Audio Video News

The Beatles catalogue will be reissued on CD on September 9, the same day the band will make its videogame debut in Rock Band. Unfortunately, the announcement said nothing about when the Fab Four's masterworks will be legally issued for the first time as downloads.

The original Beatles CDs were released in 1987. They included some notable improvements—including the regularization of some of the older pingpong stereo mixes--but some purists objected to the revisions.

The 14 new CDs will be issued both separately and as two boxed sets, stereo and mono. They will include the first digital stereo releases of the first four albums, which were mono in the first-gen CDs. Each album will include vintage U.K. cover art, original and new liner notes, a photo booklet, and a short making-of documentary.

Is this really such an earthshaking event? CDs are by their nature limited to two channels, so these new discs will probably not be as revelatory as the surround mixes of Love on DVD-Audio and The Beatles Anthology DVD set in Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1. It is also unlikely that the latest stereo mixes will be as provocatively revisionist as Sir Paul's fabulous de-Spectorization of Let It Be as Let It Be Naked. It remains to be seen if these reissues will add to our understanding of the Liverpudlian rock icons.

Why no downloads, following so many years of rumors? According to The Guardian: "Negotiations between the Beatles, their labels, publishers and online distributors appear to have stalled, and these new reissues, among the year's most important releases, will not be available for purchase in downloadable form."

And how's the sound? According to Kevin Howlett, who wrote the liner notes, "you really can tell the difference. It's an extraordinary thing to sit there and hear LPs that you know so well and hear little nuances that you hadn't noticed before." Followers of the loudness wars, take note: "they sound louder." Uh-oh.

For more details see The New York Times.