ChainsawAsh said:
Ziz said:
That's weird. The story I heard with the '87 releases was that the first two albums were originally produced mono only. They couldn't find all the stereo tapes for the next two, so those were made mono just to keep the songs consistent with one another. Everything beyond that was stereo, period, so I figured this was the same pattern, just re-mastered with current equipment to clean up the clarity more.

Never heard that story, and at any rate it isn't true - there were stereo and mono versions of every album up until Abbey Road (there was a mono version of Yellow Submarine, but it was just a fold-down of the stereo mixes, even though mono mixes *were* made, and are included in the Mono Masters disc in the mono remaster box set).

The first four albums were only released in mono on CD in 87 because the stereo mixes had all the vocals hard-panned to either the right or left. Because the tracks weren't individually separated, these albums could not be remixed, so the mono versions were used.

The next two albums had vocals hard-panned as well (Help! and Rubber Soul), but since those were recorded mutli-track, they were able to be remixed from the original master stems. George Martin himself remixed them so the vocals were more centered.

Revolver onward had better stereo mixes (no more hard-panning of the vocals), so they were untouched and released in stereo.

The original stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul, with all the hard-panning intact, will be included with the mono versions of those albums in the mono box set - the stereo set and individual releases will use the remixes.

OK, that must be it then. I knew there was something published about the stereo source material not being available so the albums were remixed to mono but I didn't remember the details...or at least not remember them correctly.