THE Lowly Peon

The Beatles in Mono: A Tagger's Dilemma 
02 June 2010, 11:42am

I went to HK last weekend with daisy. She wanted to look for some imported Japanese music, so we went into a record store for a while. I was perusing, knowing that I didn't want to spend too much, and that I really didn't want to take a bunch of stuff back to Hangzhou. Then I saw it: The Beatles in mono.

You may recall that I toyed with the idea of getting the mono box set and decided against it. Then, while there, I did some research on my iPhone, and decided to go for it. And I'm very glad I did.

Each CD in the set comes in a little sleeve that's exactly like the original vinyl sleeve (except about a quarter of the size, to match the CD). It's a lot of fun to look through.

But now I'm in a serious pickle. I've got two versions of Beatles music. Do I really want to append "[mono]" to the end of each album name? The stereo versions have always bugged me on headphones, so except for Abbey Road and Let it Be (originally mixed in stereo), I probably won't sync the stereo versions with any of my devices.

But what about playcounts? This means that I'll be starting at zero for the good stuff.

So here are my options, and though no one reads this, I'd appreciate input from anyone who does:

1. Replace the stereo versions with the mono, such that all my tags and playcounts remain untouched. I'd store the stereo versions somewhere, but never use them.
2. Import the mono versions and tag them as mono, starting over with playcounts of zero, but knowing that I'll be recording more accurate information.
3. Import the mono versions into iTunes, starting over with zero playcounts, and re-tag the stereo copies to say "[stereo]" at the end, and not sync them with anything.

I'm really in a bind, here. I've started ripping the CDs into AAC format, but haven't imported them into iTunes yet.

Help!

update
[02 June 2010, 11:49am]