The History of The Beatles on CD - Which Sound The Best in 2023?

[Music] 2020 will be remembered in history mainly for one thing but it was also the first time in 34 years in which vinyl outsold the cd in the us consumption of music on physical formats now makes up only nine percent of total music sales and the demise of the cd has been a slow and painful one but for many of us beatles collectors cds still represent a significant percentage of our collections so it's high time we took a look at their history and find out which ones sound the best [Music] i'm andrew from polygram auctions and the last time vinyl outsold the cd in 1986 i was working for a chain of uk independent record stores called our price records in their cambridge branch it was a large well-stocked store with a wealth of back catalog vinyl and cassettes which lest we forget were just as popular at the time at the back corner of the store on a handful of small shelves sat the cds the number of which grew week by week and i clearly remember the arduous task of having to move everything along to make space for the new titles which were being released thick and fast the shop was equipped with an early philips cd player on which dire straits brothers in arms was on constant rotation and it's an album i truly dislike to this day anyway as i said a lot of titles were coming out every week but there was one significant absence amongst them the beatles back then in the mid-1980s there was precious little for us beatles fans to get excited about apple had put a stop to emi releasing those absurd theme compilations and there was no archive material in the pipeline let alone on the shelves and it wasn't just me customers were regularly asking when the beatles would be coming out on cd it was a subject i raced constantly with the emi rep on his weekly visits to the store he explained in between lauding the latest sigsik sputnik single that emi simply didn't have enough manufacturing capacity to meet demand apple however were convinced that this delay was being used as leverage in their lawsuit at the time with emi concerning the cd royalty rate which was to be paid to the beatles but bhaskar menon chairman and chief executive officer at emi music worldwide at the time insisted that the lengthy delay was entirely due to the fact that there was indeed insufficient manufacturing capacity quite sensibly emi didn't want to face a situation where they would run out of stock and needed reasonable assurance of continuity of supply now all that was true but the root cause of the delay was much more complex developed in 1982 by phillips and sony the cd revolution came at a time when emi and the record industry in general were desperately trying to break out of a cycle of stagnation and decline the arrival of the cd seemed to offer a way out of the situation but emi had its doubts right from the outset and it was this indecision which nearly cost them deer as it had done so 30 years earlier at the birth of the lp here's what happened back then over in america in 1948 emi's licensor columbia records had introduced its own long playing record colombia's main rival rca then developed the 7-inch 45 rpm record which with its smaller size and increased durability was an infinitely better format than the 78. at the time both technologies were offered to emi who were then faced with two choices either ignore the changes and rely on the buoyancy of the current 78 market or build up stocks of the new 45 and lp whilst developing new record players on which they could be played emi at the time was led by a man called sir ernest fisk an electrical engineer and businessman had been given the helm of the company in 1945. unfortunately fisk was a very conservative unambitious man and wary of the difficulties he'd seen in america caused by the two competing speeds was highly skeptical of the new lp format so in september 1950 he decided that emi could afford to wait and see who won the battle of the speeds he faithfully issued a press release in which he said that emi would continue to produce 78s in undiminished quantities basically to satisfy all the people in the world who already own gramophones this communique proved to be his obituary as far as his emi career was concerned and he was replaced swiftly after making this short-sighted decision emi then went ahead with development of the lpn 45 finally launching them in october 1952 however the damage had already been done and that early indecision meant that their chief rivals decca were already one step ahead of them and had already established themselves and were leading in the micro groove market fast forward to 1982 an emi faced a similar quandary as they hesitated to invest in the cd revolution one of the reasons for this was that phillips wanted a royalty on every cd sold another was that early cd production was proving just as difficult as early lp production where the rejection rate was almost 50 percent which was costly and technically challenging it also required major capital expenditure which following the failures of the 8-track and quadraphonic formats in the 1970s made emi executives very nervous emi was also concerned about the retail cost of the cds which due to higher manufacturing costs would be significantly higher than the lp at a time when britain was emerging from its worst financial recession for 50 years but in the end emi had no choice they had to go forward with it and by marketing it as a premium product they calculated that they could easily pay philips their royalty and make a decent profit which they did emi's first cds were manufactured as a joint project between themselves and toshiba emi in japan the beatles abbey road was one of the early test cds and it's one we'll meet later in this video british and american factories were built at swindon and jacksonville illinois followed by one in uden in the netherlands to supply europe which meant that emi was well on its way to world domination as far as cds were concerned anyway so with all of this in place in february 1987 the announcement finally came the beatles were coming to cd i was so excited and on the day of the announcement went out in my lunch hour to buy a cd player so that i'd be ready for the big day the machine i bought was a yamaha cd400 costing around 200 pounds which in today's money is about 600 pounds or just over 800 it was well beyond my pocket at the time so i had to take out my first higher purchase contract and paid 8 pounds a month for what seemed like 20 years anyway the great day arrived when the first four albums all hit the stores at once please please me with the beatles a hard day's night and beetles for sale in mono only early copies of the uk cd had a printing error on the back they were marked as add analog recording digital mixing and digital mastering but they should have been aad analog recording analog mixing and digital mastering don't worry i'll be talking more about sound quality later on in this video on april the 30th help rubber soul and revolver were also released together but this time all were in stereo help and rubber sole had the added bonus of having been remixed by george martin himself especially for this project all these releases have been cleverly timed so that the release of the sergeant pepper cd occurred exactly 20 years to the day the vinyl had been released on june the first although it had been originally rush released in the uk on may the 26th 1967 the packaging for this cd was as deluxe as any cd had been up until that time it was housed in a glossy slip case with a 24-page booklet which even incorporated the cutout sheet the magical mystery tour album was finally accepted into the uk canon but was released out of sequence on september 21st after the cd of the white album which had already happened a month earlier on august 24th initial cd editions of the white album were numbered mine bought on day of release is number 29816 yellow submarine was also released on the same day as the white album abbey road and let it be completed the set again released on the same day as each other on october the 19th something which given the release schedules of beatles material today is hard to get your head around as in the blue box set a collection of oldies was overlooked again but salvation came in march 1988 with the release of past masters volumes 1 and 2 which mopped up all of the singles ep tracks and other missing bits and pieces finally if you were late to the game or were just a completist emi issued this 15 cd set housed in a black tambour fronted wooden box otherwise known as the bread bin set there was no extra musical material with this set but it did come with an exclusive small but glossy 64-page booklet with sleeve notes and indexes by mark lewison and that was that for the next 21 years until on the 9th of the 9th 2009 emi or should i say apple released the remastered cd box sets this set contained all 13 original studio albums which have been digitally remastered in stereo each cd was now housed in a newly designed fold out did you pack cover with an attractive and informative booklet inside each disk also contained a mini documentary about the album in the form of a quicktime file which you could play on your computer all of those documentaries were also included on a separate dvd lasting 49 minutes the box was a handsome glossy affair with a magnetic clasp surrounded by its own slip case of more interested collectors was the monobox which was released on the same day housed in a much smaller box this set contained 10 digitally remastered mono albums which were all made in japan each was superbly packaged in sleeves which recreated the original uk mono covers even down to the rear flip backs they even went to the trouble of reproducing the original inner sleeves which was a really classy touch all were contained in resealable plastic sleeves which gave it a real high quality feel which is exactly what collectors wanted the accompanying 44-page booklet was the ideal companion to this truly excellent set and the initial print run was quickly sold out when the remasters were first released in 2009 that's 12 years ago they were all shiny and new and for that reason alone a lot of people fell in love with them but as time has gone by opinions have shifted and appreciation has grown for some of the original cds which are now believe it or not 34 years old each set has their highlights but none are perfect so for that reason i thought it'd be fun to compile what i think is the best sounding set of cds using just the three official sets obviously it's my personal choice and your selections may be different after all the only opinion that really matters is your own which we'd love to hear about in the comments i can remember how excited i was when i bought these four cds home that february evening in 1987. i couldn't wait to hear the inner workings of these albums the squeaks of the drum pedal the breath of the vocals and all of the other things had been promised by the media hype but to tell you the truth i was really disappointed back in 1987 record companies were not as diligent as replicating authenticity as they are today for a start they made a scoreboy error by transferring the mono tapes for the first four albums on a machine with a stereo head which made them sound worse than my original vinyl pressings so for that reason none of those first four 1987 cds is going in my set but i am staying in mono for please please me with the beatles and the hard day's night which i'm taking from the 2009 mono set there's a strong case for including a hard day's night in stereo but the 2009 remaster has something nasty happening on the opening chord of the title track which really spoils the whole album for me beatles for sale doesn't sound good in mono on any format so there's no choice but to go with the 2009 stereo help is another poor sounding mono mix so i've gone for the original 1965 stereo mix which was included in the mono set which sounds a bit odd it's not perfect by any means but it's way better than george martin's 1987 remix with its rather heavy-handed use of digital reverb i've never been a big fan of rubber soul in stereo so i'm going with the 2009 mono for my box if i was going to pick a stereo mix i'd go for the 1965 original which like help is included in the mono box the stereo mixer revolver is clumsy to begin with and the 1987 transfer did it no favors at all the 2009 remaster improves things a bit but poor eq choices especially on she said she said are amongst the reasons why i'm choosing the 2009 mono for my set i've said many times that i love sgt pepper in mono but the 1987 cd is a great sounding disc the vocals really float in the way they don't on the 2009 it's a very neutral clean sounding disc which you can really turn up and enjoy without hurting your ears the 1987 is again my first choice for magical mystery tour which just has the edge over the 2009 the simplicity and honesty of the 1987 cds really shines on these later albums and it's my choice again for the white album i feel the same about the 1987 yellow submarine cd2 which also goes in my box if you've been fortunate enough to have heard the 1983 black triangle abbey road cd from japan you'll know why i've chosen it over both the 1987 and 2009 discs its warmth and clarity is something the other two just don't have the nipping and tucking of clicks and noises in the 2009 set was really unnecessary the 1987 also takes the honors for let it be finally although not everything is great on them i'll take the original 1988 pass masters cds cds are now better value than they've ever been before but many shops are stopping selling them ironically to make room for more vinyl and that's something i never would have believed if you told me back in 1987. they're always going to sound better than mp3s or most other digital download files so i think now is a great time to build up your cd collection i hope you enjoyed this trip through the beatles on cd please do subscribe if you'd like me to continue on this journey or even consider joining the channel and becoming a member it really does make a big difference but that's all for this time i'll be back with more soon so i'll say bye for now and thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Parlogram

Views: 104,352

Keywords: beatles, john lennon, paul mccartney, george harrison, ringo starr, audiophile, 2014 mono box set, abbey road, hazel yarwood, parlophone, emi records, emi, beatles collectibes, parlogram auctions, CD, cd collecting, toshiba, 2009 remasters, our price records, yamaha, bhaskar menon, swindon, uden

Id: 88iqS1WskrE

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/dmmdoublem]

As someone who owns almost all of the discs profiled in this video (just missing the '87 and '88 versions of Abbey Road and Past Masters, respectively), I've been meaning to do a deep dive of my own sometime soon.

I was hoping that the 50th anniversary Giles Martin remixes would be included as well, but perhaps those will be for another video.