I love how people just keep throwing around lines like what The Beatles "wanted" or "wished" as if they know for certain.

If The Beatles truly felt that the mono recordings are the superior versions, then why do they continue releasing the stereo versions as the main releases?

Money. I wouldn't say the Beatles "vision" is in the mono but they were hands-on with the mono mixing, playing the music and then laying it down. Until Yellow Submarine, the stereo mixes were done in three or four days, without input from the Beatles and most of the time without George Martin. Paul McCartney has said that they really didn't care about stereo. He didn't say they liked it or didn't, he said they just didn't care, at all. They were all about mono.

The Beatles have confirmed many times over the years that through Magical Mystery Tour (and it would appear the non-album singles from 1968), they took time and care to mix the mono, then left the stereo mixes to Abbey Road engineers who just cranked them out. Lennon was particularly vocal about how he preferred the mono, lamenting how the stereo took the bite out of several of his songs, including "Ticket To Ride" and "Revolution."

The reason, I suspect, that until now the mono hasn't been available is that by the end of the 60's everyone had a stereo hi-fi set and thus mono was seen as inferior. I'm sure audiophiles would have complained bitterly had only the mono been available up to this point. But the fact remains that The Beatles themselves preferred the mono mixes up until The White Album.

Was the white album mixed in stereo or mono? I thought it was the last mono album.

Yes, it was their last album mixed in mono and both mixes of The White album were overseen by The Beatles and Martin, so for that album, neither one is the band's "preferable" mix.

I think that probably had to do if your parents had the vinyls to expose you kids to Beatles music (or, gasp - 8 track)......mine didn't. My mother was Italian Opera, and my father was Country-Western. Needless to say, I don't get my musical exposure from my past, but rather from my own self once I reached Year 20.

Just to add to this....

The booklet that comes with the mono set explains it pretty well. It's not a matter of "dissing" the stereo versions, it's a matter of looking at the era of when these recordings were made. In the early and mid 60s, stereo was still in its infancy and most people had mono systems. When the Beatles made a record and when the mixing process took place, it was for mono. That was given the initial and prominent attention by George Martin and the studio engineers and the band themselves (to the extent they were involved.) The mono mix was the definitive mix at the time because that was the way the world was then. The Beatles would typically head out on tour in the early days after the mono mix was made and at some point afterward George Martin and the engineers would go back to the tapes and do a stereo mix. This of course changed a few years later as stereo became more popular.

I have both sets and I like to compare tracks on both and in certain cases I prefer the stereo, but I enjoy having the mono because as I see it, they are (other than the White Album) the primary, definitive mixes of their records.

Truly pathetic reviews. I'm not a mono purist by any means, but their criticisms of the mono aren't even valid. They came in wanting to like the stereo more and that's where they landed.

Can we just agree it's great that we have the option to listen to both? I grew up with the stereo albums and they are my "go-to" versions of the songs, for the most part, but I love having the original mono too. I just wish they offered individual

They could have easily included the mono tracks on the same discs as the stereo tracks. Space was not a limitation with the length of these albums.

To me, that isn't any different than remixing old movies. How would you feel about digitally recomposing 4:3 movies to widescreen so they looked better on your home screen? I'm sure the computer power to do that is almost within reach.

Not possible without cutting out part of the picture. Either you zoom it and cut out part of the picture or stretch ond change the aspect ratio. No computer power can change the fact that th original material is a different aspect ration than 16:9.

Unless you have the original prints, which were cropped to 4x3 to begin with.