Beatles breathe new life into hi-res audio 

23 November 2006 tbs.pm/213

Just as the war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc is ensuring that comparatively few people buy either HD disc format (leaving the way open to downloads superseding packaged media on video as well as audio), along comes something to make you think again.

That something is the new Beatles album – actually the soundtrack (or some of it) remixed by George Martin and his son Giles for Love, the latest Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas (“too big”, apparently, to present in the UK – hmmmph). It’s available in two forms: the CD on its own, or in a special Limited Edition ‘DoubleDisc’ set containing a CD and a music-only DVD containing full 5.1 surround mixes. At the time of writing the discs are #1 and #6 respectively in amazon.com’s sales ranking (2 and 7 in the UK, probably due to Classic FM’s absurdly good-value Most Wanted triple album).

The CD is excellent, but the DVD is the one to get. The dual-layer (about which more later) disc not only contains 81 minutes of surround music in DTS and Dolby Digital formats, but the same content in DVD-Audio format, the super-quality lossless hi-res system that supports 24-bit, 96kHz sampling surround audio (as is used in this case). The disc sounds utterly awesome. It is also set to surpass the sales of all previous DVD-Audio and SACD releases put together. And ironically, due to the fact that the managers of the Beatles estate still live in the distant past, the album will not be available for download in any form in the foreseeable future.

Unlike a previous relatively-big-selling hi-res surround disc (which most purchasers don’t even know they bought), James Guthrie’s SACD reworking of Dark Side of the Moon (a DVD-Audio version of Alan Parsons’ original 1974 quad mix, completed in a hurry but in my view superior to Guthrie’s somewhat lacklustre attempt, is circulating via the bit-torrent sites), anyone with a DVD player can hear the Beatles surround remixes, while those with DVD-Audio capability (quite a high proportion these days) can hear it in pristine 24/96 quality – just as it sounded at Abbey Road when the Martins mixed it.

The last Beatles 5.1 “remix” was the DVD soundtrack to Yellow Submarine which, in my view, was very contrived and unsatisfactory. Here, however, the Martins have been working since 2003 to create an astonishing sound collage that sweeps without a significant pause through 26 tracks that range from tracks like Help and I Want To Hold Your Hand that are virtually identical to the originals to astonishing “remixes” in the most modern dance-oriented sense of the word, where elements of several different songs are spun in, varispeeded, backwards and otherwise mutated to enhance a familiar recording. Things you never heard before – or hardly before – become clear while the additions merge seamlessly into their new homes.

In fact there is nearly no new recording on this album: just a new string arrangement by Martin Senior for While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Everything else comes from the original masters. The album is an object lesson in what can be done with classic multitrack originals where modern approaches actually enhance the tracks rather than ruining them. The Martins more than ‘get away with’ “painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa” as Giles puts it: instead they create something brilliant and both new and old at the same time.

There is one little authoring curiosity for DVD-Audio listeners: the length of the programme means that it is split across the two layers. This happens between tracks 21 and 22. Here we have one track (Back in the USSR) fading to black before the next (While My Guitar?) begins. But unfortunately the layer change actually occurs a few seconds early, before the last track on the layer has actually finished. Then there’s a pause of a couple of seconds (if you’re lucky) before it returns, completes the fade, and starts the next track. Oops. If you are unlucky (in the case of some Pioneer player owners for example) the pause is five or six seconds and you lose the end of the fade altogether. Oops again. [Update: this has now been fixed and a remastered version is now on sale.]

But don’t let this little niggle put you off. It’s a great album and highly recommended. Of course as far as hi-res audio discs are concerned, it has come far too late: both DVD-Audio and its competitor SACD have more or less died out. They died out because instead of one format, there were two: in other words one too many.

Today the same thing is happening with HD video discs. The two formats are suffering abysmal sales and it seems unlikely at present that either will garner the popular or movie industry support they need to succeed. If there were only one, it would be a different matter. It’s not too late, even now, guys – or you can cede the future to downloads.

A Transdiffusion Presentation

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Richard G Elen Contact More by me

A member of the Transdiffusion Broadcasting System
Liverpool, Friday 29 March 2024