Klein's sensitivity fueled the reissue program in the first place. He used to wake up at night in a cold sweat worrying that the Rolling Stones' master tapes might be decaying in the vaults. As it turns out, the tapes were in remarkable shape, but an archiving process was still necessary.

Teams of engineers in Britain and America sifted through miles of tapes, and ABKCO also bought tapes on the black market, hoping (to no avail) they might be original masters.

A SHORTER "BANQUET"

When the team played the original master for "Beggars Banquet," which features "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man," they discovered a big boo-boo. During its sole playback at the time, when a production tape was cut, the machine was running at a fast speed. When the new tape was played on a machine set at the correct speed, it played slow — and every album cut since 1968 has been at the wrong speed.

Not that the difference is noticeable: the original album clocks in at 40:36, the remastered version at 39:49.

The reissue of 1969's "Let It Bleed" does not have gaps between the tracks. This is how the original master presented the songs, and the pauses were later inserted by the mastering company. It's unclear what the artists' intent was since the band has never said the songs were supposed to be contiguous. Klein referred all questions to the Stones, and a band spokesman passed the matter back to Klein.

Reviewers have raved about the clarity of the sound, with Mick Jagger's vocals being singled out for praise. Paradoxically, the Stones' recordings were always supposed to be gritty, with the vocals deliberately buried in the mix.

Klein said the remastering team bent over backward to retain the integrity and rawness of the original singles and albums.

"This was a restoration project to restore to the original look and feel," he said. "It was not to create a new sound, a new the-way-we-feel Mick's voice should appear or sound. If it sounds more vibrant, it's because it was on the tapes, it was how it was transferred and it's this wonderful technology. It's not because someone came up with a new concept on how to present the band."

The other albums in the SACD reissue series are the U.S. debut "England's Newest Hitmakers" (1964), "12x5" (1964), "The Rolling Stones, Now!" (1965), "December's Children (and Everybody's)" (1965), and "Their Satanic Majesties Request" (1965); the live albums "Got Live If You Want It!" (1966) and "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!" (1970) and the compilations "Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)" (1966, U.S.), "Flowers" (1967), "Through the Past, Darkly" (1969), "Hot Rocks" (1972) and "The Rolling Stones Singles Collection — The London Years" (1989). I haven't heard any of these yet, but this bounty may indeed remind us that the Stones were once the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world, and perhaps restore the reputation of the much maligned "Their Stanic Majesties Request," the Stones' great spacey concept album.