Beatles ReMasters

With news today that Robert Zemekis is in talks to remake Yellow Submarine, I turn my attention to the upcoming Beatles remastered CDs.  The sound difference is supposed to be huge but I’ve only heard it in compressed format on the Beatles website so I’ll have to take their word for it.

The only difference between the box set and the individual CDs is the short documentaries on the CDs are collected into a DVD and they all fit into the big black box.  

I’m ticked off that the mono versions are in a separate box set.  With these things running at 30 minutes per, up until Pepper which is still under 40 min, there is no reason they can’t put stereo and mono on the same CD like the Capitol Albums.  Only the White Album and Past Masters would have to double up the number of discs because of their running times. 

So if you get the Stereo ($180 Amazon) and Mono ($240 Amazon) box sets they will set you back over $420, $350 (I calculated with the wrong price for the mono box when I originally wrote this, yikes).  And let’s see, I’ve purchased many of them more than once on vinyl, the 1987 CDs, the Capitol CDs and now they want me to buy the remasters in stereo and mono separately?  No thanks.  I’ll pick up Rubber Soul, Revolver, Abbey Road and maybe the White album.  Then I’ll maybe wait for the inevitable triple or quadruple dip where the stereo and monos will be packaged together.

The individual CDs look to be going for $12.99 for single and $16.99 for the doubles.  We’ll see what they are in brick and mortar shops come September 9th.