Beatles remastered. Good news or bad?

[sonidos]

I have Wavelab, which I use for cleaning up pops and ticks but I've never seen so much compression. Over the top!

Software like that is a good tool because I found my Alesis was clipping because the gain from my phone preamp was too high.

Listening to Abbey Road, every instrument just seems too loud over my phones.

[kavermei]

Originally Posted by Netlist

I agree. Take a good recorded vinyl album and transfer it to CD. It still sounds marvellous.

Yes.

[indianajo]

I opened a 12" LP version of Abbey Road today purchased sealed at Best Buy in 2009, and played it for the first time on the occasion of my balanced and dehissed mixer (with scope), balanced and Dejoffe tweaked power amp, and new to me 1998 Peavey SP2 speakers on stands so the highs make it over the Steinway. I am pleased that the Capitol masters, plated in an open sided wind swept Mojave desert factory next to a gravel crushing plant ( to judge from the insane level of pops and snaps as delivered new) have been retired. However these masters have their own swishes and thuds occuring regularly at the 33 1/3 rpm rate, besides an actual scratch on the first band. The bass level is okay for 1969, considering that ATCO was delivering bass in 1968 that could not be played by my 1961 ADC cartridge on the AR turntable with the new stylus. (Tommy Boyce & Bobbie Hart). The mix is normal if you consider the Beach Boys to be the competition, with piano and bass on one channel and lead guitar on the other channel. It is better than the early Beatles stuff with vocals on one side and instruments on the other, but just barely. If you consider Eugene Ormandy and C.R. Fine to be the competition, the Capitol-Decca team of 1969 recording engineers were blithering idiots. I bought the Beatles stuff starting with Sgt Pepper's, because the band were geniuses, but I always viewed their recording team as definitely third rate, and view this new pressing as improvement to only second rate. I hope the lead remix engineer is listed on each "remastering", as the tapes were surely good enough to to allow for an artistic pressing, but I haven't heard it yet. Different mixes may appeal to differenct market segments, as, for example, the hot market now is those vile little "ear buds", but it would be nice to know what you were buying when you lay out $20 for either a CD or LP. I believe decent CD's can also be produced, but have not made a major investment in them, and won't spend a dime on lo-fi MP3, if anybody important is listening. I skipped the whole cassette phenomena, and view MP3 as a dive down the same rathole.
My 1968-75 records are still in pretty good shape as when I started buying LP's in 1964, I could tell by listening that the second pass on my mother's RCA 5 gm player sounded much worse than the first pass. I saved my lawnmower money and bought a 1 1/2 g AR turntable and Dyna amp in 1967, and have never looked back. The class acts of those days were Mercury Living Presence, Colombia, and RCA Red Seal. Silent, silky, wonderful highs when I got good enough speakers to hear them. Pity their artists weren't as earthshakingly important as the Beatles.

[kavermei]

I hear you. I absolutely love Beatles music but unfortunately my speakers (ESLs) have superb stereo imaging so I have come to expect that from records, too. Well on Beatles albums I've got John&Paul standing in my left speaker and a couple of guitar automatons standing in my right