instead of the CDs) back in 2009. At least the albums are due to be available seperately, and including Mono Masters in that is a good call by those involved.

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