> It's worth remembering that all studio releases and masters of the Beatles were done entirely in monoaural sound. That's not quite right. First of all, Abbey

> It's worth remembering that all studio releases and masters of the Beatles were done entirely in monoaural sound. That's not quite right. First of all, Abbey Road was done fully in stereo right from the start, with the band's full creative input. Secondly, all the previous studio albums were all released both in mono and stereo versions right from the start, so contemporary stereo mixes were done for all previous albums, too. What's true though is that after their first albums, once the Beatles started getting personally involved with the mixing sessions, they usually only bothered attending the sessions for the mono mixes and left the stereo mixing to George Martin and whoever the respective recording engineer at the time was, right up until around the time of the White Album, where they finally started getting slightly more involved with the stereo mixes, too. (And then like I mentioned Abbey Road was only done in stereo.) The stereo versions of their first two albums were also hamstrung by only having two-track recordings to work with, so even beyond the initial tendency to treat stereo as a gimmicky novelty there wasn't much that could have been done beyond panning the vocals to one side and the instrumental backing to the other side, anyway. (Which is indeed an argument for preferring the mono editions of those albums, unless you need a Karaoke version of those songs :-) ) > Stereo mixes didn't happen until well after the band broke up and lost all creative control over the material. The only case where that is sort of true is with Help! and Rubber Soul, which were remixed in the 80s for their CD re-release, and where that remix has mostly supplanted the original stereo mixes. (Though at least those remixes were done by George Martin, too, and not somebody else random.) Beyond that, there are also the recent remixes of the subsequent albums, though at least for now those are being offered as additional versions, with the original mixes still being available, too.