Are 80s Led Zeppelin CDs really better?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by SOONERFAN, Jan 9, 2010.

  1. DiabloG

    DiabloG City Pop, Rock, and anything 80s til I die

    Location:
    United States
    Has anyone ever stated exactly where the dropouts are on the Sidore IV? I don't think I ever noticed them when I had the CD.
     
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  2. DiabloG

    DiabloG City Pop, Rock, and anything 80s til I die

    Location:
    United States
    Not sure if it's been documented here, but at least on my copy of the Diament ITTOD, the first drum hit of Fool in the Rain plays twice. The error lasts for a split second and it doesn't seem to be present on the Davis remaster. I've tried both playing and ripping the CD, and the error was present at both times. Does anyone else's copy have this oddity?
     
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  3. Isaac McHelicopter

    Isaac McHelicopter Possession is a clue but not the game.

    Location:
    Cumbria, UK
    Wow - you must have exceptional ears! I'd never noticed it, but it's there. It lasts for .027 of a second.
     
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  4. nikosvault

    nikosvault Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denmark
    It's a tape drag. It's on some of the pressings (259 410) while on others the indexing places it at the end of the previous track (7567-90374-2).

    I frankensteined the two WG pressings for my flac collection.
     
  5. Flaming Torch

    Flaming Torch Forum Resident

    Are all the pre 1992 In Through The Out Door cds done by Barry Diament? So far I cannot see him listed on any shown on Discogs.
    Found one but he is uncredited on the cd.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2018
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  6. bherbert

    bherbert Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Africa
    They certainly aren’t better than the Davis remasters.
     
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  7. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    Every pre-1990s Zep CD was in fact mastered by Barry Diament (including The Song Remains the Same), except Zep IV, which was mastered by Joe Sidore (and was mastered for, and released on, CD prior to all the other Zep albums).

    You'll get a heck of a lot of push-back on that statement around here - but personally, I do agree with you in part. I find a couple of the '80s Zep CDs superior, a couple of the new Davis remasters superior, and the remainder to be a matter of personal taste on '80s/Diament vs new Davises. (And in that regard I personally lean more towards the Davises - for Zep III and Physical Graffiti, for example.)

    Perhaps some Zep albums do not have a truly satisfying CD mastering <cough>Zep IV</cough> - but overall my opinion is that we're actually pretty fortunate with Zep on CD because at least half the catalogue (Zep I, Zep II, Houses, Physical Graffiti, and Coda) has two CD masterings of each album that are very good to excellent.
     
  8. Laservampire

    Laservampire Down with this sort of thing

    In your opinion that is. Personally I like remasters that aren't taken from copy tapes.
     
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  9. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    Personally I like when people don't make gross overgeneralization to try to make the facts suit their personal tastes.

    And if you don't like CDs taken from copy tapes, then I presume you're not a fan of the '80s CDs of Zep IV, In Through the Out Door, and Coda.
     
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  10. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    When was it established that IV was from a copy?
     
  11. Rmono

    Rmono Forum Resident

    Location:
    Queens, NY
    I have always been a fan of the fatbox 80's CD's, they usually don't let me down.
     
  12. Laservampire

    Laservampire Down with this sort of thing

    You’re correct, I don’t like those CDs. I also don’t like the Davis (and Marino) HOTH for the same reason.

    The point of my post was to highlight that bherbert’s overgeneralisation is apparently fine but god forbid someone criticises the Davis remasters.
     
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  13. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    My understanding is that it's from a West Coast copy tape. If that never has been proven, I will happily modify and pull back my statement on that one, to say that the Sidore Zep IV sounds like it's from an inferior source to me (the narrowed stereo image and overall sound quality).

    But surely you also realize that my point was that Laservampire implied that all or most of the recent reissues are from copy tapes, and he also implied (because his argument is in support of the '80s CDs he prefers) that the '80s CDs were not made from copy tapes. So the point remains, whether we know for sure that it was two, or three, '80s Zep CDs that were made from copy tapes.

    That absolutely, positively was not your point, Your point was to give the impression - which is a false impression - that there's a widespread, objective condition (the use of copy tapes for the Davises vs original masters for the '80s CDs) that supports and correlates with your subjective preference for all the '80s CDs over all the Davis CDs. You're only trying to cast yourself as a victim of groupthink now (a groupthink that doesn't exist, BTW), after the fact, because you were called on your misleading comment.

    FWIW, I too prefer the Diament Houses over all other CD masterings. I also slightly prefer the Diament Zep I over the Davis, and I really like the Diament Physical Graffiti, although I slightly prefer the Davis and I consider those two more as very different, equally good alternatives than I do better vs worse.
     
  14. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I think there’s been an assumption it was from a copy, but my recollection is any time specifics are mentioned, it turns out the subsequent remasters have the same issues.

    Where/how is the stereo image narrowed?
     
  15. tootull

    tootull Looking through a glass onion

    Location:
    Canada
    Jimmy Page on upcoming Led Zep reissues: ‘This is a major adjustment’
    Two things make the latest Led Zeppelin catalogue reissues different from all others since the turn of the century.

    First, the remastering of the music – off the original analogue, quarter-inch studio tapes – specific to each of today’s myriad formats.

    "The original albums were recorded for vinyl," Page said. "And then there was the advent of CDs."

    Right. In the mid 1980s, Atlantic released the first digital versions of the Zep catalogue – not off the original tape masters but off poor-quality dubs.

    "They sounded absolutely horrible," Page said. "But it was clear that that’s the way things were going, to a CD market. So 20 years ago the catalogue was remastered for CDs."

    Page oversaw that project and breathed new, punchier life into many Zep tracks, such as Good Times Bad Times and Immigrant Song.

    He has done so again. Given Page’s unofficial role as chief curator of the Zeppelin catalogue, you shouldn’t have to ask why.

    "I suppose the most important thing to consider from my point of view, or the band’s point of view, is the quality. You always want the quality to be the best it can possibly be.

    "This is a major adjustment to what was done 20 years ago. The technology in remastering now, which of course covers all the new digital formats, and also vinyl, is just superior."


    :angel: :whistle: :laugh: :cheers:
     
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  16. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Ah, PR spin. Gotta love it.
     
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  17. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    It was my listening impression when I last heard it, during a reassessment of all the Zep IV masterings including the three CD masterings and several vinyl rips. I have not loaded the masterings up in an audio editor to see if my subjective listening impression can be corroborated objectively.
     
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  18. Laservampire

    Laservampire Down with this sort of thing

    No, my point was to point out that overgeneralizations are not constructive and lead to false assumptions. See all that you inferred from my post, that I didn’t actually state? Hell if not for HOTH what I said could be two completely unrelated statements :laugh:

    It sucks that people (myself included) need to have a mish-mash of different Zeppelin CDs so you can have a decent version of each album, and the “newest remasters are the best. Full stop. Don’t piss on my parade” crowd around here make it very hard to have a useful discussion about which versions are objectively the best for mastering/sources/transfers etc.
     
  19. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    And you thought you'd point that out by making a massive, inaccurate overgeneralization yourself?


    Again, I agree with you that a mish-mash is necessary, although I don't share your degree of upset about it.

    But once again, you're creating a strawman so you can position yourself as a victim of some crowd. It's manifestly inaccurate, not to mention unnecessary to the point you're making about the mixed-bag mastering of Zep CDs.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2018
  20. Andreas

    Andreas Senior Member

    Location:
    Frankfurt, Germany
    Not proof, but the Sidore IV CD has many small dropouts that are absent on the 1994 Marino remaster. I don't remember the details, but Phil Elliott identified them noted them in your forum.
     
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  21. Flaming Torch

    Flaming Torch Forum Resident

    Even more confused than ever re Zep on cd. Actually I like all 3 remasterings - Diament, Marino, Davis but do we actually know which versions used the original master tapes? Most of my vinyl copies are from the mid to late 70s and are from the UK. I presume they would be close to the master tapes but I don't know.
     
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  22. Flaming Torch

    Flaming Torch Forum Resident

    Thanks. I kept my old Song Remains the Same so now with the new box that album has 3 distinct versions/mastering on cd.
     
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  23. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    My recollection was they were present on both discs.
     
  24. SNDVSN

    SNDVSN Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glasgow
    So Page thinks the Diaments are horrible...proof that his hearing is damaged!
     
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  25. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    It is confusing, and as best I can tell there are some masterings where we know copy tapes were used, others where we know (or are confident, anyway) the master tapes were used, and others where there is some uncertainty or dispute.

    If @lukpac and others have insight into this, I would be very interested to learn more about what the situation was with master vs copy tapes was in regard to the original US and UK pressings (and mid/late '70s repressings like yours). Were the master tapes always in the US (At Atlantic NYC)? Were they flown back and forth between the US and UK to enable the creation of EQ'd LP cutting tapes on both shores from the master? If both US and UK LPs were cut from the master tapes, then I guess any sonic differences are down to the mastering used in the preparation of the LP cutting copies, and the techniques used in the actual cutting of the vinyl.

    As for the CDs, my understanding is that the current evidence/belief is that all of them were mastered from the master tapes except the Diament In Through the Out Door and Coda, and likely the Davis Houses of the Holy. I don't think any of the Marinos were made from copy tapes, but I'm not sure about that. And there's a lot of chatter over the years about the '80s Sidore Zep IV being made from a "West Coast copy tape," although as you can see above, lukpac seems to be claiming there's not sufficient evidence to corroborate that (Sidore was based on the West Coast, but where the tape he used was from, and what generation it was, apparently is still not entirely known).

    I have to say, I'm getting kind of tired of this. Yes, yes, Page has trashed the prior generations of CDs each time a new generation has come out. In 1990, he said the '80s CDs were awful because they were mastered without his involvement and they "used copy tapes" (which we now know was only true in some cases). And in 2014 he made some cockamamie claim that because the remasters he did with Marino in 1990 were done before the mp3 era, that you "can't hear the instruments properly" on the mp3/iTunes versions of the Marino masters.

    This is of course PR spin by Page, but it's also probably something he genuinely believes. Some of the Davis remasterings - whatever criticisms one might make of them - do have remarkable clarity, meaning one can in fact hear some details that previously have not been as distinct. And it's true that the '80s CDs were not mastered with his input, and he likely would've made some different EQ choices than Diament and Sidore made - heck, even Diament himself has said that if he had to do them again, he would've been more aggressive in EQ'ing them. So even if you prefer what Diament did to what Page would've done, one can see (IMHO) that Page believes what he's saying, even if we can see that he's overgeneralizing and making incorrect technical statements. The fact that Diament got a very natural, organic sound out of Bonham's drums on his mastering of Physical Graffiti, and that many folks here prefer the more laid-back sound of his PG CD to the new Davis CD, doesn't mean that Page knows that or agrees with that and it just lying or spinning when he says the new remasters are better and the old CDs suck. And it doesn't mean he can't hear anymore either - even if he's lost the entire top octave and a half of his hearing, 99% of the sonic characteristics we all argue about are plainly audible outside that very top-end frequency range.

    It's the same with many other artists. Johnny Marr, for example. loves the 2011 Smiths remasters because he (like many of us) felt the '80s CDs had an artificial treble halo and not enough low-end oomph. We don't like the compression of the 2011 remasters he supervised, and there's also a flatness and lack of depth to some of them - but they are much ballsier than the originals, with tremendous transient impact and much more audible basslines, and clearly that's what Marr likes. He's not deaf, lying, or spinning - he just cares about one sonic aspect, and to us that aspect is far from the whole picture. Ditto for Queen - apparently they were super-involved in the 2009/2011 remastering campaign, and Bob Ludwig is a giant in the field - and the Queen remasters still are really compressed and too loud. But they are crystal-clear for the most part, and the EQ frequency balance is pretty darned good. No one from that camp is spinning when they say how great the new ones are - they genuinely believe it.

    My point here is that the only thing staler than Page's dissing of prior masterings once every 24 years, is folks here posting snark about this issue over and over again and htinking they're saying something new or insightful.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2018

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