Remastered tracks – first impressions

Just got back from a presentation of the Beatles remasters at EMI’s office here in Oslo, Norway. We were played 30 second samples back-to-back with their 1987 counterparts and I was amazed by the clarity of the remasters. On “Yesterday”, you could almost hear Paul’s fingers on the guitar strings. Whenever there was an orchestral arrangement, the individual instruments also stood out more than ever. On the early songs, channel separation sounded wider than ever, not as a result of a remix, but because each individual sound (like hand claps) was clearer than before.
After the samples sessions, we were treated to complete songs from the 2 disc 32 songs sampler, (pictured above, and in my previous post).
Then we got to see some of the mini documentaries and they really are mini, or maybe they should be called micro documentaries. Like less than one and a half minute each! But they were still a treat to watch, there seemed to be some new footage with Paul playing Blackbird in the studio in the White Album one, and a cool animated Abbey Road cover in that one. No Carnival of Light in the Pepper one and no new Let It Be footage in that one.
We also go to see the finished Revolver CD package (stereo), and the (empty) boxed sets. I found out why the stereo box is taller. The stereo CD’s are thicker, with a double-folded sleeve and booklet, so they are stacked within two compartments in the box. Whereas the mono CDs will just be tiny replicas of the original vinyl LP’s and thus are all able to fit inside one compartment, hence the smaller mono box.
UPDATE: We have now been contacted by people who have received review copies of the boxed sets, and they have informed us that the mini documentaries are around five minutes each, unlike the ones we saw, which were around 1:18 each. This means that contrary to what EMI told us, what we were watching were edited versions.

(I got this picture from elsewhere on the internet)
Link to video of the boxed sets