The Beatles (The Original Studio Recordings)

• 1. The Ninth Of September

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  EMI senior studio engineers Allan Rouse and Guy Massey led a massive remastering project that concluded on the 9th of September 2009. This specific date was chosen because John Lennon held a deep significance for the number nine throughout his life. The release coincided with other major Beatles products including the mono box set and the Rock Band video game. Sales figures quickly surpassed expectations as individual sales exceeded thirty million units across all formats. The collection became the second complete box set of original recordings after a 1988 predecessor. Previous collections from 1978 and 1982 had failed to include every single recording in their catalogues.

• 2. Sixteen Discs And Labels

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  The sixteen-disc collection contains remastered stereo versions of every album in the Beatles catalogue. The first four albums made their CD debut in stereo even though most songs appeared previously on various compilations. Help! and Rubber Soul use remixes prepared by George Martin for the original 1987 CD releases. Magical Mystery Tour appears in the sequence and artwork of its original North American Capitol Records album release. All CDs replicate their original album labels from Parlophone Records variations to the UK Apple Records side A label. Past Masters disc one uses a mid-1960s Parlophone label design while disc two uses the Apple label design. Each album except Past Masters includes a mini-documentary about the record itself.

• 3. Lost Tapes And Mono Mixes

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  No stereo mixes exist for the 1963 single She Loves You or its flipside I'll Get You. Abbey Road Studios practiced wiping and reusing master tapes once they had been mixed down to mono for single release before early 1963. The only way to make true stereo mixes of Love Me Do is through technology that separates components of mono mixes. It is commonly believed that those specific tapes were either stolen or destroyed despite being in EMI possession in January 1964. Competent-sounding stereo versions have been created unofficially using backing tracks but engineers elected not to do this. Every release of these four songs has remained in mono or simulated stereo on the collection.

• 4. DVDs And USB Drives

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  Included in the set is a DVD called The Mini Documentaries compiling all short documentaries released on individual albums. The DVD features narration from all four Beatles as well as George Martin during the opening of each album. Each documentary contains rare footage and previously unheard dialogue alongside sound excerpts from various songs. A limited edition of thirty thousand apple-shaped USB flash drives was released on the 7th of December 2009. This format marked the first appearance for the Beatles catalogue in high-resolution digital audio encoded at forty-four point one kilohertz. The sixteen gigabyte drive includes three hundred twenty kilobits per second MP3 copies of the albums.

• 5. Charts And Certifications

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  The box set debuted at number fifteen on the United States Billboard Top 200 albums chart. On the Japanese Oricon weekly album charts it debuted at number six selling over thirty-five thousand copies in its first week. The set received triple platinum certification by the RIAA in April 2010. It also achieved Diamond status in Canada during March 2010. In Germany the box set reached number thirty-seven on local charts. The collection won the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album at the fifty-third Grammys ceremony. Vinyl versions arrived later on the twelfth of November 2012 with a two hundred fifty-two-page book included.