Audio Hijack Pro makes the Beatles’ new stereo-mixed remasters listenable. (Tip: Get the mono edition for the albums that were originally mono.)
I’m sure, at one time, there was a good reason to put all of the instruments in the left channel and all of the vocals in the right channel. 2009 is not that time.
There was never a good reason to split music that way across the then newly-found two channels. They did it that way back then because they could, for the very first time, even though it did nothing to improve imaging and realism in the way that stereo sound had the capability to do. I say this even though I’m not old enough to have been around to hear it for the first time, but considering that a majority of the music I listen to is from that era, I know how the “stereophonic” sound was initially overused, primarily with the Beatles, but there were others as well (some of the Doors’ stuff, among others, was overdone in my opinion). And then there was quadraphonic, which took far longer to die than was necessary: I hope I don’t have to say the same about auto-tune in thirty years…
