Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [50th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Version]

Overall, the album offers a surprisingly successful transformation that somehow enables one to hear this most familiar of material as if through new ears, a remarkable achievement in itself.

With an extraordinary remix of Sgt. Pepper, Giles Martin has knocked down the wall between the myth of the greatest pop album of all time and the listener’s experience.

All of the new mix’s strengths are writ large here. Ringo is restored. The voices feel ‘properly’ balanced and positioned. And in general, where there was whimsy (the bête noire of most Pepper agnostics) the power of solid drums and central voices irons it out. ... It’s an album--maybe the album.

Each edition of the Sgt. Pepper’s reissue features the new Stereo Mix that was lovingly crafted by Giles Martin, the son of the Fab Four’s producer George Martin. And it is a marvel. ... You’ve heard these songs hundreds of times but they have never sounded this present.

As it turns out, Giles Martin reveals considerable new wonders--particularly in his stereo remix of the original album. The remix, in fact, provides a long overdue epiphany. ... Popular music's most elaborate and intricate creation--and one that helped end the mono era--wasn't made to be heard in stereo.

Accompanying all this is Giles Martin's newly mixed stereo version inspired by the original mono. It means everything is fuller and better balanced. ... The Beatles never worked with such unified purpose again, but what this Pepper boxset captures is the fun, intense, playful ferment; the triumph, in other words. [Jul 2017, p.42]

George Martin's son Giles's work here is superb. It helps you hear an album you know inside-out as if for the first time. [Jul 2017, p.116]

It’s all beautifully done, as you might expect. ... Giles Martin’s remix is a vast improvement on the old stereo version--more muscular, with an unexpected emphasis placed on Ringo Starr’s drums--although the original mono mix, also here, is the one with the Beatles’ fingerprints on it.

This shining-up of the Sgt. Pepper grail is gorgeous. [No. 144, p.51]

50 years on still doesn't obscure its frivolity. Paul McCartney dominates vocally and compositionally, and a mind-bending stereo remaster redefines the psychedelic summit while making the mono mix on disc 4 superfluous, but a pair of demo discs single out John Lennon's backbone contributions in multiple takes of pre-LP single "Strawberry Fields," plus "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life."

According to Paul, the new mix is intended to reflect the original mono mix, in that all the voices and drums are in the middle, while also being a stereo mix. The result is, as it sounds, a compromise, where everything is not so much in stereo as on steroids. ... The real excitement for fans is of course in the extra tracks. Here there are no massive surprises (I expect--I was sent the double CD, not the full six pack), just some interesting spoken bits and a lot of Anthology-style backing tracks