Rubber Soul at 61 gets a fresh mix

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:31:22 +1100

Rubber Soul has been lopsided for 61 years. On the 1965 stereo mix the voices are parked on one side and the instruments are scattered across the rest. On headphones it is like eavesdropping on two different rooms.

On 2 October that changed. Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell released a new stereo mix on Apple Music, rebuilt from the original four-track tapes. It is also on Spotify.

I haven’t done my proper listen yet. That needs a quiet room and my AirPods Pro. What follows is what the people who have done it are hearing, and why I think they are right to be excited.

The stereo mix nobody asked for

The Beatles never cared much about stereo. George Harrison said it plainly in The Beatles Anthology: “When they invented stereo I remember thinking, ‘Why? What do you want two speakers for? Because it ruined the sound from our point of view.'”

Mono was the real album. It was also the version the band sweated over. Take Sgt. Pepper two years later. The mono mixes were done with the Beatles in the room. The stereo mixes were knocked together in six days by Abbey Road staff with none of the band attending.

Rubber Soul got the same treatment. Its 1965 stereo mix, later revised for CD in 1987, was an afterthought with the voice shoved to one channel. Kristan Reed calls the result a “horrible listening experience on headphones”.

Demixing, or what Peter Jackson’s team made possible

The fix needed a way to pull a finished recording apart. That is demixing: machine learning trained to recognise a voice or an instrument and lift it out of a tape where several sounds share a track.

The technology was developed for Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary. The Rubber Soul release credits de-mixing technology from the team led by Emile de la Rey at Jackson’s WingNut Films. Giles Martin first used it at album length on Revolver in 2022. “On ‘Taxman’ I can take off the guitar, I can take off the bass,” he said, “and then I can even separate the snare drum and kick drum as well.”

Rubber Soul is the same trick on a harder problem. Martin told Exclaim! that on “Norwegian Wood” he separated John Lennon’s vocal from his acoustic guitar, which were captured on two microphones: “With machine learning, I can separate the two microphones that he used into a vocal and acoustic guitar.”

Note the phrase. Machine learning. The Beatles camp has sometimes reached for “artificial intelligence” to describe this work, and I think that was a mistake. AI usually is now understood as “generative”, which means fake. Nothing here is invented. Every note on this album was played in 1965. The software only works out where each one sits.

Martin’s session breakdown of “Drive My Car” shows why this is hard. On the original four-track tape, track one carries Harrison’s guitar, Ringo’s drums, Paul’s guitar and a tambourine all at once. Track two holds the three-part vocals, piano, cowbell and lead guitar. The Beatles and George Martin made their decisions early and filled the gaps as they went.

Giles calls the software “facial recognition for sound”. His rule is that it must add nothing and take nothing away. Sum the separated parts and they should cancel perfectly against the original, which proves no artefacts crept in. Then comes the twist: demixing makes the job bigger, not smaller. Instead of four tracks to balance there are many more elements to place, and the Abbey Road room sound has to be recreated around each so the result feels real.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Giles Martin modernising “Drive My Car”

What the reviewers are hearing

The consensus is consistent across the reviews I have read.

The hard panning is gone. Vocals sit in the centre and instruments spread naturally either side. Reed says the new mix has “all the charm of the mono, but with all the spatial depth and revealing clarity that stereo brings”. He now calls it the definitive version, from a long-time mono loyalist.

The drums are the headline. Analog Planet’s Mark Smotroff describes Ringo’s kit “in a first-generation true stereo soundstage locked in with Paul McCartney’s more audible bass guitar”. That is a remarkable thing to say about a 61-year-old record. Remember that Ringo’s kit on these sessions was reportedly recorded with only two microphones: one on the kick and one overhead.

The bass is better throughout without being overdone. Lead vocals are more forward. Harmonies are easier to follow without sounding boosted. The album sounds like one band in one room, not a split screen.

It is not unanimous. Tracking Angle’s reviewer still rates the mix “super successful” but reckons Ringo’s matchbox percussion lost some texture and a few Harrison guitar parts are less distinct. That is the cost of pulling tracks apart. I will be listening for both.

What else is in the box

The full set is a 4CD or 5LP super deluxe edition. It has the new stereo mix, early session takes and home demos, the original UK mono album and the Capitol US stereo version. There is also a new Dolby Atmos mix and an 88-page book with an introduction by Paul McCartney.

One find is “Little Girl”, a John Lennon song outline nobody had heard before. Ringo Starr calls the album “the departure record”: “we were stretching a lot more in the writing and the playing.”

I agree. This is where the moptops become composers. The sitar on “Norwegian Wood”, the harpsichord-like piano on “In My Life” and the character study of “Nowhere Man” all point to a band that has been handed licence to push boundaries.

The price of admission is steep. The box is US$229.99 on vinyl. Streaming costs nothing extra and one reviewer’s advice is to stream first.

Better than the Beatles heard

Here is my argument. Better is subjective, but hearing every voice and instrument in balance has to beat a compromised afterthought. The mix the Beatles signed off on was mono. The stereo they ignored was a rush job. This one is the first stereo Rubber Soul made with care.

It also says something about the tapes. Master tapes from the 1960s are fragile, and many bands were not so lucky with their archives. I suspect the Beatles were served by brilliant engineers who used top-quality tape and by a label that kept it safe. Sixty-one years later, that foresight is paying off.

So put on your best headphones tonight. Start with “Norwegian Wood” and listen for the sitar sitting somewhere that is finally not the left ear.

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