Thursday, February 08, 2007

Search for the Holy Grail



After searching the web for almost 2 months I was finally able to locate a Mono copy of the Beatles Sgt.Peppers album and the Mono version of the Beatles White Album. To the average person who hasn't been a Beatles freak as I have for almost 40 years, these albums are like gold when compared to the stereo versions.

What most people aren't aware of is that the Beatles themselves took 3 weeks to do the final mixing and mastering on Sgt.Peppers, where as it took George Martin only 3 days to do it for the stereo version. Even though most people like to listen to music in stereo, to a music connoisseur, the Mono albums have a richer, more textured sound; the stereo versions sound almost watered down.I was only able to find an MP3 version of Sgt.Peppers, but it is recorded at 192kbps, which is above the decent level of songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store where music is at 128kbps when purchased.I found the Peppers album on a site of Blogger.com, but I don't recall the address (sorry!) I know the album is authentic because "She's Leaving Home" is 10 seconds shorter than the stereo version and the key of the song is 1/2 a note higher than the stereo. Lucy In The Sky choruses have an almost swirling effect to them ( no, I wasn't stoned when I listened to the album) & at the end of the Sgt.Peppers reprise, Paul is screaming something totally different just before "A Day In The Life".

With the White Album I found it on a "torrent" site ( I think it was "Demonoid Torrents") that gave me the songs in the .FLAC mode (stands for Free Lossless Audio Codex) which is close to the best download mode possible. I then with software converted the songs into .AIFF mode, which is the mode regular music CD's are sold as. If Apple's iTunes was able to play FLAC songs I would have left it that way. Again, all of the differences I had read about were present on this version. The "torrent" was from a Japanese copy of the album, which was one of the countries besides the UK who had access to the Mono version. No Mono albums were ever issued to the US.Again, this version of the White Album had a richer, better sound to it; some cuts had extra harmonies added, other tracks had an extra guitar added & the Beatles themselves also mixed and mastered this version of the album.

If you aren't an absolute Beatles nut, it probably not worth the time & energy to look for these mono versions. But if you're like me, someone who is a Beatles connoisseur these versions are
absolute necessities.Even when I listen to them on my iPod, the fact that they aren't stereo doesn't
subtract from the quality of the listening experience. I don't know many Beatle freaks, so if there
are anyone out there who has a story to share or maybe even something we can swap, I would definately welcome an email or a chat on Yahoo Messenger. My name is John and my email address
is: jlj90125@optonline.net and my Yahoo Messenger handle is jak4357.

Posted by John Kish at 4:10 PM 0 comments

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