Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am a huge Beach Boys fan, and have been since I was a toddler - as long as I can remember (which was only a few years after their formation). Their music was one of the things that brought together my parents, brother, and me - the whole family were, and still are big fans. Brian is a genius, the group should be proud of most of their recorded heritage, and they made some of the best singles ever made. I own every Beach Boys album, and love Surf's Up, Holland, Sunflower as much as Pet Sounds. This new compilation is a disappointment. I'll start off with the good: I like seeing all the singles (minus Be True To Your School and Little St. Nick - this is a negative and I don't know why these tracks were left off) alongside some of the tracks that would not be as well known to casual listeners such as Cotton Fields and California Saga. I like having Getcha Back and That's Why God Made the Radio on it too. The NEGATIVE, and it is major: The remastered sound on these two discs is awful. Really awful. I played it on a great car stereo, a bose player, and a very decent component system, and they sounded just as bad on each. The songs sound compressed, hollow, too clean, too high end. The vocals sound great, but there's middle or low end. The instrumentation is washed out. I compared the version of Surfin' U.S.A. on this compilation to both the two previous Capitol versions found on the Surfin' U.S.A. cds, along with the great Razor & Tie 2CD compilation from a few years back - on this new version I couldn't even hear the drums, and the recording sounded too clean - too sanitized. On the other versions there was a warmth and depth to the sound that was just plain missing from this 50 Big Ones. This could be said for many of the songs remastered on 50 Big Ones. One of the worst ones was Getcha Back - it sounded like a bootleg mp3 with no dynamic range in it at all. What it sounds like to me is that they remastered and mixed this 50 Big Ones for iTunes and mp3 downloads, which is happening more and more these days. I'll file this away in the collection, and if I want a good hits compilation to listen to I will dig out my Razor & Tie compilation, or go listen to the albums - all of which sound light years better than this disappointing 50 Big Ones compilation.