The Beatles Stereo Remasters: USB Edition

The Beatles are one of the few bands who have never made their music available to be bought as mp3 downloads on AmazonMP3 or iTunes. In fact, at this point I don’t know if there are any other major bands who have not done so.

When the announcement was made that The Beatles music was going to come out in mp3 format most people probably assumed that this meant that their music was going to be available but that’s not the case, instead The Beatles USB will contain The Beatles entire’60s stereo catalog.

The Beatles USB memory stick contains The Beatles Stereo Box Set except clearly in a much different format than the 17 discs included in the stereo box set. This Beatles USB stick that you can hold in the palm of your hand includes all of the same music and all of the same visual elements as the much larger box set.

In actuality it contains all of the Beatles stereo remasters in the box set two times because it has both 320kbps mp3s and 24bit FLACs. I’m certain you have experience with mp3s (and 320 mp3s are the highest quality that mp3s come in) but what about those FLAC, what what is FLAC? Essentially these FLAC files are “lossless” which means there is no loss in sound quality like there is with mp3s. And since they are actually 24bit instead of the 16bit files that are included on CD, they are of higher quality than CD.

What this means is that The Beatles USB memory stick now contains the best quality versions of The Beatles remasters! That might change if there is a DVD or Blu-Ray release in the works but at the moment this is the holy grail for audiophiles as far as The Beatles remasters.

What about the original mono mixes? Sadly these are not included on this USB memory stick. You still have to get The Beatles in Mono remastered box set to hear the mono mixes.

Harold Joshua Quesenberry recommends reading this Beatles Blog for lots of cool Beatles trivia and for the latest on The Beatles Remastered Box Sets.