The Beatles Mono Box Set

November 10, 2009 in Remastered Beatles
Tags: Beatles, Beatles Remastered, Mono

The Beatles in Mono Box Set is a Beatles purist’s drum come true. It is “The Beatles as they were meant to be heard” finally on CD (for the very first time.)

Stereo didn’t become the standard for popular music until the late 1960s after The Beatles had already recorded and released many of their greatest albums. Although they did release stereo mixes of their albums as well, it was the mono mixes that they spent the most time working on and that the vast majority of their fans listened to.

It wasn’t until The White Album (1968) that stereo became as important to The Beatles as mono, and then after that mono was phased out completely. The band’s final three albums (Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, & Let It Be) were only released in stereo.

The White Album was sort of the “transition” album as it was actually only released in stereo in the US, although both the mono and the stereo mixes were released in the UK.

I think there’s a noticeable change that happens in the way their music was mixed for stereo with this album. Prior to The White Album many of their stereo mixes were extremely wide (for example: all of the vocals on one side and all of the instruments on the other.) This is really unsettling, especially when listening on headphones.

But for their last few albums the band seemed to get the stereo mixes right a lot more than they got them wrong.

Of course all of those “wrong” stereo mixes are a part of the draw of the Beatles in Mono Box Set. Many of the band’s earlier songs were mixed so badly in stereo that they really do sound significantly better in mono.

Many people think that the mono mixes of their earlier songs are really much better than the stereo mixes. And I don’t just meant the really early songs like “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” there are also definitely those who believe that such legendary albums as Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band also sound better in mono. And it’s definitely true that the stereo mixes of those albums do have a lot of really wide panning that maybe isn’t the best way to hear those songs.

If you’re curious about The Beatles music as it was heard by most people in the 1960s then you should get The Beatles Mono Box Set.

Advertisement