Abbey Road 50th Anniversary


I’ve been listening to the 50th Anniversary of “Abbey Road” by The Beatles all morning....what fun!  The new mix is well done.  It’s warm and spacious.


I understand The Beatles albums are sacred for some.  I’ve enjoyed most of the remastered and reissued albums over the years.  This new “Abbey Road” release definitely sounds different, and after a few plays I put on the original pressing and the 2009 remastered version for comparison.  I prefer the cleaner, sweeter sonics of the newer versions.


I like the extra instrumentations, orchestrations and outtakes.  The new packaging and materials are wonderful.  The books, photos and sleeves are tastefully laid out with a high quality presentation.


What do you think of this iconic masterpiece?  What is your favorite pressing/version of “Abbey Road”?


“....and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make....”

128x128allane

Showing 4 responses by cd318

I'm playing the CD extra tracks first before moving on to the remix.
Nothing special on disc 2 but I've yet to hear disc 3.

My biggest gripe with the GM remixes is that whilst it's absolutely brilliant to get back to the freshness of the original session tapes why would you want to compress the actual album.
SHEER GREED?

I refuse to pay extra for the uncompressed Blu-ray but by most accounts the audio is markedly better.

 


@alexberger, yes the 2009 CD remasters left an awful lot to be desired. The stereos were just wrong.

The tweaked versions in the 2014 US box might be the best the Fab 4 sound on CD. 

One day someone will finally capture the analogue magic and get the digital transfers right. But it won't be Giles - seems as if it's beyond him.

He's the remix cash king.
Once again the dreaded bloated bass boost....

Other versions sound more natural...

If you can get hold of the BT version you would probably keep this GM version as occasional digital alternative.
Well there is no question that since 2009 all the digital versions have had the bass turned up a notch or two compared to the version George Martin himself put out in 1987. 
I would have preferred a far more subtle increase in bass as a result of possibly better transferring technology some 40 years later. In fact I would have preferred all of the post A Hard Days Night releases to have been kept flat as in the 87 versions - just a tad clearer and with a hint more bandwidth.

As things still stand this 50th version will soon become an interesting but soon forgotten curio as the 1987 version remains the standard. The infamous Japanese Black Triangle which was all too hastily withdrawn, but can still be found online, is still the best digital version to date. It just sounds that much slightly closer to the original LP than any of the other digital versions.
So far. 
I’m sure that this is not the last release of the back catalogue that we will ever see. Far from it. One day, but only as the near bottomless money well starts to run dry, they will eventually succumb and let someone have a go at getting as close to the original Harry T Moss vinyl releases as it is humanly possible.

Harry, the mastering engineer at Abbey Road might just be one of the most important unsung heroes in the Beatles story. Here’s a couple of quotes attributed to the great man,

“The Beatles came here in 1962 for an artist test in Studio 3 and that was the first time I met them. Around that era, before anybody was put on to tape to be recorded by a big organisation, they did a test first and I attended hundreds of these tests. I was blasé about it because of every hundred that you had to sit through and suffer; there would only be one that was any good. Frankly I wasn’t impressed by The Beatles at that time.”

“We made records so that they could be played on a Dansette, and we used to argue that instead of making our records inferior to suit an inferior machine, we should tell Dansette to make better players or just go out of business.”