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The Beatles - Preserving Unaltered Beatles in Mono (Released)

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 (Edited)

Since Apple refuses to release completely unaltered digital releases of The Beatles in Mono,

I will be taking on the task. I will be using my professional deck. (SL-1200, R blue, 96/24 DAC and Izotope) to transfer my mint Original UK Mono Records.

This is in the same vain as the Dr Ebbetts project for the Stereo albums.

Here is the process. Clean stylus. Take Vinyl out of sleeve. Zero stat it. Pour a 25% rubbing alcohol mix on. Drip dry. Zero stat again. Record a 96/24 stereo stream. Play side 1. Take off deck. Flip album. Repeat. Do very minor controlled click reduction at the start and in the fade out. Left channel minus Right channel just leaving any miss tracking or siblance. Sum to mono. Use original track and sum to mono. Minus original mono by the miss tracking thus removing the miss tracking. Also the sum to mono reduces background noise. Fade in the start to reduce noise. Fade out the very tail end to reduce noise. Save as 96/24. Downsample to 44/16 for CDs

If anyone want anymore info feel free to PM me

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The only times the Beatles in Mono has been released digitally are the 2009 CDs and the flat transfers included in the deluxe remix sets. But both of these are not perfect.

For the 2009 CDs they feature automatic digital cleanup. Manual spectral “fixes” and a mid boost EQ. The “Flat” Transfers would be better if not for the Considerable amount of Dynamic Range Compression.

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Transfer of Sides 1 and 2 of A Hard Days Night are Complete. Processing is now starting

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Not a Beatles expert, but there are a lot of laserdisc editions; it could be possible to find out some mono versions, so I guess laserdisc higher S/N and dynamic could be a better source, at least in theory.

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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spoRv said:

Not a Beatles expert, but there are a lot of laserdisc editions; it could be possible to find out some mono versions, so I guess laserdisc higher S/N and dynamic could be a better source, at least in theory.

That would be an ok route except for the fact that only 5 out of 13 Beatles albums appear on laserdisc. Not to mention they are just the films. So you will get different edits and mixes than the album version and often songs are cut out of the film completely or are trimmed down significantly. For my purposes my original UK Monos are the best sources

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Thanks for the answer!

Yep, it seems your route is the best - the procedures you are following are good!

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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just to be clear. no automatic click reduction is being performed. It is a manual very controlled very light click reduction in the intro and fade out.

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I’m thinking of releasing it as sides and at 48/24 instead of 44/16. Thoughts?

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Brodnation’s A Hard Day’s Night has been Completed

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With the Beatles preservation has completed

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Looking forward to hearing the final results. Major Beatles freak here.

“I speak Spanish!”

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In some ways some of the original US stereo mixes need to be preserved too. There were often subtle differences between them and the UK stereo mixes (the ones currently available today). One example is for the original US stereo release of Rubber Soul, uniquely for the song I’m Looking Through You contains two false starts at the opening that were edited out in the UK pressing and current re-issues. This was due to a mistake on Capitol’s part where when Parlaphone (the UK distributor) edited out the two false starts, they sent Capitol the master before they edited out the false starts, and Capitol simply just didn’t edit them out because they thought they belong with the song. But as I said, all current re-issues of the album reflect the UK pressing. This flub also was only unique to the US stereo version of the album, the mono version edited them out as well.

If you don’t understand, here’s what I mean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke26Z4DZCsg

Raccoons

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Didn’t they release a CD box set of the Capitol US versions?

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Yes and No. it was the Capitol us album sequencing with the UK mixes

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But Dr Ebbetts already did both a stereo and mono US preservation

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Ah, okay. I never cared to listen to the Capitol versions so I didn’t get that box set.

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There are places on the internet with a lot of different vinyl rips of Beatles albums, I would wager that the proper ones are among them. I could be wrong though. Would love to give this a listen in any case. Personally I’d release in 96kHz/24bit. Even if you can’t hear the difference, at least it allows some more editing for those who want to do it. It’s supposed to be a kind of archive after all.

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I Have Decided to release these as 48/24 WAV dual-channel mono files.

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TomArrow said:

Personally I’d release in 96kHz/24bit. Even if you can’t hear the difference, at least it allows some more editing for those who want to do it. It’s supposed to be a kind of archive after all.

I’d also welcome a 94/24 release for us audiophiles who’d definitely appreciate this option. 😃

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk