mono mastering sacrilege: is a puzzlement!

[krabapple]

Witness this thread about 'fixing' the mono versions of the Beatles songs. Read the whole damn thing, please.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showt ... ge=1&pp=20

Explain please why it's OK for Steve Hoffman to use a two-track machine to remaster mono tapes (e.g. Pet Sounds), but it was a horrendous thing for the
Beatles' guy (Mark Jeffries) to do.

Or is it *just* that the machine was *misaligned* in the case of some Beatles stuff?

[MK]

It needs to be clarified more. There's nothing wrong with using a two-track machine, it's using the two-track AND combining the channels into mono (often stated as "L+R" with some allusion to a mono button - never mastered a tape in my life so couldn't tell you what it looks like). Steve's preference is to use a two-track and then pick a channel, whichever has the least drop-outs or whatever, and just duplicate that channel for both channels. Sometimes he forgets and just masters it in 'stereo' like the Buddy Holly CD everyone foams about.

[lukpac]

That's "news"?

FWIW, this would be how it breaks down...:

mono tape played with stereo head, one channel used - good
mono tape played with stereo head, mastered in stereo - not a big deal
mono tape played with stereo head, channels combined to mono - bad

Also, this doesn't make any sense:

BTW, I did the same out of phase test on "She Loves You" from the Past Masters CD. That one is also in "out of phase stereo", so it can be fixed in the same way I described above. I haven't tested the rest of the mono Past Masters tracks, nor the EMI CDs of the first four albums. Maybe someone could do it and post the results. If they are also in "out of phase stereo", they can be fixed, too.

I'm listening to PM1 now, and it sure as hell sounds like 100% mono to me. I don't have time to load it into ProTools at the moment, but if it was actually mastered it stereo you'd hear the edits in stereo, since they are on the diagonal. No such luck. Combining to mono doesn't seem to make a difference in sound, either (it would if it were actually stereo/out of phase).

If the channels aren't digitally identical, it seems like at the very least they were summed to mono prior to digital mastering.

Something to think about...the German tracks on PPM are stereo, just VERY narrow. I suppose it's possible that the same is true of the mono singles - they played the tape back in stereo, narrowed down to (almost) mono, and then mastered that result in stereo. Or not.

[Xenu]

As an aside, I can't believe people are still willing to pay money for the Singles/EP sets.

[Dob]

Geez, no. The EP cuts are one generation down. That's the reason for the difference in tonality.

How can that be "the reason"? A proper dub shouldn't have a tonality difference. If the copy was made improperly, then *that* would be the reason...not simply that they used a copy.

You mean that's why they have different tonal balance? To me it sounded like different EQ...I assumed this meant they were remastered differently.

That would be my thinking...

[Andreas]

As an aside, I can't believe people are still willing to pay money for the Singles/EP sets.

[MK]

When it came out in 1992, both sets retailed for about $100 each, and everyone cried RIP-OFF then. Here's an archived RS review on the EP set that pretty much summed up the response:

Bearing a retail price of around $100, the set is no bargain. Collectively, the music on these fifteen CDs – all but two of which run for eleven minutes or less – would fit onto two full-length discs (especially considering that six songs from Magical Mystery Tour are included in both mono and stereo). There are no revelations in the sleeve notes. And for the record, these EPs have never gone out of print in England; collectors would probably wish to own them in their original vinyl form anyway.