Capitol to Release First Four US Release Beatle Albums (1 Viewer)

[Marvin]

I'm still undecided as to ordering this set. But seeing that Amazon is now down to $55.99 with free shipping for the set, that would make it an almost reasonable $50.39 with a "share the love" discount. I've started a thread for this set at DVD Talk's STL section. If it's ok to do that here, if anyone orders this, please STL me at [email protected]

 

[Brian L]

Time to wake up this thread...

The Box was released today, and the buzz over at Hoffman's is almost universally positive. FWIW, if those folks, who tend to be both uber-Beatles fanatics and hyper-picky about remastering work are OK with this, its worth a listen.

I picked it up at lunch, and was only able to listen to the first 1/2 dozen tracks of Meet the Beatles (in stereo). So far, so good.

Very smooth highs, and a nice sound the the bottom end. I look forward to the end of the day do I can listen to more of the set.

OK you Beatles fanatics....DISCUSS!

BGL

EDIT: Here is a link to the Hoffman thread:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/sh...ad.php?t=42934

 

[KrisM]

Did any Canadians Pick this up? I'm curious if it is released here yet and pricing. My Beatles collection is pretty complete except the earlier years. I'm leaning towards buying this.

Regards
KrisM

 

[Keith Paynter]

Paid $65 + txs here in Regina at A&B Sound.

Believe it or not, the CD's are quite faithful to the original Capitol tapes. Some contemporary work was done to them, mostly to warm up the sterility of digital CD audio, but not to noticibly affect your memory of these albums.

Oddly enough, I never really owned any U.S. Capitol albums from that period until after I had bought/heard the British originals when I was collecting their stuff in the early 80's (most rabidly after Lennon's death), mostly being interested in hearing audio differences between mono and stereo versions of the British albums. Even the earliest stuff was still available in Canada in longer form (Twist And Shout, Long Tall Sally and Beatlemania, all unchanged from dupes of the British masters - Canada got to hear the Beatles on Capitol first before the States, including the 'Ringo'-ed Love Me Do), so I had those instead - amazing they were still in print in Canada for some 20 years.

When the Canadian market was being flooded with Japanese imports of the U.S. albums on the Odeon label, I snapped up as many as I could and started taking note of what Capitol did to 'Americanize' the product. I still find the U.S. doctoring rather annoying yet novel, and having all these albums available in both mono and stereo sure beats having to buy the bootlegs these were designed to curtail, or spending a fortune in collector's shops or on-line auctions trying to find pristine vinyl from the period.

My biggest hope is that, now that the dust has settled and it would be historically accurate to do so, Capitol would consider for future release making the 'Butcher Cover' Y&T album part of the package, and using the original fake stereo versions as opposed to the re-issued full stereo edition.

 

[KrisM]

I bought this shortly after my last post and haven't really had a serious listen yet. I did get through most of the stereo tracks last night(while doing other things). They do sound better than I expected, although the reverb on some tracks is just too much.
The packaging is terrible, really flimsy. The artwork on the CD sleeves is quite blurry too.
I paid $69.99CDN at HMV. I don't normally buy there because they are always the most expensive, but BestBuy and Futureshop didn't have them in stock. They didn't even know what I was talking about. I normally buy at A&B Sound, but they are a 40 minute round trip from my house, and I didn't feel like driving.
Here's hoping this will kick Apple in the ass to get the proper CDs, and/or DVDA/SACDS out.

Regards
KrisM

 

[Philip Hamm]

Worst box set packaging I've ever seen. Terrible! I need to make jewel boxes. Where's that scanner.....

Oh, yeah. Sounds GREAT!

 

[Matt Butler]

Im on the fence simply because I have the original vinyls from the 60s. (My mom gave them to me)

How do they compare?

 

[AnthonyC]

There are actually two cases for this. I saw the long box at Best Buy, but I saw (and purchased) a smaller sized set at Target. Haven't opened it yet.

 

[Bryan Ri]

Wow, these sound fantastic. Great job by Capital

 

[Marty M]

Our local Target has the smaller sized set for $49.99 and BB has the long box for $59.99. Is there any I would be missing if I got the smaller sized boxed set?

 

[AnthonyC]

No.

 

[Larry Geller]

Just the opposite. If you get the long box, you don't get the slipcase that holds the whole thing together, keeps the discs from falling out, and has something on the side (photos of the LP covers), so you can tell what it is when you file it in your collection. Also, the printing on the mini-LP sleeves seems to be much less blurry on the cube version. Avoid the long box like the plague!