twin-track

On Please Please Me, Which Is More 3-Dimensional, Mono or Twin Track?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

With all due respect to George Martin, we’ve played a number of mono pressings of Please Please Me in the past twenty or so years and have never been particularly impressed with any of them. The monos jam all the voices and instruments together in the middle, stacking them one in front of the other, and lots of musical information gets mashed together and simply disappears in the congestion. 

But is twin track stereo any better?

Yes, when you do it the way Norman Smith did on Please Please Me.

Twin Track stereo (which is actually not very much like two-track stereo, I’m sure Wikipedia must have a listing for it if you’re interested) is like two mono tracks running simultaneously. It allows the completely separate voices to occupy one channel and the completely separate instruments to occupy another, with no leakage between them.

On some stereos it may seem as though the musicians and the singers are not playing together the way they would if one were hearing them in mono. They are in fact recorded on two separate mono tracks, the instruments appearing in the left channel and the singers in the right, separated as much as is physically possible.

Stuck in their individual stereo speakers, so far apart from one another, the members of the band don’t even seem to be playing together in the same room.

That’s on some stereos, and by some stereos I mean stereos that need improvement. Here’s why.

Three-Dimensional Mono?

In the final mixing stage, Norman Smith added separate reverb to each of the two channels, sending the reverb for the sound recorded in each channel to the opposite channel. This has the effect of making the studio, the physical space that The Beatles appear to be in, seem to stretch all the way from the right channel, where the Beatles’ voices are heard, to the back left corner of the studio, where the reverb eventually trails off.

(more…)

With The Beatles on Mobile Fidelity

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Sonic Grade: C+

The MoFi pressing of With the Beatles has so many problems it would take an hour to describe them all. Suffice it to say, it’s thinner and brighter, with voices that are grittier and grainier. The overall effect is the sinking feeling that you are listening to a cheap reissue and not the real thing. Don’t the Beatles sound better than this? To be fair, some tracks are okay, others a disaster.

If you own the MoFi, play it. Listen to it carefully. Make notes of which songs sound better than others and why. That’s how we spend our days, evaluating the relative merits of various pressings, and it’s that and that alone that has given us the critical listening skills necessary to recognize and appreciate the differences among the records we play.

One of the biggest problems with the average Parlophone copy is just the reverse of the MOFI. They tend to have rolled off highs, which emphasizes the harshness in the upper midrange and causes a loss of transparency. (The best Hot Stamper copies are of course as smooth, sweet, and transparent as they come.) Even with those shortcomings though, I would still rather listen to a typical Parlophone pressing. I wouldn’t be frustrated by the sound of somebody fooling with the EQ and screwing it up.  (more…)

Please Please Me on MoFi – Another Disgracefully Spitty Half-Speed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Sonic Grade: C

If you own the Mobile Fidelity LP, do yourself a favor and buy one of our Hot Stamper pressings. (Actually any good British import pressing will do.)

What’s the first thing you will notice other than correct tonality, better bass and a lot more “life” overall?

No spit!

As we’ve commented elsewhere, because of the wacky cutting system they used, Mobile Fidelity pressings are full of sibilance. 

As I was playing a British pressing of this record many years ago, maybe by about the fifth or sixth song it occurred to me that I hadn’t been hearing the spit that I was used to from my MoFi LP. You don’t notice it when it’s not there.

But your MoFi sure has a bad case of spitty vocals. If you never noticed them before, you will now.

We discuss the sibilance problems of MoFi records all the time. Have you ever read Word One about this problem elsewhere? Of course not.

Audiophiles and audiophile reviewers just seem to put up with these problems, or ignore them, or — even worse — fail to recognize them at all.

Play around with your table setup for a few hours and you will no doubt be able to reduce the severity of the sibilance on your favorite test and demo discs. All your other records will thank you for it too.

Especially your Beatles records. Many Beatles pressings are spitty, and the MoFi Beatles pressings are REALLY spitty. Of course MoFi fans never seem to notice this fact. Critical listening skills and a collection of MoFi pressings are rarely if ever found together. For reasons that should be obvious to anyone spending time on this site, you either have one or the other.

(more…)

The Beatles – With The Beatles

More With The Beatles

  • This vintage UK import copy was doing practically everything right, with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated a solid Double Plus (A++) side two – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Superb space and immediacy, rich and (relatively) smooth and oh-so-Tubey Magical lead and harmony vocals – this is the right sound for With The Beatles
  • So many great songs: “All My Loving,” “Please Mr. Postman,” “Til There Was You,” “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me” “Devil In Her Heart”… fourteen in all
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 5 stars: “It was clear that, even at this early stage, the Beatles were rapidly maturing and changing, turning into expert craftsmen and musical innovators.”
  • Far from the best album the band ever released, it’s still full of great songs and must be seen as a Classic from 1963 with strong appeal to any fan of the early Beatles

This is a tough album to get to sound right, as long-time readers of our site surely know, but here are the sides that prove this album can sound very good indeed. Looking for the best sound? Try “Till There Was You” on side one and “You Really Got A Hold On Me” on the flipside.

(more…)

Listening in Depth to Please Please Me

More of the Music of The Beatles

More Reviews and Commentaries for Please Please Me

The Beatles’ first album is nothing short of amazing. It’s clearly the best recording of their first five releases.

Naturally, it’s a founding member of our Top 100 Rock and Pop List, along with five other Beatles classics: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour and Abbey Road.

Please Please Me (in awesome twin-track stereo no less) captures more of the live sound of these four guys playing together as a rock and roll band than any record they ever made again. (Let It Be gets some of that live quality too and makes a great bookend for the group.)

If you are interested in digging deeper, our Listening in Depth commentaries have extensive track by track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums that have gone through a number of shootouts.

For most of the major titles by The Beatles, scores of shootouts have been done, with our earliest efforts stretching all the way back to 2005.

Side One

I Saw Her Standing There

Like any of the boys’ most radio ready singles, this song tends to be a bit bright. If this track sounds at all dull, there’s probably no hope for the rest of this side.

Misery

This track should sound lively and punchy. The best copies have excellent bass definition and superb clarity, allowing you to appreciate how the wonderful bounce of the rhythm section really energizes the song.

Anna (Go to Him)

Does it get any better? This is the real Beatles magic baby!

Chains

Note that the vocals on this track are not as well recorded as they are on the track above. As a rule they’re a bit edgier and not as transparent.

Go back and forth between the two songs a number of times and we think you will hear exactly what we mean. Although this difference is more audible on the better copies, it should still be noticeable on any Hot Stamper pressing.

Side Two

P.S. I Love You

Another track with a bit of that “mixed for radio” sound. On most pressings this song tends to be bright, thin, and grainy.

Baby It’s You

Listen carefully to the middle eight section — you can hear the rhythm track levels turned down at the first bar and then back up at the last.

Some of the most Tubey Magical sound on the album — we love this song!

This is the real Beatles All-Tube-Recording-Chain Magic, Parts Three through Seven. Every track from here on out is killer.

Do You Want to Know a Secret

Even richer and more Tubey Magical. How can it be this good!?

If you know someone who doesn’t understand why anyone in his right mind would still bother with a turntable and old records in this day and age, play these songs for him. No CD can begin to do what a good pressing of this album can do.

A Taste of Honey
There’s a Place
Twist and Shout

Further Reading

(more…)

The Beatles – Please Please Me (German)

More of The Beatles

Reviews and Commentaries for Please Please Me

  • This vintage import pressing of the Beatles’ debut album boasts excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both sides have superb presence, clarity and size – they are bigger, bolder and richer, as well as more clean, clear and open than most others we played
  • 5 stars: “Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh [and]…it’s easy to get wrapped up in the sound of the record itself without realizing how the album effectively summarizes the band’s eclectic influences. There’s a love of girl groups, vocal harmonies, sophisticated popcraft, schmaltz, R&B, and hard-driving rock & roll, which is enough to make Please Please Me impressive, but what makes it astonishing is how these elements converge in the originals.”

Folks, if you’re looking for an amazing Top Quality copy of the first Beatles release, here it is! Big and lively with superb presence and energy, this is EXACTLY the right sound for this music. The album itself is nothing short of amazing. It captures more of the live sound of these four guys playing together as a rock and roll band than any record they ever made afterwards. (Let It Be gets some of that live quality too and makes a great bookend for the group.) (more…)

Rubber Soul – Twin Track for Me But Not for Thee

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

How is it that none of the critics of “twin track stereo” — the two-track recording approach used on the first two albums, with the elements hard-panned left and right — has ever come clean about the obvious twin track stereo sound of Rubber Soul?

We used tracks four, five and six to test side two with, and in all three the vocals are hard-panned right with most of the instruments hard-panned left. Why is it wrong for Please Please Me to sound that way — the mono mix being the critic’s choice — but fine for Rubber Soul to be heard that way? 

Tons of energy on the drums in the left channel are a key test.

In the right channel the shakers and tambourines are way up in the mix.

The bass is a bit lean compared to the other tracks and tends to get a bit lost. If you can follow the bass throughout the song, that’s a good sign.

Balancing the bass and drums in the left channel with the vocals and percussion in the right channel is not easy to do, which of course is what makes it a great test.

(more…)

Spending More Time With The Beatles

beatlwitht_x20

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

To find the Hottest Stampers it helps to have piles and piles of minty British pressings. And lots of time on your hands. And lots of help. Fortunately, with a staff of ten and nothing else to do all day, we have all three.

This is a tough album to get to sound right, as long-time readers of our site surely know, but on a good copy it can sound wonderful. This one really delivers, with plenty of presence and energy as well as natural, balanced tonality.

So, What’s Out There?

We’ve heard copies that were smeared, murky, muddy, grainy, or all of the above. Almost all of them had no real magic in the midrange. And of course, we heard tons of copies with the kind of gritty vocals that you’ll find all over the average Parlophone Beatles pressing.

Early or Late Pressing?

So many Parlophone copies would have you think With The Beatles is a gritty, edgy, crude recording — especially if you made the mistake of buying an early pressing.

The early pressings are consistently grittier, edgier and more crude than the later pressings we played.

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “It’s like hearing this music for the first time…”

More of the Music of The Beatles

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

WOWOWOWOW the Please Please Me Beatles is something else. Huge 3D sound, totally organic and clear, never would have expected this from this record. Mind-blowing, so much energy, silent vinyl… great disc from you. It’s like hearing this music for the first time and being back in the ’60s for the privilege.

The hard stereo separation doesn’t even bother me.

C.

Dear C.,

It doesn’t bother me either! Which is why I wrote this commentary and followed it up with this one.

(more…)

With The Beatles – Original Liner Notes

More With The Beatles

Original Liner Notes (!)

Fourteen freshly recorded titles – including many sure-fire stage-show favourites – are featured on the two generously filled sides of this record. The Beatles have repeated the successful formula which made their first ‘Please Please Me’ LP into the fastest-selling album of 1963. Again they have set eight of their own original compositions alongside a batch of personal choice pieces selected from the recording repertoires of the American R&B artists they admire most.

The first half of the session gets away to a rip-roarin’ start with John’s powerful treatment of IT WON’T BE LONG NOW. Two more Lennon/McCartney compositions follow with these two remarkably talented tunesmiths handling their own lyrics on ALL I’VE GOT TO DO and ALL MY LOVING. On the first slower number John takes the vocal lead with Paul supplying the harmony. On ALL MY LOVING Paul stands in the vocal spotlight with John and George chanting in the background. Listen to George’s superb, slightly Country and Western guitar solo, an intriguing feature of ALL MY LOVING.

DON’T BOTHER ME marks the disc debut of George Harrison as a composer. It is a fairly fast number with a haunting theme tune. Behind George’s double-tracked voice the rest of the fabulous foursome create some unusual instrumental effects. Paul beats out a lean, hollow-boned rhythm from the claves, John uses a tambourine and Ringo hits out at a loose-skinned Arabian bongo (don’t ask me where he picked that up!) to pound out the on-beat percussive drive.

On a fair number of previous recordings by The Beatles producer George Martin has joined the group to add suitable piano sounds to their instrumental arrangements. His keyboard contributions come a little later in this new programme but on LITTLE CHILD it is Paul McCartney who plays piano. John and Paul join forces for the vocal on this rocker and, whilst Paul was over-dubbing the piano bits. John was standing beside another microphone adding in some neatly-timed mouth-organ phrases.

Those who considered Paul’s interpretation of A Taste Of Honey to be a stand-out attraction of The Beatles’ first LP will be more than pleased to hear him assume the role of romantic balladeer again on TILL THERE WAS YOU, the near-standard hit from the show ‘The Music Man.’ (more…)