The Beatles remastered catalogue on CD has arrived. I decided to start listening with two albums that were originally released back-to-back in 1965, Help! and Rubber Soul.

These two also are the only ones with three versions released over the various formats of the series. Both are available in stereo and can be purchased individually or as part of The Beatles Stereo box set. Those versions are the 1987 re-mixes by producer George Martin, the same mix as the original CD releases from the late ’80s but of course remastered.

The albums are also included in The Beatles in Mono box, each disc of which includes a mono mix, only available if you purchase this mono set, and the original 1965 stereo mixes remastered, the first time those mixes have been available on CD.

I also have the 1987 CDs of these titles. So, I was able to compare all four versions.

Why were these two albums remixed in 1987 by George Martin? Good question. He said back in 1987, after being completely overlooked by EMI on The Beatles first four albums of that remastering campaign, that these two albums along with Revolver sounded “woolly” and he wound up not changing anything but “hardening” the sound up.

He applied digital echo in the mixing process as opposed to the original echo chamber at Abbey Road from the ’60s and cut down a little of the background noise. But that really simplifies it. Check this link  for an interview with Martin in 1987 in which he gives a more detailed reasoning of the process. It can be quite illuminating.

In fact, the differences in the stereo mixes are quite subtle, but the differences in the new remastering applied are significant. But let’s start with the mono versions.

On audiophile boards and forums, many feel mono is the only way to listen to The Beatles. I grew up listening to the U.S. versions of the albums in stereo, for better or worse. I did start replacing my vinyl collection of these albums in the late ’60s with the English versions because they sounded better, had more songs on each album, were the way the albums were intended to be released by the group and I had a thing for those shiny, laminated British covers.

So, I’m familiar with the mono mixes of the very early albums, and I always felt those records, i.e. Please Please Me, With The Beatles, Beatles For Sale and Hard Day’s Night, made sense being mixed in mono, although some of the stereo mixes on For Sale and Hard Day’s Night suit the material just as well. Also consider that at that time the mono mixes were done first because that was the dominant format of the day, until the late ’60s, and if you are to believe some camps the stereo mixes were an afterthought. I don’t fully ascribe to that theory but I won’t argue about stereo over mono for these four.

When you get to Help! and Rubber Soul, it all gets a little trickier. The mono and stereo mixes all sound good but for different reasons.

The mono mixes, in fact, sound extraordinary. They are clear, open and full sounding, a major upgrade over the late ’80s stereo CDs. Mono has a certain drive to it as well. It’s punchy, it hits you right in the face, particularly on a car stereo. And the balance of instruments and voices is impeccable.

Set at exactly the same volume settings, the mono version jumps out of a pair of stereo speakers, while the stereo has to be pumped up a bit to match it. That’s because there is a 4 db boost when you run everything through both channels. So there is that basic sonic difference to take into consideration, but judging from just these two releases, if all the remastering team produced were mono versions of the albums through the White Album, the last to be mixed in mono, we should all be quite happy. But they didn’t of course.

It’s quite interesting to compare the three stereo versions. Some prefer the ’65 mixes, as they were originally intended to be heard you might say, but the remastered version of the ’87 mix sounds excellent. The subtleties of a track, for instance percussion of a tambourine or wood block are clearer in both stereo versions but the balance of the instruments varies greatly compared to the mono mix because most things are panned rather hard left or right.

It must be noted this effect is less obvious on Help!, which is a curiosity since it was recorded and released before Rubber Soul. All the vocals on Help! are dead center much as you would find on most stereo mixes today. I verified this with a handy mode rotary dial on my Apt Holman preamp. You can turn the dial one way to L+R, which gives you in effect a mono folddown of a stereo mix, or you can swing it the other way to L-R, which eliminates everything that is panned dead center. When you do the latter all the voices disappear. That means they are dead center in the mix.

In contrast, Rubber Soul vocals are on most tracks hard to one side. On Help! usually you will find bass and drums panned to one side of the stereo spectrum and acoustic and electric guitars to the other with a Harrison guitar overdub panned mostly to the side of the other guitars or mixed in with them.

There are exceptions to this, for instance You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, which has no drums but a tambourine panned to one side, and You Like Me Too Much and Tell Me What You See, which employ keyboards on one side of the mix.

The ’65 stereo mix of Help! sounds good as well. The panning is a little harder left-right, not much, and there is a bit less depth to the vocals with the use of the analog echo device. I prefer the ’87 remastered version marginally. Both are a big improvement over the earlier CDs of the ’87 mix. In comparison, that mix just kind of sits there with a lot less life compared with these remastered versions.

The most significant effect of all these remastered discs, though, is how the voices sound. The vocals are remarkable. As you listen you begin to realize, if you hadn’t already, this is the charm and magic of The Beatles, besides all that great songwriting. The voices are the most important and most pronounced item in all the mixes. They stand way, way above anything else. On these remastered CDs, the voices are huge, you know like the singer is right there in the room with you.

When you add to that the amazing blend The Beatles had, whether it was the two-part harmony of John and Paul or the three-part harmony when George is added in, there’s no mistaking the singular sound and power of the group.

As for Rubber Soul, the mono mix is definitely preferable of the three versions. I didn’t believe I would ever write that before listening to these discs, since I love the separation on songs such as Drive My Car, Norwegian Wood and You Won’t See Me. But it’s true. Mono is simply so much fuller and you don’t lose much in the precise detail of specific items because as mentioned the balance of each instrument and the voices is so well done.

Also, now that a typical stereo system is usually set up with speakers at least 10 feet apart if not more, songs such as Nowhere Man, Girl, I’m Looking Through You, If I Needed Someone and Wait sound kind of strange with all the voices panned to one side. The other tracks on the album don’t use the effect: Think For Yourself, The Word, What Goes On, Run For Your Life, In My Life to some extent and Michelle, which has Paul singing lead on one side and the background harmonies on the other.

Even so, the stereo versions are a major upgrade and may be preferable to many, since they are more readily available as individual releases. And, in fact, when I listen to the stereo CDs through my small M-Audio studio monitors, which are set up rather close together, the stereo mix sounds almost as kick-ass as the mono. The less distance between the speakers, the less of a hole in the middle of the stereo image.

Here’s a confession to a guilty pleasure. I have a system with front and back speakers on which I employ an early ’90s digital sound processor so I can simulate various room environments while listening in stereo. Take your Surround Sound 5.1 or 6.1 or 7.1, I’ll stick with my DSP. Well, when you pump the mono versions of these albums through all four speakers, the sound doesn’t simply fill the room it takes over total possession of the listening environment. It’s pretty much the same thing with the stereo mix. Don’t let any audiophiles know, but The Beatles never sounded so good.