Форум Меломанов

Что характерно, весь сыр-бор сводится к тому, ЧТО, собственно, считается "стереофоническим звучанием". Собственно, две принципиально РАЗНЫХ дорожки и есть стерео, две одинаковых - моно, а две монофонических дорожки, сдвинутых относительно друг друга по частоте или фазе - "псевдостерео".
Исторически, стереозвук появился из применения сначала двухдорожечных магнитофонов, потом дорожек стало 3, потом - 4, затем - 8, позднее - 16, и т.д. Разумеется, стереозвук, полученный микшированием 2 дорожек даже рядом не валяется с 8-дорожечным, но быть стереозвуком он от этого не перестает.

Ближе к Битлз: ребята с rus.625-net.ru погорячились, мягко сказать, заявив, что "сводилось все исключительно в моно, которое до 1965 года было единственным форматом поп-музыки. В стереоформате выпускалась только классическая музыка." Это не совсем правда. Думается, такое можно написать, лишь плохо разобрав-переведя англоязычные первоисточники. Стереозаписи появились как минимум в начале 50-х, и, вправду, использовались поначалу для классической музыки. Примерно с 1957, стерео стали использовать в кантри, а чуть позже (1958-59) - и в поп-музыке. Но, и это существенно, рынок для стереозаписей существовал почти исключительно в США, а более бедная Европа довольствовалась моно. Соответственно, когда в 1960-62 американы типа Элвиса писали в 3 дорожки и микшировали в раннее стерео, европейцы писали в 2, и микшировали в моно. Если взять нашу эстраду, то как оказывается, еще с начала 60-х (всяко раньше 1965) делались многодорожечные записи, которые сейчас перемикшируют и выпускают в стереозвучании, что не может не радовать.

Для владеющих языками, маленький отрывочек по сабжу, ни много ни мало десятилетней (!) давности:
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Beatles Unlimited Magazine, No. 132, Mar/Apr 1997:
30th anniversary of Sgt.Pepper’s By Johnny Te Lintelo

In BU 128 page 61 you read a small article called ‘Why not Stereo?’ about a letter from Bengt Wärmlind from Sweden. Soon after publication I received a 14 page letter from him about releasing The Beatles’ first four CDs in stereo. This article is inspired by Bengt and I started to investigate those old 1987 and later stories.

In the USA since 1960 3-track stereo was used in recording studios, with 8-track from 1966 onwards and in 1970 16-track became available. In the UK 2-track was common, until 1963 introduced 4-track and early 1968 8-track became available. Mono/stereo was even a stranger practice since most singles until 1968 were just simply monoreleases. Even decades later these monomixes were used for many singles-compilations like The Rolling Stones’ Hot Rocks series.

Big American sixties artists like Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley are presented just in stereo these days, with on the other hand The Beach Boys. The Capitol Beach Boys collection has 16 LPs on CD with half of that in mono with even 1967 LPs in mono and 1963 LPs in stereo. This was the band’s choice since leadman producer Brian Wilson didn’t want the listener to interfere with the sound with his loudspeakers at home. Their 1970 album Sunflower was a landmark in recording technique mentions: ‘The songs on this record were recorded in true stereophonic sound; they are not 16 monophonic signals placed somewhere between right and left speakers blended together with echo, but rather total stereo capturing the ambience of the room.’ Apart from records like these every other stereo record has an artificial stereo perspective like Paul McCartney used effective on his 1978 Wings record London Town intro.

The nice thing about these those old 3- or 4-track recordings is the clarity that is so good audible on for example ‘Nowhere Man’. When John and Paul sing in the right channel in the song’s intro; just listen to the left channel and you hear the echo of the vocals inside Abbey Road Studio 2. Especially nice for all of us who were once so lucky to get inside Abbey Road Studios like many did in 1983 during EMI’s Beatles Show.

Back to CD reissues, in 1986/87 both The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney had all their albums out on CD. In 1993 Paul McCartney’s back catalogue was reissued with better artwork and improved sound. Well the same happened recently with the Stones catalogue on Decca and Virgin both issued improved material. Part of the Beatles catalogue was remastered for the Anthology project, but the main catalogue of 15 CDs dates from 1986/1987 mastering, which is a big difference. At this very moment a very interesting rerelease catalogue is from the UK band The Who. Their recordcompany Polydor is rereleasing the original LPs in a unique way. Beside an incredible sound quality, and 24 page artbook they give more than value for money. For example the LP The Who Sell Out from December 1967 had original 13 tracks, well for the CD they used the original 23 songs along with even more jingles The Who made for their creation of a UK pirate station on LP.

Guess about how each Beatles CD could be released with bonus tracks and alternative takes to fill up these 30+ minutes CDs.

Back to 1987 with those original Beatles CDs. On 1987 The Times had an article about the new first four Beatles CDs. Interviewed was EMI chairman Bhaskar Menon: ‘They were actually made for mono. In very close discussions with George Martin, the Beatles producer, we determined that there was no question that we must preserve the original mixes, that the releases really must be in mono, because stereo was not the intent of the performers.’

From Scene Magazine’s interview with George Harrison 1987:

GH: ‘But I also heard a strange story that Geoff Emerick (Beatles’ engineer) had done CD mixes, and somebody at EMI had a cassette copy of them and the cassette copy was faulty, and they listened to it and said: "Oh, these are terrible!" And somebody went in and re-did them, but actually, Geoff Emerick’s mixes were good.’

George Martin about the mono releases: ‘I wasn’t brought into this until December (1986) by which time EMI had made up their minds what they were going to do. They really consulted me, I suppose, out of old-fashioned courtesy saying, you know, don’t you think we’ve done a rather good job? And when I heard what they’d done, I thought they were dreadful. They had presented me with the stereo versions. I told them that if they had to issue any stereo versions, they should be specially looked at, particularly in these early cases and that I don’t think the first two should have been put out in stereo at all. And I think that because they had so little time they said: "Well, look, we’ll put all out in mono, and if you like, you can have another look at them, and maybe number three and four can be transcribed for stereo later on." Now this was because they had a date to adhere to. They had to press up a great many records and I guess they had to make some kind of decision, which they made.’

Q: ‘You said that they put out the last two in mono because of expedience and because they had a date to meet. But didn’t they know, in the four years CD had been out, that they would eventually have to put these things on CD? Didn’t they make any kind of provision for having them ready? Wouldn’t that have made sense?’

GM: Well, I haven’t worked for EMI since 1965; it’s not good asking me that, I’m asking the same question.’

When the first four CDs were released on 26 February 1987 Capitol announced that because of their monosound sales would reduce 15%. In the USA advance orders for each title were 350,000 copies which were all sold within the week.

Questions were made about why not include both the stereo- and the monomix from each LP on the first four CDs, as each LP hardly lasted 33 minutes.

Q: ‘Once the decision was made to issue four CD titles, there was the problem of whether to issue the albums in mono or stereo. As it’s possible to fit up to 75 minutes on a CD, couldn’t you have included both the mono and stereo versions on one CD?'

Mike Heatley from EMI: ‘To issue mono and stereo on the same CD might look like the easy option, but unfortunately it does create some problems. Firstly, it affects the copyright in America. Secondly, this might have been possible for early albums, but clearly with the longer LPs like Sgt Pepper’s and the White Album we would encounter difficulties. Would we have to issue those as a double CD and then expect people to pay twice as much, when in fact the majority of them only want either mono or stereo and not both.

In fact after much soul-searching and having brought in George Martin to ask his advice, we decided to issue the first four LPs in mono. The main reason for this was that the earlier albums were originally recorded with mono in mind. Stereo versions of the early albums have always been available, of course, but the stereo market was very small in the 1960s and it was only at the end of that decade that stereo became the norm - Abbey Road being the first Beatles album to be issued in stereo only. I think most people would agree that musically the early Beatles albums sound better in mono.’

The man who remastered the early CDs was Abbey Road recording engineer Mike Jarratt.

Q: ‘How was the decision made, as whether mono or stereo CDs should be issued?’

MJ: There was a problem: whether to issue mono or stereo, or whether to remix. If you could hear the mono and stereo master tapes, you’d be in no doubt that the mono tapes sound better. I did check all the paperwork, as back in 1963 there was very careful documentation, and it appears that much more time was spent on the mono mixes, because back at that time very few people had stereo. In fact, I did prepare both mono and stereo digital master tapes. George Martin then came in and gave the OK, for the mono tapes. The third and fourth albums were recorded in 4-track and proper stereo mixes are obviously available; but even with these albums they were produced for a predominantly mono market. That’s why they were issued on CD in mono.’

Q: ‘When you were mastering the CDs did you play with the sound of the original tape to add equalisation or compression?’

MJ: 'Again, I referred to the original documentation to see what was done in the sixties, I’ve had a couple of years experience as a cutting engineer, so I knew what changes had been made for purely technical reasons and what had been done for artistic reasons, so I hope I managed to get the best from the tapes. I did even experiments with running the master tapes through the machines that were actually in use at the time; but I found that the best sound came from using modern machines with 2-track heads.’

Q: ‘Have the master tapes stood up the years?’

MJ: Very well indeed. We do store our master tapes exceptionally carefully. They’re sealed in plastic bags and then sealed again in tins, and kept in a special vault which has specific temperature and humidity. I did have a couple of heart-stopping moments when some of the joins fell apart, but I just rejoined them with modern editing tape. The problem there was the way that the original splices were done; age had just dried up the paster they had used for editing!’

Finally from EMI’s press release from February 26 1987: ‘We did not tamper or remix any of the material - we simply pulled the original mono tapes from the archive, checked them for quality - which were perfect - and then put them through the CD-remastering process. One of the top recording engineers at Abbey Road Studios, Mike Jarratt, was given the task of doing the remastering and preparing the tapes for digital format, and what he did was to make ‘faithful’ copies of the pritine mono master tapes based on the original 1963/1964 cutting transfer sheets. This enabled him to apply the same amount of EQ (equalisation) as the originals. He also went to our pressing archive and painstakingly compared his new copies with the very first vinyl pressings of the albums as originally issued. When he was satisfied that everything was perfect, Peter Vince, who is in charge of CD mastering at Abbey Road, had the complex task of transferring these onto carefully PQ-encoded Sony 1630 U-Matic tapes which even incorporate digital silence between tracks, and they were taken to our factory at Swindon to make the glass master pressings from which all CDs are manufactured.’

How good EMI may have tried to convince the public to appreciate these four mono releases, the problem is that the quality of these recordings is not up to the quality the other CDs offer beside Yellow Submarine and Let It Be. Those first four didn’t have any involvement by George Martin and compare them what he achieved with Help! and Rubber Soul by cleaning up each track and then digital mixing the four tracks to an excellent result. How about a same treatment to A Hard Day’s Night and Beatles For Sale?

Comparing the stereo versions with the mono CD it seems like on A Hard Day’s Night that I miss all kind of oddities, like the effects of the doubletracked voices, instrumental parts, drumparts and the monoraul sound is much more compressed, less revealing. The problem with the stereo 2-track recording lies in the excellent example of the song ‘Till There Was You’. After 1:09 min. the song has a 15 seconds acoustic solo, which on the stereo version has in the right channel just echo of the left channel.

Late 1979 Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, a US company that started since 1977 putting out Original Master Recordings in the best sound and art quality, released the LP Abbey Road on vinyl. By the early nineteeneighties after negotiations with EMI they released all original UK Beatles albums on their supermastered quality vinyl. In 1982 a box was released containing all Beatles LPs half-speed mastered. The records were billed as UHQR (Ultra High Quality Record) and the box was for sale at 299 UK pounds. By 1986/1987 the US press wrote that the company was trying to release their own Beatles-catalogue on gold CD, with even the four first CDs in stereo. They never got permission from EMI, so John and Yoko’s Double Fantasy (Mobile Fidelity UDCD 01-00599) remained their only Beatles related CD. Another audio quality label DCC (=Dunhill Compact Classics) offers for the same price around f 75,- (UK £25 / $24,-) the titles McCartney (DCC GZS 1029), Ram (DCC GZS 1037), Red Rose Speedway (with bonus tracks, DCC GZS 1091), Band On The Run (DCC GZS 1030), Venus And Mars (DCC GZS 1067) from McCartney and Ringo (DCC GZS 1066) by Starr. Next release will be Wings At The Speed Of Sound.

During 1995 BEAT records released on bootleg a 2 CD called Original Master Recordings containing the stereo Mobile Fidelity mixes from the original EMI master tapes. In August 1995 Bengt Wärmlind from Sweden bought this CD and he writes: "Last summer I purchased the rare double CD Original Master Recordings (BEAT CD 013-2). It contained Please Please Me, With The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night and Beatles For Sale IN STEREO, in a sound quality I thought was impossible! I listened to it more than a week, before I understood what I owned. The mastering was perfect with great dynamics and fidelity. The stereo-mixes sound wonderful. And still it looks as if the stereo-mixes are in their original form. But the sound quality is much better than on the original vinyl LPs. I have many friends who have listened and they all say that they have never before heard The Beatles in such superb sound quality."

Bengt was so enthusiastic that he wrote to dozens of musicpapers around the word like The Beatles Monthly Book, Record Collector, Mojo, Q, Goldmine, Rolling Stone, Billboard and many other Beatles mags to get them to write about mono/stereo.

During February 1987 George Martin was interviewed about the first four EMI CDs.

Q: ‘Okey, but now people have heard those mixes on the Mobile Fidelity halfspeed mastered pressings, which are probably as clean an LP as you’re going to hear, and you can hear quite a lot of what’s on those masters.’

GM: ‘I don’t think those ("he means LPs") master pressings are right. I don’t approve of those master pressings.’

Q: ‘Really?’

GM: ‘Really. What they were trying to do there - and again, those were done without either The Beatles or myself being involved - was to get the same kind of thing you have on CD, but without the CD itself. And I think they forgot that in translating those to the master pressings, the EQs that were being used were appropriate not for that medium, but for the earlier medium (meaning mid-sixties quality LP pressings). In other words, what you tend to hear in that way, and in fact, what you’re getting now, is a rather harsher sound than was intended.’

Bengt did send me excellent quality stereo cassettes of the double CD and I have never heard those first four albums in such quality. I did check Bengt’s version of ‘All My Loving’ with the new stereo version George Martin produced for the 1993 CDs 1962-1966 and unfortunately Martin’s version isn’t half as exciting as his one. Ringo’s cymbals sound alive and the guitarparts oh so great, those vocals so good you won’t believe your ears!

Another one, the best CD version of ‘Twist And Shout’ can be found on Imagine John Lennon, Music From The Motion Picture mastered by George Martin for the soundtrack, sounds so great, but much less than the bootleg version.

The best ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ on Anthology 1 again compared in sound-quality, the bootleg wins!!!!

Then ‘I Should Have Known Better’ on the bootleg the harmonica comes in so clear and then Lennon’s voice. The quality is so good that you hear him breath after singing each line with George’s guitar so pure. This is the way this music should sound and not the way they’re mastered now for the primitive equipment people had in the nineteensixties. The music should sound like mastertapes sound and not how it was pressed for the primitive equipment from 30 years ago. When I play Rubber Soul I hear ‘Michelle’ with 100 watt speakers and not like I did in the seventies on a 1 watt speakersystem dating from the sixties. When I hear Capitol’s 1963 Beach Boys CDs I hear their material ’20 bit no noise remastered’ leaping out of the speakers like their ‘In My Room’ and I want The Beatles to sound the same like they do on the Original Master Recordings!

About the first four mono CDs:

Q: "Brian Southall (from EMI) told me the other day that the very first two albums were not released in stereo in 1963, but only much later, perhaps 1964 or 1965."

GM: ‘That’s right.’

Q: ‘However I’ve found some early Parlophone advertisements, including one in a 1963 tour program - that gives the mono and stereo catalogue numbers, and which shows photos of the stereo catalogue numbers, and which shows photos of the stereo album covers. They do seem to have been released simultaneously.’

GM: ‘(Silence for a moment) I can’t believe that. We issued Please Please Me in February 1963 and certainly no stereo mixes were made. Not by me. Not by anybody I know.’

Q: ‘Well I have another advertisement that shows Please Please Me, the Twist And Shout EP and the She Loves You single which taken together, would place that ad in about August 1963 and again, it gives the stereo number for the album.’

GM: ‘You have the advantage of me. I was not aware of a stereo being produced. I thought it had been done after I left in 1965. Certainly, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. Now, that may seem extraordinary to you, but in 1963, I don’t even think I had time to have breakfast. Certainly, I didn’t do the stereo mixes and neither did The Beatles. Some geezer at EMI probably looked at this and said, for the minority of stereo people around, we’d better put out a stereo record.’

George Martin isn´t to blame remembering each detail of his rich past, but in 1988 the truth appeared in Mark Lewisohn´s book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. After the ‘Please Please Me’ recording sessions on 11 February, on Monday 25 Feburary 1963 in two 10.00 a.m - 1.00 p.m and 2.30 - 5.45 p.m sessions, both the mono and the stereo version of the album were mixed by producer George Martin and engineers Norman Smith and A.B. Lincoln. The results of those mixing sessions appeared in mono (Parlophone PMC 1201) on 22 March and in stereo (Parlophone PCS 3042) on 26 April.

For the second album With The Beatles, with a cover that still influences artists in the nineties, sessions were held on 18 and 30 July, 11 and 12 September, 3 (for the last time on a BRT 2-track recorder), 17 and 23 October. Mono mixing sessions were done on 21 August, 30 September and 23 October with the stereo mixing sessions done on 29 and 30 October. When the LP was released on 22 November both formats were released simultaneously ; mono as Paraphone PMC 1206 and stereo as PCS 3045.

When the Beatles started their sessions on 17 October a landmark in recording technique become available, a Studer J37 4-track recorder. From those day’s sessions was featured on the ‘Free As A Bird’ CD singel with ‘This Boy’ outtakes 12 and 13. For the new LP only Ringo´s ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ was recorded on 4-track, leaving a 12th take of ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’ unreleased (an edit of take 7, 10 and 11 was used instead).

From this album on, mono and stereo were twin releases, with for each album release special mono and stereo mixing sessions were arranged. The last time this was done was for the double-LP The Beatles, and for it´s follow up Yellow Submarine a monoaural cut was made from the stereo tapes.
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Если кратко передать суть: первые синглы и первые два альбома Битлз писали на Парлофоне на двухдорожечном магнитофоне. Записи микшировали для себя - в моно (Джордж Мартин говорит, что даже не помнит, чтобы кто-либо на Парлофоне занимался стереомиксом этих записей, хотя мастер-ленты большинства песен были сохранены), для американской Capitol - в стерео (из показаний других звукоинженеров Парлофона). Затем, с третьего альбома, стали писать на 4 дорожках, но продолжали микшировать в моно, потому что в Англии стереоаппаратуры ни у кого практически не было. Но стереодиски - да, выпускались, и в Англии и в США. Сохранились рекламные проспекты с номерами моно и стерео-дисков (картотека велась скрупулезно), и везде даются 2 даты выпуска альбомов, напр. для Please Please Me: "Released 22 March 1963 (mono), 26 April 1963 (stereo)", тогда как синглы выпускались лишь в моно. С 1968 появилась 8-дорожечная записывающая аппаратура, и стерео стало нормой. Не столь давно Capitol выпустило коллекционный набор американских альбомов Битлз, в обоих форматах.

На основании прочитанного здесь и в других местах, можно уверенно сказать, что следующие песни навсегда останутся в моно:
Love me do (оба варианта - и сингл, и альбомный)
P.S. I love you
(обе смикшированы американами в плохое частотное псевдостерео, и так присутствуют на "стерео" версии первого альбома)
She loves you

Остальные - существуют как минимум в 2-дорожечном миксе.