The Beatles - With The Beatles: Remixed [Prof. Stoned 2022]
16bit/44.1kHz CD Quality FLAC
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01. It Won't Be Long
02. All I've Got To Do
03. All My Loving
04. Don't Bother Me
05. Little Child
06. Till There Was You
07. Please Mister Postman
08. Roll Over Beethoven
09. Hold Me Tight
10. You Really Got A Hold On Me
11. I Wanna Be Your Man
12. Devil In Her Heart
13. Not A Second Time
14. Money
Bonus:
15. She Loves You
16. I'll Get You
17. I Want To Hold Your Hand
18. This Boy
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Total time: 42m19s
Stereo Mixes & Mastering: Prof. Stoned (June 2022)
v1.0: 24-06-2022
v1.1: 07-07-2022 (slight changes made to vocal balance on Tr. 01-02, all other files identical)
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Original credits:
John Lennon – lead, harmony and backing vocals; rhythm and acoustic guitars; handclaps; harmonica on "Little Child"; nylon-string acoustic guitar on "Till There Was You"; tambourine on "Don't Bother Me"
Paul McCartney – lead, harmony and backing vocals; bass guitar and handclaps; piano on "Little Child", claves on "Don't Bother Me"
George Harrison – lead, harmony and backing vocals; lead and acoustic guitars; handclaps; nylon-string acoustic guitar on "Till There Was You"
Ringo Starr – drums, tambourine, maracas, handclaps; lead vocals on "I Wanna Be Your Man", Arabian loose-skin bongo on "Till There Was You" and "Don't Bother Me"
George Martin – arrangement, production and mixing; organ on "I Wanna Be Your Man", piano on "You Really Got a Hold on Me", "Not a Second Time" and "Money"
Norman Smith – engineering and mixing
Tony Barrow - Linernotes
Robert Freeman – cover photograph
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Tech. note:
All tracks have been derived from the stereo mixes (when available) by spectral extraction. The original stereo mixes generally have the backing track panned hard left and the vocal track panned hard right, like the 'Please Please Me' album. But unlike PPM, most vocals on 'With The Beatles' were overdubbed afterwards which means there is not much bleed-through from the instruments on the vocal track, making it more challenging to produce a modern stereo image with vocals, drums and bass centered. Harrison's guitar appears on the right channel, and on about half the tracks there are backing vocals on the left channel this time. For the tracks that only exist in mono*, a more primitive stereo image had to be made: vocals, bass [center]; drums [left]; guitars, other [right].
Spectral extraction does not always yield perfectly consistent results by default; further cleaning and correction of the extracted mono tracks is essential to producing a realistic and steady stereo image. Furthermore, the extracted elements are not comparable to actual multi-tracks. The details and frequencies from an instrument or vocal that were buried within a recording cannot be retrieved and there are limitations to how far one can go with rebalancing, separating and manipulating of the tracks, before unwanted sonic artifacts start to show.
I have brought up the bass guitar a bit more in the mix where possible but sadly the software couldn't extract a complete bass channel from every song, due to being mixed too far back in the original, in which case I had to resort to a few other tricks to get the best possible low-end. However, 'Roll Over Beethoven' benefits greatly from having the bass guitar turned up and this is a good example why Spectral Extraction can have an advantage over traditional mastering. Most of the time spent working on this was trying the get the vocals to sound right in stereo (but again, not every recording was suitable for that).
The original mono master of 'With The Beatles' is probably a very good early example of what people nowadays call the 'loudness war'. It accentuates the upper midrange heavily and does not have much low-end. It was made to blast out of small radio speakers and conquer the world. EMI tried to correct this on later reissues but it mostly results in a muddy sound. By comparison, the stereo master has much better fidelity and depth but suffers from the extreme separation between backing track and vocals. This version seeks to have the best of both. Considering that the original stereo mix is pretty much equal to the original session twin-track tape, there are not a lot of options one has to 'remix' this material. But the result has turned out better than I initially thought it would be. Hope you like it.
* which would be Tr. 15-16
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Sources: the 2009 USB files (Tr. 01-14,16-18) & Compact Disc EP. Collection 1992 (Tr. 15).
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I have used the following digital studio gear and monitoring in the making of this:
- DeMix Pro 3.0.1
- Cubase
- Universal Audio UAD-2 Satellite Quad-Core (incl. various extra plugins I purchased over the years)
- PMC IB2s & iLoud Micro monitors
- Adobe Audition
