Did a Capitol 2 Comparison

So far I've just done a careful Capitol 2 comparison of Please Please Me
(the song) and a less careful comparison of other tracks from the same
album, although it seems the comparison stands with the other tracks.

The new Capitol (to me) sounds better than either
the Ebbetts or the MFSL transfers to CD.

Most of the tracks match Ebbetts "Please Please Me" LP

I hate to say it, but the Ebetts is the weakest of the lot.
His redeeming quality is this: Whereas the other 'stereo' versions
place vocals on one channel, instruments instruments on the other, with
a reverb vocal thrown to the instrumental channel, Ebbetts splashes the
vocals across both channels, concealing most of the reverb.
Overall a more pleasing effect, but to my ears the instruments,
allthough not louder, sound like a 'hot'recording where at some point
the source tape was oversaturated.

The MFSL is actually a pretty good recording too.
However, it sounds like in addition to adding sufficient highs and lows,
they dropped the mids a bit, taking some of the life of the guitars in
the process.

The guitars, by far, sound better on the Capitol set. The bass is just
a
tad less pronounced, but the overall effect is far more pleasing.

Here are a couple of quirks which seem to belong to the masters used for
all 3 versions I compared: On the vocal track, whether done through
some
automatic processing or simply a hand on a gain control - I don't know,
but where the vocals are present, the instrumentals are present at a
very low volume, and between vocal parts, they are turned way up.
When this occurs you can tell at some point a tape was oversaturated,
and the result is very shrill and distorted. On the one hand, the
instrumental track isn't effected by this, but on the other, when
playing both channels as normal people do, you still notice that
during many of the vocal breaks, the sound quality of the
instrumentation suddenly becomes unpleasant.

I hope the information concerning the remastering project stating
that the first two UK albums will still be in mono is wrong.
Otherwise, this shortcoming can never really be addressed.

Another recording peculiarity I noticed with the track PPM,
which appears on all stereo versions, is that the harmonica
was overdubbed onto the vocal track, not the instrumental track.
So when you play the instrumental track, it's remeniscent of
the live and BBC versions of this song - the lead guitar part
just isn't great and you miss the harmonica.
Fortunately, unlike the live versions, you can put
the balance control where it belongs and bring it right back.

So - regarding Disc 1, anyway,
we have improvment over other versions of the same material.

We can't get mad at the engineers for Apple's decision
on what to release / what not to release: With what they
were given to do their job, they've given us the best so far.

PS - as expected, Love Me Do is still duophonic