BluRay Music Video Poll The Beatles - 1/1+ [BluRay]

[Clint Eastwood]

Haha - believe me, I've been through no end of frustration with Amazon's format, but at least it has improved. And the site is often where the best deal on a particular title can be found.
Amazon, as well as not separating versions, neither requires much in the way of version validation when a seller lists. So, they can claim they're selling an SACD for $0.01 and you get it and it's a CD.
Alternatively, they sometimes think they're selling a CD for $0.01 and it's a rare SACD...

Every cloud has a silver lining!

LOL...yeah...that example of the CD listing is like looking for a virgin in a bordello..99.9% of the time if there is a mistake..it's a CD instead of a SACD...been there done that SO many times..hehe...

 

[edisonbaggins]

LOL...yeah...that example of the CD listing is like looking for a virgin in a bordello..99.9% of the time if there is a mistake..it's a CD instead of a SACD...been there done that SO many times..hehe...

 

[Franklin]

If you click on "see all xxxx customer reviews," then select cd from the drop down, you'll see only cd reviews.

I hadn't realised that. Amazon UK has it too. Good spot.

 

[MIDIQ]

I vote 6. The surround is worthless, except for a couple songs, so surround mix gets a 1 vote, music gets a 9, would have been 10 if there were studio mixes. But for what it is decent. I do enjoy the hi rez sound of the music, sounds great, the best these songs have sounded. So i am kinda happy with it.

 

[rtbluray]

Ok, so after months of avoiding a review of this release, I'm finally diving in.

To start off with Blu-Ray 1, given the limitations of the Beatles earliest recordings and videos, I wasn't expecting anything remotely discrete in surround until around Track 9 ("Ticket to Ride" from "Help!") so I wasn't that disappointed at all with the way things sounded on the first eight tracks. Some are from live performances ("From Me to You", "She Loves You", "Can't Buy Me Love", and "A Hard Day's Night") so those especially don't offer that much in terms of fidelity, but the studio recordings from that era ("Love Me Do", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "I Feel Fine", and "Eight Days A Week") sound very good. I'm not sure they have ever sounded better.
(I'm going to skip "Ticket to Ride" and "Help!" for now since I want to compare these mixes with the ones on the "Help!" Blu-Ray in a back-to-back fashion.)
"Yesterday" is another live performance so don't expect anything for that track.

So from "Day Tripper" onward, what mixes stand out and which ones fall flat?

Good: "Penny Lane", "Hello, Goodbye", "Lady Madonna", "Let It Be"
Bad: "Day Tripper", "We Can Work It Out", "Paperback Writer", "Hey Jude", "Get Back", "Ballad of John & Yoko", "Something", "Come Together", and "The Long & Winding Road"

(I also skipped through "Yellow Submarine" "Eleanor Rigby", and "All You Need Is Love" to do direct comparisons with the mixes on the "Yellow Submarine" Blu-Ray.)

So what's the story? It's mostly not that great with the exception of a handful of tracks. I'll have to more say coming up in a bit about Disc 2, and then I'll go ahead and rate as appropriate.

 

[rtbluray]

Onto Disc 2 now!
Like Disc 1, don't expect things to start off discretely at all given that the first few tracks are "Twist & Shout", "Baby It's You", "Words of Love", and "Please Please Me". Three out of those four are live/radio performances, so the technical limitations are definitely an issue.
Then we have some alternative videos from the ones found on Disc 1.
So where should things really get good? On "Rain" of course! But does it? No…

Good: "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love"
OK, but could be much better: "Strawberry Fields Forever", "A Day in the Life", "Hey Bulldog"
Bad: "Rain", "Revolution", "Don't Let Me Down"

(I skipped "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" to compare against the "LOVE" DVDA later on)

So when it's all said and done, How would I rate this? An '8'. Now I know a lot of you may think that's really high, but here's how I break things down:

Content: 3/3
Surround Mix: 1/3
Fidelity: 3/3
High-Res Disc: 1/1

I thought about giving the surround aspect a 0, but there are some good mixes, so I'm taking the high road here, after all it's the F###ing Beatles man!

 

[JonUrban]

Taking a break from Chicago, I finally got around to comparing the versions of "Free As a Bird". Hey, it's not the greatest tune in the Beatles catalog, but it's a nice try. I was intrigued that the word was the 1+ was a totally different 5.1 mix, so I finally got them both up on the "big computer" and checked them out. And yes, they are two different mixes!!! I wonder why?

My findings are that they futzed with the Anthology mix to make it the dreaded "more modern" mix. What I mean by that is that what was once discrete is now less discrete. For example, the bridge where Paul sings "Whatever happened to....". That vocal is not in the rears on the Anthology version. Totally absent. On the 1+ version, it's there and clear, not flanging. The same with Georges intro guitar. Totally in the rears on 1+, just a hint in the rears on Anthology. If you look at the wav files below, you can see the drums in the center channel very prominently in the Anthology mix, while they are spread out to all 5 channels in the 1+ mix. You can also see that they redid the bird flapping noises in the beginning of the song, totally changing the surround panning. And the little ukulele deal at the end that was loud in the center channel on anthology is cranked way down and sent to the fronts in 1+. And the LFE looks totally different as well. Soloing the LFE, the Anthology version sounds like a bass guitar being played while the 1+ version sounds like sound effect booms.

One more thing, the Anthology version keeps most of the lead vocals in the center channel, with just a bit of bleed into the fronts but not the rears. In the 1+ version, the lead vocal also lives in the fronts and bleeds into the rears.

From a surround perspective, the Anthology version, to me, is better. More distinct. I wonder what possessed them to change it. @:

Screenshot below: Top wav is Anthology Version, lower wav the 1+ version

 

[ar surround]

This set, The Beatles 1/1+, sounds even worse now that I have the Chicago Quadio Blu-rays to listen to. Argh! Lost opportunity that also gives me a headache.

 

[seilerbird]

This set, The Beatles 1/1+, sounds even worse now that I have the Chicago Quadio Blu-rays to listen to. Argh! Lost opportunity that also gives me a headache.

Yes but to be fair Chicago's masters are about ten years newer.

 

[alk3997]

Yes but to be fair Chicago's masters are about ten years newer.

Actually the masters sound great. It's what was done in 2016 that doesn't.

To Jon's point, besides the increased compression, the reason for remix on Free As A Bird was improved software to clear-up John's vocals and to make it sound like the other 5.1-channel mixes on 1+.


Andy

 

[GOS]

This set, The Beatles 1/1+, sounds even worse now that I have the Chicago Quadio Blu-rays to listen to. Argh! Lost opportunity that also gives me a headache.

I'll be damned.

I personally still get great enjoyment from Love. Probably I have wax in my ears. lmao

 

[alk3997]

The Love set isn't being questioned. It's the 2016 1/1+ 5.1-channel set.

 

[seilerbird]

Actually the masters sound great. It's what was done in 2016 that doesn't.

They were not trying to appeal to a small market like the surround sound market, they were going after the bigger audience who would be put off by surround. They wanted the band in stereo in the front and some audience noise in the rear, exactly like 99% of the concert discs being sold today. But still the Beatles master are nowhere near as good as Chicago. The Beatles were mostly on two and four tracks and Chicago was on 8 and 16 I believe.

 

[JanBakker]

I'll be damned.

I personally still get great enjoyment from Love. Probably I have wax in my ears. lmao

After reading your post I instantly voted 10 :yikes later realising I just voted for 1+ instead of Love :violin, so ignore my vote please .

 

[alk3997]

They were not trying to appeal to a small market like the surround sound market, they were going after the bigger audience who would be put off by surround. They wanted the band in stereo in the front and some audience noise in the rear, exactly like 99% of the concert discs being sold today. But still the Beatles master are nowhere near as good as Chicago. The Beatles were mostly on two and four tracks and Chicago was on 8 and 16 I believe.

You might be surprised. The 1" tape for the Studer J37s was used for only 4 tracks which gave a large amount of bandwidth and low noise per track. What EMI and The Beatles did was to do a series of bounce-downs (or mix-down) from tape-to-tape to free up tracks. This meant the final recordings on two track stereo or single track mono was a combination of first generation and up-to-fourth generation recording even for a single song. If you go back to only the first generation recordings, which is possible because all the tapes were kept from 1964 onward, the sound quality is quite good. The Love DVD-Audio is only first generation recordings.

When the remastered CDs were made in 2009, they were cleaned up from the stereo and mono mixes, which in some cases could be fifth generation recordings (even sixth).

Now, I can't compare to the Chicago quad masters since I don't have them yet, but I suspect the biggest advantage the Chicago recordings have are they used a solid state mixing desk while The Beatles, until mid-1969, had to use a tube-based mixing desk. The Chicago tapes would have the disadvantage of having more noise per recorded track and less bandwidth, which is how Mr. Dolby made his reputation (as well as dbx).

In the end, it doesn't really matter since we get to listen to both bands and enjoy the cleaned-up versions of both groups.

Andy

 

[ar surround]

I'll be damned.

I personally still get great enjoyment from Love. Probably I have wax in my ears. lmao

The Beatles Love DVD-A is great, a 10+/10. The Beatles four-track first generation masters obviously sound wonderful based on what we hear on that Love disc. The circa 1967 Sgt. Pepper/MMT 5.1 cuts on Love are utterly fantastic; and they were still using four-track recorders for these very complicated recordings. So no excuses accepted for this 1/1+ "thing." All of the compression on it makes my head want to explode...or is it implode? Anyway, it's been at least a day since I last listened to the Quadio of CTA and I am going through withdrawal. @:

 

[EMB]

Yes, I've been sitting on this one for a bit, not sure how to get its pros and cons together....


If one can ignore the alterations in the original aspect ratios of the respective videos--and I find that easy, since this is an anthology of music, really, the video almost ancillary in a way--credit should go to those who restored the videos to the condition they are in. We saw this potential with the ANTHOLOGY discs, and that standard is carried over here. It's just good fun to watch, regardless of sound quality.

But sound is what we're really about here, and that has problems that remain inexplicable, leaving out for the moment any live renderings.

Now, had this collection--think for a moment the DVD version, not this more elaborate presentation--been issued around the time of the actual release of the '1' album, or a few years after, it might have gotten great praise even from critics. But what we have here from an audio perspective is a mix of badness and brilliance.

First, the sonics were restored by the same team who did the 2009 masters, I presume; I'm too lazy to verify that, but a fair assumption. But even if that were not so, anyone doing the remastering work would have only limited success with any mono or twin-track sources, so it's impossible to say anything negative about these batch of tracks, since their flaws are inherent and for us old farts, endearing.

Once we get to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and through the 1964 recordings, we don't get truly discrete mixes, and that's just as well (despite what is heard on the AHDN Criterion). It's one thing to hear the discrete sound during the course of a film--though even then, I find much of it jarring and prefer the mono track--but for hearing the old hits, the tighter and denser mixes here just work better for me.

But then we come to "Ticket To Ride" and this is where the real trouble begins. Compare what you hear to the HELP! DVD and to this rendering. We're still in 3-track recording, so any remixing is going to have its limitations, but those involved certainly took the separation as far as it could reasonably go while not turning the song dry and sterile, which would surely been the result of true discrete separation (and that would have isolated the sound to the fronts while forcing duplicate sound or ambiance to the rears). I understand the logic of keeping things 'tight' for this kind of music even in 5.1, but "Ticket" and "Help!" are glaringly different on the movie DVD, compared to this package. Not the sonics--both are exceptional, though I think the HELP! DVD has a more 'organic' sound if that can be understood.

But the most obvious aspect by this point--and particularly true with "Help!"--is that listening to it was akin to playing any SQ slab of vinyl with a crappy decoder. You *do* hear discreteness, but this is almost drowned out by the *bleed* of sounds into other speakers taking away the discreteness inherent to CD-4 and Q8.

Perhaps an explanation for this tightness and limited soundfield might be found in the mix of the live "Yesterday." It seems the producers went out of their way to make it immersive, even sounding stereo, though, being live in '65 or '66, it was certainly taken from a mono source. Nice cleanup and sonic frippery, but fraudulent nonetheless. Perhaps it was felt that, with the studio "Day Tripper" next, the latter being more discrete might point out the inherent inconsistencies not only of Beatles recordings and circumstances, but the mix of live material vs. more polished studio sounds?

Regardless, RUBBER SOUL was the first Beatles album to have more elaborate separation, isolating left/right sounds yet keeping a solid 'center'. One can debate the merits of placement, but a worthy experiment all the same. We don't hear this on "Tripper" or "We Can Work it Out" from that period, but worst of all, the missed opportunities that begin with "Paperback Writer," even if this one has a few interesting effects which, alas, are a tad subtle.

As of "Yellow Submarine" and scattered tracks thereafter, there is more, um, 'discretion,' if still not as much as could have been achieved. "YS" is the restored version with the original stereo omission restored ala YS SONG TRACK. But the most obvious missed opportunity was "Eleanor Rigby." On the YS movie disc, Paulie's vocal is in the center channel, everything else around him; radical, maybe even perverse, but for the images on the screen, perfect! Here, again, everything is rather blended and comparatively bland, and maybe that was Giles' point, to simply *slightly* expand the stereo we know to 5.1 without making things too disturbing for those who know the music well but are so used to hearing 5.1 cinema that 5.1 rock from the '60s in similar fashion would be, well, just all too much.

Things don't improve the rest of the way, really. Some are tighter than others, but by this section I liked the videos more than the mixes by a wide margin; nice to see the boys before The End. As for the LIBN version of "Long and Winding Road"...that was a solo Macca, really. Spector's remix with orchestra was, indeed, a nice coda to the announcement of the breakup even if not in the 'Beatle Spirit' or whatever.



And so ends Disc 1. Long before it was over I realized that had Ron Furmanek supervised the sound, wow, what it might have been. How Giles Martin decided to become so conservative is, well...depressing. One more thing: both the DVD and BluRay editions are LOUDER than the movies I compared them with. This was true of the '09 masters, too, as it has been all too much in modern music. What does this mean? Simply this: the loudest passages are loud, but the quieter passages of vintage music are amped up, too, leaving no room for the subtlety of what recording used to be. Even in digital a wide dynamic range can be achieved, but the fixation is with a sonic attack rather than remembering the kisses, caresses, that are the quieter parts of songs.

I live in this century, only because the other alternative--death, and the lack of a time machine--sucks even more.

And I've just worked through Disc 1; Disc 2 to follow in a bit, needs work.

ED

 

[Ephi82]

I have to start with the sound quality of these Blu Rays. Most of the songs have never sounded so good. I believe the the conservative use of surround in the mix reflect the limitation of using multi track tapes that had 4 channels for most of the time, and the Beatles used a ton of bouncing.

I would guess that Giles found that getting much more discete than he did would result in a gimmickey sounding product.

As for the videos, well again they have never looked better. Outstanding.

I dont understand how low many of the ratings are on this project?

 

[Franklin]

As for the bouncing, some work has been done to retrieve the unbounced tapes and sync them to the later overdubs. I've not got 1+ but I believe the upset is that better 5.1 Beatles mixes exist on other releases.

 

[EMB]

I believe the the conservative use of surround in the mix reflect the limitation of using multi track tapes that had 4 channels for most of the time, and the Beatles used a ton of bouncing.

I would guess that Giles found that getting much more discrete than he did would result in a gimmicky sounding product.

The previously released ANTHOLOGY, LOVE, and the first three films are great fun to hear--if you like surround. Given Giles' involvement in LOVE, hard to understand why he would not try to go for the best 5.1 he could get, regardless of the material, unless...

As for the videos, well again they have never looked better. Outstanding.

I don't understand how low many of the ratings are on this project?

My reason, anyway:

As for the bouncing, some work has been done to retrieve the unbounced tapes and sync them to the later overdubs. I've not got 1+ but I believe the upset is that better 5.1 Beatles mixes exist on other releases.

Bottom line: Shoulda, coulda been better mixes (non-studio material notwithstanding).

Coming up: Disc 2 review.


ED