Abbey Road-Help! Mix

'Abbey Road/Help! Mix' is a Beatles compilation album adapted by C.Syde65. This compilation album is based on an old playlist titled Beatles that I found on a family computer in 2007 that dated from the 1990's.

The first half of the playlist consisted of Beatles songs from the album Abbey Road, while the second half of the playlist consisted of Beatles songs from the album Help!

All of the songs on the playlist were MP3 files at 128 kbps, which were eventually deleted and replaced with Wma files at 192 kbps ripped from the 2009 stereo remasters of both albums.

Well actually by the time the playlist had come into my possession, the playlist was corrupted. This is because almost all the MP3 files that were on the playlist had been deleted, with the exception of Ticket to Ride, You're Going to Lose that Girl, Help!, Yesterday, Octopus's Garden, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and Come Together were deleted.

I have to admit that I was rather disappointed to discover that most of the Beatles songs on the computer had been deleted. Surprisingly, there were 2 other MP3 files that had not been deleted - Hey Jude and While My Guitar Gently Weeps - but neither of them were featured on the playlist for unknown reasons. It could have been that the playlist was created before those 2 songs were put on the computer.

While the compilation itself has not been burnt, the 2-disc adaption was compiled on various occasions between 2013 and 2019, making it difficult to know the exact time I decided to make a compact disc adaption. Because all the songs featured on the original playlist were MP3 files of songs ripped from the 1987 stereo remasters of the compact disc releases of Abbey Road and Help!, the tracks presented on the CD adaption below probably wouldn't differ much from their MP3 file counterparts on the playlist.

I know that the MP3 file of Yesterday had a strange pop sound at the end of it, which may or may not have been the beginning of Dizzy, Miss Lizzy, the next song on Help! Aside from that, I don't recall hearing anything different. The only other differences I'm aware of is that the MP3 files of Octopus's Garden, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and Come Together had running times of 0:02:48, 0:03:25, and 0:04:16 respectively.

The Wma files of those songs ripped from the 2009 stereo remaster of Abbey Road have running times of 0:02:51, 0:03:28, and 0:04:20 respectively. This implies that the blank spaces were removed from some of the MP3 files of the songs from Abbey Road, as there's no way that they would otherwise have been 0:02:48, 0:03:25, and 0:04:16 in length respectively.

The "no pause between tracks" box would be ticked when burning this compilation, to prevent the Nero Express Essentials software from adding 2 second pauses between tracks, to free up more space on the CD - not that there wouldn't be enough space to fit 17 and 14 songs on the first and second discs respectively anyway. The "normalise all audio files" box would also be ticked, to set the volume of all the tracks to a standard volume.

There were a few differences between the order the songs appeared on the playlist, and the order the songs appear on the tracklist of the CD adaption below. On the original playlist, Octopus's Garden appeared as the first track. The End did not appear on the original playlist, most likely by accident. If it had appeared on the playlist, it would have appeared as the 16th track between Sun King and You Never Give Me Your Money.

And if I recall correctly, Because was in a different place on the playlist. Since Octopus's Garden appeared as the first track on the original playlist, it could have been that Octopus's Garden and Because were switched around. This is only guesswork since the playlist was deleted.

Another difference is that on the original playlist, The Night Before appears as the 25th track, between Tell Me What You See and Ticket to Ride, whereas on the CD adaption it appears between I've Just Seen a Face and Tell Me What You See.

Because Hey Jude and While My Guitar Gently Weeps were on the computer when I discovered this playlist, I have ultimately decided to include those 2 songs as bonus tracks on the end of the second disc of the CD adaption below. But there are a few differences between the MP3 files and the WMA files that were ripped from Past Masters and The Beatles [White Album].

The MP3 file of Hey Jude that I discovered in 2007 was rather inferior. The tail end of the song was missing, making it shorter than 0:07:00 and possibly even 0:06:50. There were also a few skips in the song if I remember correctly. The MP3 file has been deleted, so I cannot check what the exact duration of the copy was. The copy of Hey Jude that was ripped from the 2009 stereo remaster of Past Masters on the other hand is 0:07:10 in length. And there are obviously no skips.

The MP3 file of While My Guitar Gently Weeps that I discovered in 2007 wasn't inferior, but it wasn't as good as the copy of While My Guitar Gently Weeps that was ripped from the 2009 stereo remaster of The Beatles [White Album]. Aside from the quality, there wasn't really any difference except that the MP3 file of While My Guitar Gently Weeps had a running time of 0:04:42, while the copy of While My Guitar Gently Weeps that was ripped from the 2009 stereo remaster of The Beatles [White Album] has a running time of 0:04:45.