Zeppelin remasters past, present and future (was Re: Robert Plant Rocks the house)

[stevethomson@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

----- Original Message -----
From: Brad <barnoo@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, September 14, 2009 3:14
Subject: Re: Robert Plant Rocks the house
To: FBO <Zeppelin@xxxxxxxx>

> I don't think that the replicas were remastered???
> 
> The last true attempt at a catalogue release were the early 90s 
> box which is less than great in my view.  Great packaging 
> to be 
> sure, but the sound is not what can be achieved with the right 
> approach.  Sure Mothership gave some songs, but not all, a 
> polish but 
> as far as I'm concerned the catalogue cries out for a remaster 
> from the original master tapes.  The Beatles remasters are, 
> with a 
> few exceptions, outstanding and shows what can be done with the 
> right people at the helm.

Right on all counts, Brad. Technically, whenever a CD or LP is prepared for 
manufacture, it's "mastered" but in the past two decades or so, "remastering" 
has taken on a modified meaning and tends to represent the notion of going back 
to the original analog master tapes, transferring them to digital using the 
latest technology and using EQ, compression, etc., to achieve the desired 
sound. This processing with EQ and compression can take place either in the 
analog domain before digitization or digitally afterwards. While digital 
processing offers a whole world of possiblities, there are also some proponents 
of analog processing, especially for material that was originally analog.

In terms of this new meaning for "remastering" the entire Led Zeppelin catalog 
has been done for the general public twice. Once in the 80's by mastering 
engineer Barry Diament (except for the 4th album which was done by mastering 
engineer Joe Sidore). The second time was in the early 90's by mastering 
engineer George Marino for the two crop circle boxes in 1990 and 1993. 
Mothership was done by mastering engineer John Davis, but using the same 
digital transfers done for George Marino. All the subsequent public releases, 
the Complete Studio Recordings box set, the 1994 individual remastered albums, 
the 2003 and 2005 mini-LP replicas from Europe and Japan and the 2008 
"Definitive" box set out of Japan in both SHM and regular CD formulations, were 
all sourced from the same George Marino remasters (often credited to Jimmy Page 
since he sat in on most of the sessions). Some people claim that the Definitive 
box sounds better than the 90's releases, but it's the same mastering with a 
2-3dB boost in most cases. It's been proven in many listening tests that people 
perceive louder material as better sounding. Plus, in the case of SHM discs, 
the material is better so playing them back in real time on a CD player **may** 
result in better sound due to less error correction, etc.  However, it's the 
same data. In fact, I did an experiment a few months back on the Steve Hoffman 
forum in which I took a clip from all known CD masterings of Black Dog and put 
them back to back in a test sample with all clips adjusted to the same 
perceived loudness level. Most people could not tell them apart except in the 
case of the John Davis Mothership sample, which sounded a bit more compressed 
and less dynamic.

Anyway, sorry for the longwinded history of LZ on CD (there was another 
mastering done in 2001 of selected tracks but it wasn't for the public, just 
for the movie industry. I imagine it was also sourced from the Marino 
transfers).,

In comparison to the new Beatles remasters, all LZ masterings on CD are 
absolutely primitive done on 16-bit/44.1 technology that dates back to the late 
70's. The Beatles remasters were done by playing back the absolutely original 
mixdown master tapes (not copies of those tapes) on the correct equipment (same 
models used to record them, maintained and carefully adjusted), with the heads 
cleaned after each song, then with some mastering EQ, etc., done in the analog 
domain before transfer to 24-bit/192 digital using the best analog to digital 
converters money can buy. Then only very minor limiting was applied instead of 
the usual squashing most modern releases get. Only 5 minutes of noise reduction 
was applied to over 500 minutes of music. The results are truly stunning in 
some cases. I received both box sets last week and I'm truly impressed with the 
results. The first thing I thought was damnit, I wish Led Zeppelin would 
assemble a team like the folks at EMI and put them to work on such a project. 
I've seen some rumors around the net that just such a project is happening, but 
I've never seen it confirmed by anybody reliable (Nech, give your 
proctologist's lawyer's best friend's hamster trainer a call, will ya!). While 
some claim the Beatles thing is just a cynical money grab, the improvement in 
sound for some of those albums is not at all subtle. I'd love to hear studio 
Zeppelin with a similar improvement.