Beatles "Live at the Hollywood Bowl" to finally be released on CD!

[EMB]

With today's technology the sound quality and separation, at the very least, should be an improvement over what we got in 1977, though I do wish they'd simply replicated the '77 album with bonus tracks. Regardless, should be an interesting--if nonetheless still flawed--listen. The excitement of those concerts was beyond belief, and the only thing that would be better would be a video edition cobbled together from whatever sources there are.

ED

 

[alk3997]

BTW, it turns out that my above post was my 500th here. I know something was supposed to happen. Oh, yes, there it is...another gray hair. :

Andy

 

[ChristopherLees]

there are videos of the 64 hollywood bowl concert...some of which was played in great quality on anthology series...and on boot form ive seen the whole show...from 2 different camera sources

 

[Plan9]

With the use of equalizers and analog noise reducers to isolate the instruments, the original 3-tracks were transferred to 24-track tape in 1976/1977.

Just to satisfying the anal retentive in me (sorry): the original 3-track tapes were transfered to a 16-track in 1976.

This is also the first official Beatles release I'm aware of where demix techniques for mono tracks, to create new recording stems, were used. The same type of technology was used to help clean-up the 2009 remastered original albums.

The demix technique on mono tracks was used for the RockBand game, which is an official release.

No "demixing" was used on the 2009 remasters that I'm aware of. However, it might have been used on last year's remixed 1 compilation.

 

[alk3997]

Just to satisfying the anal retentive in me (sorry): the original 3-track tapes were transfered to a 16-track in 1976.

I'm glad someone else looked, too. That was exactly what I initially wrote. Then I went to Lewisohn, "The Beatles Recording Sessions" page 48, which has a quote from George Martin,

"...And it was very difficult to find a three-track machine that worked. Eventually we found an old one which we prevented from overheating by having a vacuum cleaner to reverse, blowing cool air onto it. The first thing Geoff (Emerick) and I did was transfer the original tape onto 24-track and worked from there."

Of course that was a 10+ year old memory at that time, but that was the quote I went by. I didn't go back and look at the original liner notes (I should have). Do they say 16-track?

The demix technique on mono tracks was used for the RockBand game, which is an official release.

No "demixing" was used on the 2009 remasters that I'm aware of. However, it might have been used on last year's remixed 1 compilation.

Right. The Beatles Rock Band game used Cedar Retouch to separate the instruments. The results, which were good enough for a game, were less than professional quality (IMHO). It always sounded to me like they took whatever they got out of Retouch and said, "good enough", rather than treating that as step one.

What I based my comment on, rightly or wrongly, was that Cedar Retouch is credited for the remasters as a touch-up tool.

http://www.prismsound.com/music_recording/studio_news.php?story=0179

So, I believe forensic audio software was used but not to separate instruments. I believe Beatles 1/1+ probably used forensic audio software, particularly the early live tracks, but it's really hard to tell with the way the 5.1-channel mix was done as extended stereo and I haven't found any credits that indicate the software was used. I think I saw a Giles Martin quote that said he used forensic audio software but it wasn't quite good enough for anything but bass instruments (I think that was the quote).

It will be interesting to see which software was used for the separations on the Live album. At least they already credited the engineer this time.

Thanks for the great clarifications/corrections!

Andy

 

[Plan9]

I'm glad someone else looked, too. That was exactly what I initially wrote. Then I went to Lewisohn, "The Beatles Recording Sessions" page 48, which has a quote from George Martin,

"...And it was very difficult to find a three-track machine that worked. Eventually we found an old one which we prevented from overheating by having a vacuum cleaner to reverse, blowing cool air onto it. The first thing Geoff (Emerick) and I did was transfer the original tape onto 24-track and worked from there."

Of course that was a 10+ year old memory at that time, but that was the quote I went by. I didn't go back and look at the original liner notes (I should have). Do they say 16-track?



Right. The Beatles Rock Band game used Cedar Retouch to separate the instruments. The results, which were good enough for a game, were less than professional quality (IMHO). It always sounded to me like they took whatever they got out of Retouch and said, "good enough", rather than treating that as step one.

What I based my comment on, rightly or wrongly, was that Cedar Retouch is credited for the remasters as a touch-up tool.

http://www.prismsound.com/music_recording/studio_news.php?story=0179

So, I believe forensic audio software was used but not to separate instruments. I believe Beatles 1/1+ probably used forensic audio software, particularly the early live tracks, but it's really hard to tell with the way the 5.1-channel mix was done as extended stereo and I haven't found any credits that indicate the software was used. I think I saw a Giles Martin quote that said he used forensic audio software but it wasn't quite good enough for anything but bass instruments (I think that was the quote).

It will be interesting to see which software was used for the separations on the Live album. At least they already credited the engineer this time.

Thanks for the great clarifications/corrections!

Andy

You know what, I'm not so sure anymore about the 24-track. I was going from memory as well. It's just that 24 tracks seemed like an obscene amount of tracks to unfold a 3-track recording, but it would be what they had on hand at the time.

About the 2009 remasters, all that Cedar was used for was removing what they called extraneous noises (electrical, bad edits, and, sadly, sometimes even performance noises) and de-noising the fade-outs. It was used on less than 5 minutes of the entire catalog.

 

[ar surround]

After being disappointed with the sound of the CD in the recent The Beatles 1+ package, I am hesitant to pre-order any Beatles product until the reviews come in. Hopefully, this will be a pleasant surprise as I can see that many of you are very excited about this release. I've never heard it.

 

[alk3997]

You know what, I'm not so sure anymore about the 24-track. I was going from memory as well. It's just that 24 tracks seemed like an obscene amount of tracks to unfold a 3-track recording, but it would be what they had on hand at the time.

About the 2009 remasters, all that Cedar was used for was removing what they called extraneous noises (electrical, bad edits, and, sadly, sometimes even performance noises) and de-noising the fade-outs. It was used on less than 5 minutes of the entire catalog.

Here's my educated guess trying to "channel" the old analog days...The EMI engineers transferred the original 3-track stems (most likely from a Capitol generated safety copy) to 24-tracks so they would have plenty of room to try different ways of isolating the instruments and voices. I remember how difficult it was to sync-up tracks between different analog tapes without Pro Tools.

So, instead they used the recorder's internal bouncing feature to send each original stem with different EQ, analog compression and other analog processing into another track of the 24-track multitrack. It would have given them 7 tracks to play with for each original stem. This way they could easily A-to-B compare different attempts. Once they used up all of the multitrack they would have had to use a second tape, whereas with 24-tracks they just needed to use internal bounces. A 16-track tape would have given them "just" 4-5 tracks to play with for each original stem.

Just a guess...

Andy

 

[alk3997]

After being disappointed with the sound of the CD in the recent The Beatles 1+ package, I am hesitant to pre-order any Beatles product until the reviews come in. Hopefully, this will be a pleasant surprise as I can see that many of you are very excited about this release. I've never heard it.

YouTube to the rescue. I'm assuming the audio will be slightly better than this although it sounds like some processing was already used in this version.

[video=youtube;q2SD7teI8vQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2SD7teI8vQ[/video]

 

[Plan9]

Here's my educated guess trying to "channel" the old analog days...The EMI engineers transferred the original 3-track stems (most likely from a Capitol generated safety copy) to 24-tracks so they would have plenty of room to try different ways of isolating the instruments and voices. I remember how difficult it was to sync-up tracks between different analog tapes without Pro Tools.

So, instead they used the recorder's internal bouncing feature to send each original stem with different EQ, analog compression and other analog processing into another track of the 24-track multitrack. It would have given them 7 tracks to play with for each original stem. This way they could easily A-to-B compare different attempts. Once they used up all of the multitrack they would have had to use a second tape, whereas with 24-tracks they just needed to use internal bounces. A 16-track tape would have given them "just" 4-5 tracks to play with for each original stem.

Just a guess...

Andy

That's how I imagined they did it. That plus adding audience screams on 1 or 2 tracks for added ambiance.

 

[alk3997]

Your audience ambiance comment caused me to remember a good Hollywood Bowl recording trivia answer.

The Hollywood Bowl recordings first use on an LP was on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. There is about a 1 second snippet of Hollywood Bowl audience screams during the crossfade between the Sgt. Pepper's title track and With a Little Help From My Friends. It's where the audience suddenly gets louder just before the Billy Shears vocals.

Since we were in an analog world then, the audience screams appear at slightly different times between the mono Sgt. Pepper's album and the stereo Sgt. Pepper's album. On the stereo album, the screams are in true stereo for that second or so. The other sound effects which are mono with ADT'd stereo. That also shows that the 1 second of Hollywood Bowl screams were added at the mixing stage rather than being part of the original multitrack recording, which the other effects are.

Andy