Please Please Me: Remixed (Prof. Stoned, v1.2)

The Beatles - Please Please Me: Remixed [Prof. Stoned 2022]
16bit/44.1kHz CD Quality FLAC

01. I Saw Her Standing There
02. Misery
03. Anna (Go to Him)
04. Chains
05. Boys
06. Ask Me Why
07. Please Please Me
08. Love Me Do
09. P.S. I Love You
10. Baby It's You
11. Do You Want to Know a Secret
12. A Taste of Honey
13. There's a Place
14. Twist and Shout

Bonus:
15. How Do You Do It
16. From Me To You
17. Thank You Girl
18. One After 909
19. Love Me Do (alt. take from single)
20. Please Please Me (alt. take from single & mono LP)

Total time: 45m56s

Stereo Mixes & Mastering: Prof. Stoned (May 2022)

v1.0: 29-05-2022
v1.1: 30-05-2022 (Tr. 15,18,19 newly done from higher quality sources)
v1.2: 11-06-2022 (remedied a little deviation of vocals on Tr 1 that bugged me)

Cover picture restored by Clayton Hickman

Thx to JWB & lukpac

Original credits:

* George Harrison – harmony and background vocals; lead and acoustic guitars; lead vocals on Tr. 04,11
* John Lennon – lead, harmony and background vocals; rhythm and acoustic guitars; harmonica
* Paul McCartney – lead, harmony and background vocals; bass guitar
* Ringo Starr – drums, tambourine, maracas and lead vocals on Tr. 05

* George Martin – additional arrangements, producer and mixer; piano on Tr. 02 and celesta on Tr. 10
* Norman Smith – engineer and mixer
* Andy White – drums on Tr. 08-09

* Angus McBean - Photography
* Tony Barrow - Linernotes

Tech. note:

All tracks have been derived from the stereo mixes (when available) by spectral extraction. The original stereo mixes have the backing track (and some fold back echo from the vocals) panned hard left and the vocal track panned hard right. Since all the songs were recorded live, the vocal channel has noticeable bleed-through from the room. Nothing was mixed in the center. This setup allows for the extraction of two pairs of 5 mono channels with clear separation from each other: vocal, bass, guitar, drums and other (usually a mixture of harmonica, guitar, piano, etc.). The drums, guitar and bass mono channels that come from the backing track are of course much more useful than the ones that come from the original right channel but everything was used.

I have made the following stereo image: drums (dry), vocals (dry), bass (dry) [center]; guitars (dry + bleed), other, drums (bleed) & vocal echo [left and right]. Harrison's guitar appears mostly on the right channel, Lennon's parts -when audible- are on the left. The separation of the guitar parts was only possible because they were in stereo on the original recording. I did not add any reverb or echo of my own, everything was already there. For the tracks that only exist in mono*, a more primitive stereo image had to be made: vocals, bass [center]; drums [left]; guitars, other [right].

I was able to correct the off-sync harmonica on the stereo version of Please Please Me. As hardcore fans will know, the stereo and mono versions are different takes and it is believed the stereo take was used by error because the session paperwork had been missing by Feb. 1963. The harmonica dub from the mono version existed on separate tape and was manually synced along to the stereo mix. While working on this track, I also fixed a guitar mistake at 1:17 because it was now much more obvious than before (and because I could).

Spectral extraction does not always yield perfectly consistent results; further cleaning and correction of the extracted mono tracks is essential to producing a realistic and steady stereo image. Furthermore, the extracted elements are not comparable to actual multi-tracks. The details and frequencies from an instrument or vocal that were buried within a recording cannot be retrieved and there are limitations to how far one can go with rebalancing, separating and manipulating of the tracks, before unwanted sonic artifacts start to show.

Having said that, these recordings produced excellent results due to having been recorded/mixed very well in the first place. The overall advantage of this new version is not just a better stereo image but also having the elements in the recording re-balanced in such a way that was not possible before. The drums and bass sound much better together here with added depth and much less bleed from the vocal mics. The murky closed-in sound of the original mono mix is gone and so is the disorienting dual-mono sound of the original stereo version. What remains is a more detailed picture of how splendidly Norman Smith recorded this 13-hour session to just two measly mono tracks.

For the record, the reason I have used a non-EMI sources for a few tracks is because these are higher quality than what EMI has released.

Enjoy!

* which would be Tr. 08,09,15,19,20

Sources: the 2009 USB files (Tr. 01-14,16,17), Roger Scott's 'Master to VHS' sources (Tr. 15,18), Lukpac's vinylrip 2022 (Tr. 19) & the 2009 Mono Masters (Tr. 20).

I have used the following digital studio gear and monitoring in the making of this:

- DeMix Pro 3.0.1
- Cubase
- Universal Audio UAD-2 Satellite Quad-Core (incl. various extra plugins I purchased over the years)
- PMC IB2s & iLoud Micro monitors
- Adobe Audition