Remastered Beatles Here at Last

On Wednesday, Apple Corps. and EMI will finally release the long awaited remastered Beatles studio albums. They will be available as CDs. Two box sets of the albums will also be released, one in stereo and one in mono.

As of yet there are no confirmed reports of digital download availability.

Neither the albums themselves or the box-sets contain any previously unreleased material, but Bruce Spizer, noted Beatles author and historian spoke to MSNBC about why the new additions are, nevertheless, worthwhile purchases.

"The core catalog was first issued on CD in 1987 — that's 22 years ago — and at the time those were done the digital format was really in its infancy," he said. "CDs then often sounded harsh or tinny and engineers often had trouble capturing the warmth of analog recordings. So what we have here is a case where these CDs are being remastered using the latest technology which will have significant enhancement in the sound quality."

The remasters mark the debut of the stereo versions of the Beatles' first four U.K. albums, "Please Please Me," "With the Beatles," "A Hard Day's Night" and "Beatles for Sale." The mono box set also has its worth: it's the mono CD debut of every Beatles' album released from 1965 onwards, and includes the long out of print mono 45 and EP mixes.

Rolling Stone has pointed out that "while it seems like other artists remaster their entire catalog every several years, Capitol/EMI have barely touched the Beatles' discography since 1987."

The work was undertaken by a dedicated team of engineers at the famed Abbey Road studios, lasted a duration of four years and utilized a blend of state of the art recording technology and vintage studio equipment to maintain authenticity and feel while providing the highest fidelity possible.

We impatiently await their release.