The Beatles on Spotify

Try Tidal then! Believe me the quality is such that I have only been waiting about 50 years to have the opportunity to treat my ears to the Beatles as they should gave been delivered. No dispute about the merits of the hardware it can be delivered through, but what I have provided an aural treat from the quality of the recorded media delivered through Tidal. 

Agree, the difference is palpable. I have been listening  to Tidal(HF) on a trial period and Spotify,  which i subscribe to,   and I realise now what the fuss is all about. It is really that good. Not sure it warrants the monthly fee they ask for though.

Just got an email circular from Naim stating the Beatles are now available in hi-definition (sic) to stream from Tidal.. surely some mistake?, I can only get standard lossless CD definition on my NDX ..

Simon

I just bit the bullet on spotify premium - introductory offer £0.99 first theee months. Will try streaming the fab four (who are holy in my book) but seriously it will get anywhere near the Mono box set...

Yawwwwwwnnnnnnnn!!!!!

As if we haven't had The Beatles before.  Some of us are old enought to have bought these on black vinyl when they first came out.  Me for one.  Oh, and then on cartridge (younger readers can look it up), cassette, and CD.  They've had their money out of me many tiomes over

AFAIK, SQ can be no better in Tidal than on CD.  I don't think they're available on HD there.  So what's the fuss, other than the usual Tidal hype?

JSH, not everyone still uses those olden days music delivery methods.  For those who are of a more youthful or modern persausion this could be good news.  Personally I can take or leave them and I'll play my Flac if I do want to listen but then again I'm a week or two of fifty and stuck in my ways.

Mike-B posted:

The Beatles ( sic ....  per Simon ) have never released anything in HD 

We need to get real on this,  Apple, Tidal, Spotify,  or whoever's  marketing hype does not make anything HD.

The USB version was marketed as 24bit.

My first Beatles anything was Rubber Soul (mono) Xmas Day 1965. My most prolific purchase has been, like many others, The White Album - original mono album in 1968, then a stereo version, then a couple of CD versions, the 2009 remastered version and of course what Spotify and Tidal are offering.

I took the 2009 remastered set and copied it to my NAS using dbpoweramp in FLAC. In terms of reproduction, what Tidal offers, to my very old ears, is at least as good as the 2009 copies on NAS. I have only dabbled with a couple of albums, but I thought there were at least a few tracks available in mono somewhere on Tidal. Also, as someone else pointed out, I never assumed they would be any higher than CD quality, which appears to be what we have got. 

Apart from never seeing them live, I somehow also missed out on the chance of at least seeing if not touching the original masters which were kept in the same vault as the backup tapes of a certain music company I did some work for. Might have been the backup regime changed before I did the contract work, but my mate, the IT Director, certainly encountered them. 

A Very Merry Xmas - and enjoy whoever on whatever you are listening! 

Andarkian,

Nice post. As a Beatles fan I'd be interested to hear about the relative storage/security measures of the Beatles' masters versus others, if you're at liberty to say.

As far as I remember, they were stored in central London, nowhere near Abbey Road, in a safe in what could be termed a nuclear bomb shelter. 

I got an email from Naim saying:

"For the first time ever, one of the most popular and influential bands of all time is now available to stream in hi-definition on TIDAL"

High definition? Really?  Is someone in the marketing department drunk or are we witnessing the first day of a new technical epoch?

Have these STANDARD QUALITY albums been remastered again or are the streaming providers using hitherto available versions?

I got the Bluray 3 disc for Christmas which included a newly remastered 1 album on cd. I played the cd on my NU2 and I think all the tracks sound better imo. There was better seperation punch and just more detail on tap. Can't believe they've improved these already great remasters but they definately sounded better. I played my 'old' remaster of the same album to confirm my findings. The Bluray sound is superb too being 24/96 I believe. I had the 24/44:1  USB version and found some improvements in SQ like more punch and smoothness but nothing amazing I have to say. 

We need Bluray 24/96 versions of all the albums? 

Yes indeed...

We sure do. Or downloads. It's an expensive package for load of stuff I don't want, like Steve Hackett's recently released retrospective. I hope the 24bit stuff emerges in its own right.

It would be good to find out how the latest remaster of the '1' album was done. After all the 2009 remasters were some some time ago now and as we all know technology moves on and whilst I'm always sceptical regarding the bit rate thing I'm convinced the 2015 remaster is superb. 

Like a lot of of us on here we love the Beatles and don't mind paying out again (if it's worth it) to enjoy their music with warts and all over again. 

I live near Liverpool and it's great to hear stories about the Fabs when they toured around the City from my own relatives and friends who were actually there going to see them play. I suppose I'm a bit biased and don't mind being a bit ripped off by the greatest band ever..