The Beatles: The Collection

The Beatles: The Collection bears special mention among the various Beatles compilations, box sets, reissues, and multitude of variations of the Beatles catalog that have been released over the course of the last several decades. Now a collector’s item, this Beatles box set is widely regarded by audiophiles as having the best sound quality of any Beatles releases on wax.

The collection, by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, boasts a complete remaster of every original UK studio album at half the speed of the original masters allowing for greatly improved sound quality. The one outlier is Magical Mystery Tour which was a Capitol release which was enhanced from submasters with the last three tracks in rechanneled stereo.

Originally released in October 1982 this limited edition collection sold out in short order. A second pressing of 25,000 released over the next couple of years met with equal success.

The Victor Company of Japan, highly regarded for their technical expertise, pressed each disk in red vinyl and each box set was issued with a certificate of authenticity. Inside the box, the original album covers were replaced with a log sheet and photographs of tape boxes.

This special limited edition release is limited to the 12 original UK studio albums plus Magical Mystery Tour (the only U.S. release in what is considered the Beatles cannon). In as much, many of the Beatles most popular songs which were originally released as singles where excluded.

Though there is much debate as to which release of the Beatles albums offers the best sound quality, this collection is certainly among the top candidates and surely the best on vinyl (which many feel still offers a superior sound quality to digital).

These discs have been transferred to digital and are available as bootleg versions whose quality has been deemed excellent, though the official Bealtes remasters released in 2009 are considered to posses the best sound quality of any digital release.