The Long Wait For Remastered Beatles CDs Is Finally Over

When The Beatles albums were originally released on CD for the first time (in the 1980s) the technology was very new and the mastering job done then is now considered quite subpar (and has been for quite some time.) 

Beatles fans have been waiting a long time for Beatles albums to be remastered for CD again and now it's finally happening after more than 20 years. The official release date is September 9th, 2009.

All 13 of The Beatles original UK albums are being remastered for stereo release. Along with those 13 albums (from Please Please Me through Let It Be) the Past Masters collection is also being remastered.

What's Past Masters? It's a collection of all of the songs released by The Beatles in the 1960s that were never included on one of their albums. This includes huge hit songs like "Hey Jude" and the fast version of "Revolution" which were released as singles but not on any of their 13 official studio albums.

Stereo Box Set

The stereo remastered versions of these 13 studio albums along with the Past Masters CD are all included in the stereo box set. There's also a lot of extra goodies included in this box set such as a DVD which includes a short documentary on the making of each album.

Mono Box Set

Up until about 1968, mono was the standard. This means that the stereo mixes done up until this time were mostly an afterthought. It was actually the mono versions of these albums that The Beatles and George Martin spent the most time trying to get perfect and it's because of this that to a lot of Beatles purists the mono versions are the "real" versions of these albums (up through The White Album which was the last one mixed in mono.)

For the first time these original mono mixes are being released on CD (previously they were only available on original vinyl!) But these mono versions of the albums are not available for individual sale, but only as a part of the mono box set which includes all 10 of The Beatles studio albums that were originally mixed in mono (that means no Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, or Let It Be.) It also includes a CD called Mono Masters which is like the corresponding Past Masters except (obviously) in mono. Most of the songs on Past Masters were originally mixed in mono, so this makes sense.

09/09/09

The remastered CDs are not being released until 09/09/09 (a reference to the repeating "number nine" on "Revolution #9") but they can be pre-ordered online now. Pre-ordering may be particularly advised with the mono box set because it appears that only 10,000 copies are being made (although it's possible this is a miscommunication or some extra will be added later when they sell out.)