Beatles

As expected, Rubber Soul, sourced from George Martin's 1987 16 bit, 44.1k remix sounds like a CD. Why should it sound like anything else? That's from what it was essentially mastered.

The sound is flattened against the speakers, hard, two-dimensional and generally hash on top, yet it does have a few good qualities as CDs often do: there's good clarity and detail on some instruments. The strings are dreadful and the voices not far behind. The overall sound is dry and decay is unnaturally fast and falls into dead zone.

My copy had visible "string of pearls" non-fill and this time it was audible in a few spots as a "tearing" sound. The cover art is very, very close to the original so that's a plus.

If your system is dark and soft, this one might be a welcome wake-up call, because despite the negative hashy qualities, the EQ is pretty good, but the stage will be flat as a pancake.

It's not my pleasure to be so negative but since I have a clean UK original (signed for me by George Martin!) I'll not be playing this one again. Yes, there are some panning mistakes and whatever else Martin "cleaned up" but really, sometimes it's best to leave well-enough (and this album was well-enough! alone.

If you've got the box, you're stuck with this one. Find a good original UK but still, don't expect a sonic miracle. This was a decent sounding record but not a sonic spectacular, though it has some good sounding tracks. But at least the original exhibits proper instrumental textures.

If you're buying individual albums from the box, this one is a must to avoid! A really bad judgement call by bean counters. They should have used the original mix that would at least have been transferred at 24 bit resolution. Don't blame Sean Magee, please. It was not his decision.