The Beatles USB [Music USB product]

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• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Great collectors item that's functional and solid!

  • Incentivized

  For Beatles fans: This is as good as it gets for now! Every song of course is remastered and as a fan you know the drill as to what that means. But this USB device takes the delivery format to you one step further. Instead of CD quality which has been the audio standard since they took over where vinyl left off, you get two sets of files on a non-recordable USB stick which is fashioned from a hefty chunk of aluminum. It's heavy for it's tiny size. You can probably wrap your fingers around it and hide it in your hand. File set number 1, the mp3 files, were of course made for use on portable devices such as iPods. They were never shown the light of day due to squabbles between Apple Computers who owns iTunes and EMI who own the original recordings. The Beatles wanted them released and decided to wait no more and put this little gem out. File set number 2, are why a fan will be buying these instead of or in addition to the CD collections. The FLAC lossless music files! With proper equipment or software on a PC or Mac computer, you can hear audio quality better than CD quality!!! CDs are sampled at 44.1 MHz in 16 bit format. This device gives you a 24 bit sampling format which means more information is sampled to gather greater details in the music. It's closer to hearing actual master tapes than CDs. Trust me, I love CDs! They sound great! But this USB device is clearly a great little package. For non-Beatles fans: This package has everything you could ask for! Every song on every album released by The Beatles. You get to browse the artwork which never bends or gets fingerprints because it's digital. You get the linernotes as well all in a nicely arranged graphical interface to read along while you listen. You get the mini-documentary created for every CD released talking about the making of that album. These were going to be included as part of iTunes when you dowloaded a whole album! The music files are also easily added to iTunes as there is an option to download it several ways. You can burn CDs from iTunes using these files. The mp3 files sound cleaner than the files I created from my CDs! So unless you just prefer to hold the paperwork of a CD then buy this limited Apple which is also the first time I'm aware a band issued it's whole catalogue in such a cool compact device!

  Posted 15 years ago by BeatlesFan65

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  AWESOME!

  • Incentivized

  On a recent review I read regarding the 2009 Beatles remasters, a reviewer wrote about customers being ripped off because the songs were not REMIXED but were simply REMASTERED. As far as I know, there have been only two remixed albums of the Beatles: The Yellow Submarine Songtrack and the recent "Love" mash-up album. I have to disagree with those concerns because we all grew up listening to THESE mixes of Beatles songs. The remasters accomplishes a lot in boosting the overall volume of the songs and in providing both clarity and increased low end. To this extent, I am satisfied and I am also hopeful that in the future, remixes will be made of all the songs to provide a fresh (but different) perspective. I have also read that the "stem" of the "apple" is fragile and can easily break off. This caused me to cautiously remove the usb (stem) part, place it in my usb port and transfer all the content to my external hard drive. After that, I put it back in its box and I have stored it away as a valued collectible of the Beatles. If this stem were sturdier, I could possibly entertain the idea of accessing the usb content directly from the usb instead of having transferred it to my esternal hard drive. In the end, overall, great job on remastering the material which is the best I have ever heard these songs. The FLAC losless versions are possibly the best way to experience the Beatles thus far (maybe the original vinyl pressings could top this). I am happy with this purchase and it made a lovely anniversary gift from my wife.

  Posted 15 years ago by asm75

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  It's Everything You've Heard About It...And More!

  • Incentivized

  My Apple USB arrived in good shape with minor scratches to the finish owing to the poorly designed packaging. Fortunately, instead of breaking off, the USB/apple stem dug itself into the high density foam instead of shearing off as has happened to so many other mail-order buyers. The music is pristine. The FLAC encodings sound as good as the vinyl ever did, and shouldn't deteriorate with repeated playings. The bonus -- you can now rebuild the Capitol albums with all their songs in the US release order, for no extra charge! The Flash interface runs well, and plays the MP3 music and videos, but that's all it does. You can move the files to a hard drive and put the USB back into the apple and then put it back in the packaging (and into the safe deposit box) or into the display shadow box you're going to want to buy. The apple itself is a lot heavier than I expected for aluminum. There are no obvious serial numbers on the physical pieces, but I haven't looked for a serial in the metadata on the USB drive. In short, there's no way to tell if you have one of the first 30,000 or if you've got one of the overruns. But really, unless you're a dedicated collector (and leave it sealed in the outer wrap) it just doesn't matter -- you're getting what you're paying for, which is the Beatles' entire catalogue, in high-def high-quality digital formats. Win-win. Apple Corp and EMI, good call. Now, if you'd just re-release Let It Be, the movie, on DVD, I could die happy.

  Posted 15 years ago by Kindasaurus