[a fool in paradise]

PS, there were 2 volumes of Beatle bootleg CDs (the ORIGINAL 2 volumes of Ultra Rare Trax) that exceeded the quality of the legit studio releases. And those came out in 1987.

So the bootlegger did NOT have 4 years to get the tapes to sound that way.

[Rocko]

Wow, that takes me back to the late 1980s. I still have those originals.

Since then, many hundreds of Beatles boots have been released....

Wonder if these remasters will suck or not...?

[BradyLS]

I’ve been wanting to pick up the entire Beatles catalog for a long time. In one set, if I could. This seems the right time and effort for what I want, at any rate.

But let’s say they are “milking” their catalog. Well, why not? There’s a new wave of Beatles fans with every generation. If they didn’t work on the recordings to get the best from them, folks would kvetch about why they just regurgitate the same old material without using the newest technololgy to get the most out of those old recordings.

If any group has the time and resources to remaster their material, more power to them. Just so long as the remasters are true to the recordings that made them popular in the first place. It would suck, for example, to have some new guitar whiz anonymously re-record a guitar lick, the studios then try to hide it, and have a die-hard fan catch it.

...But for the Ultra Rare Trax bootleg: how did they get the bootleg tracks to sound better than the label released ones? How do they determine the standard for “better?”