One of the few bands not to release their music as mp3 downloads are The Beatles. Actually, I don’t think any other platinum selling band is still holding out on digital downloads. When it was announced that The Beatles were finally releasing their music digitally on December 8 of 2009 I think most people just assumed that it meant that their music was going to be available but that’s not the case, instead they have gone another way: The Beatles USB Flash Drive.
The Beatles USB flash drive contains the remastered Beatles in Stereo box set except of course in a much different form than DVD and 16 CDs included in the box set. This one USB flash drive that you can hold in the palm of your hand contains all of the same elements as the much larger box set.
In actuality it contains all of the remastered Beatles stereo tracks in that box set twice because it has both 320kbps mp3s and 44.1kHz/24bit FLACs. I am positive you know about mp3s (320kbps mp3s are of very high quality) but what about those 24bit FLAC files, what are they all about? Simply put these FLAC files are “lossless” and this means they do not have any loss of sound quality like mp3s do. And because these particular FLACs are 24 bit instead of the 16 bit files that are on CDs, they are actually of higher quality than CD.
This means that The Beatles USB contains the best quality version of The Beatles remasters! Of course, this might change if they decide to release these remasters on Blu-Ray or DVD but at the moment this is the holy grail for audiophiles as far as The Beatles remasters.
What about the original mono mixes? These are not contained on this USB stick. You still have to get The Beatles in Mono Box Set to hear the mono mixes.
