Led Zeppelin II - 1988 Technidisc CD with Different Mastering

Interesting - I did very little to the bass on that. That and Plants vocal were the two things that stood out to me when first realizing it was actually zeppelin.

I have a mix that is about 11 on the DR meter. It was done when I was comparing to the older original mixes from my old CD rip.

Davis 2014 - Orban and DR:

Note on the Davis, Orban shows Highest Reconstructed Peak Level of 0.1 with 19 peaks above 0DBFS.
This is what I mention in the comparison vid, when the Davis version gets going after the fluff/freakout thing.


My remix:


Note on mine there's no peaks above -0.2. the limiter I used catches intersample peaks.It allows you to get up to the max DBFS you want without brickwalling and flattening the peaks.

As shown, my remix is a bit more consistent - which is easy to do nowadays as compared to what I used back in the all-analog days.

Also note that the Orban processes lossless files. The DR only does MP3's.
I used the DR stuff back in the day; since then everyone in the industry I work in uses the LUFS LKFS integrated readings, since it's what the streaming services use now.

This is where one of the higher intersample reconstructed peaks occurs - right after the solo, right before the vox comes back in for the verse:

 

Cool - thanks! Although the DR meter (at least the offline version) does lossless files and high-res files too (even though it says high-res isn't supported, it works just fine on them). In my experience, the only limitation of the DR meter is that it won't process FLAC files. But it does AIFF, ALAC, and WAV just fine.

 

Mine bagged on the Wav for some reason... tried a few wav's and it said not supported. Might be an older vesion tho it does show *.wav in the Load File dialog...


I think it's because I use Wavelab to rip it and it does 24 bit...

 

Yea when i re-ripped it using Winblows it writes a 16 bit file - pretty much the same result:


Interesting that the DR meter shows 9 now but the Orban is almost the same... MP3's suck...

Orban is a pro audio company that's been around for years. Used a lot of their stuff in broadcast - some vids of their gear on my marketturd rant:
Turn it up Mudderfudder

Direct link to one here:

NOTE - the audio is a bit uh.. how shall I put this - abrasive on that youboob vid..
One guy on that you-page asks where it is in the chain. the Orban was the stereo generator so it's baseband fed the exciter (what generated the FM carrier) - which fed the transmitter.

Note the two units above it - that's one of the original multiband limiters - the Texar. Used those at Y97/Magic97 in Pgh when they first came out in the late 1980's - they were near Monroeville just up the parkway from the 'burgh...

 

Kudos on the remix! While I'm not sure that I would call it "definitive", it is very well done.

However, your handling of the middle section is just plain amazing...what a revelation! instead of a cacophony of sounds and noises that sound quite frankly like mush and gets old rather quickly your remix brings out details I never even knew existed in that mix. it's incredible in hindsight how cool it really does sound and how much of it was obscured for me for the last 35 years that I've been listening to Zeppelin. I can actually hear Page's intentions now as to the orchestration of that section. I don't listen to whole lot of love much anymore but even now I can't wait to go back and hear your mix again if only for the middle section.

PS. I miss the volume increase on the high-hat starting the middle section, lol. Yours is the way it should have been though.

 

Thank you for that... I wasn't really sure what people would think of it. As I mentioned, the webmaster at the official LZ forum said he didn't hear any difference - again which is cool . I'm sure he got slammed with all the fan mixes back in 2012 when it came out.

I was never really a big LZ fan - I mean I really appreciate it when I'd hear them, but I didn't actively search out stuff like bootlegs and all. In fact, I rarely listen to music much at all - I work with it so much that I get my fill - usually, mixing local and regional bands on small labels or indies. After trying to get a decent drum or guitar sound on something for 15 hours you kinda "just tune it out" (another quote from the Futurama episode of Godfella's). My wife's a big music fan (tho she hates Zep for the most part) and will always ask - "What do you think of this?" after I've been mucking around with high hat tracks in some dense metal tune that sounds like an ashtray was whacking off of the high hat stand. For me, music is not much of a passive activity anymore - used to be. But I recall and try to go for the goose bumps as when I was a kid and heard stuff like LZ for the first time. Even as saturated as I am, I'll still notice things like jingles and production music that just hits me as pure genius - I mentioned this on another forum topic recently. To me music is very sacred.

Speaking of fan mixes, I spent a bit of time on the orleans site (yea I joined) trying to hear what others had done. Went thru all 47 pages of posts. One thing I noticed is that all the one's I heard the drums were in mono. I'm guessing others ran into that disparate sounding 2 channels of drum tracks and just gave up. As I've mentioned I finally figured out (after looking at my Tektronics O'scope) what was going on - the 8ms offset between them. When I got it realigned all the issues I had with the stereo field of the drums went away. It's not a wide field, but now you can hear the tom rolls going from right to left down to the floor tom. I posted my thing apologetically since it seemed to be a dead thread - but I figured maybe someone there might appreciate it. I'm sure I'll get flamed...

I should reiterate that after hearing those fan mixes, and doing it myself, that what Page and Kramer got out of that back in the day on a small console is just amazing.

Yea - that middle section... that was another point where I was about ready to just give up. I mentioned it to the guy that sent me the stuff... he pleaded for me to at least try. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what Page and Kramer were going for. There's one part, after I got it to sit in the mix, where I noticed the theremin kinda answers Plant's "Looowd" - it's right after the longer bowed guitar part. This is what I used to set the timbre and processing I was doing to the theremin stuff. Once that sounded right, I figured I got it close to what I think he was going for. It's very conversational between he and Plant on that part - something that was lacking in the original mix.

I mentioned earlier in this forum topic about doing a Twisted Tower Dire remix. They had this song The Valkyrie Death Squadrons. I had done a few of the other remixes and they were all excited " wow can't wait 'till you get to Valkyrie " So I pull up the session - heard the raw tracks - and was thinking "... what the hell is this? I have no idea what to do with this..." I called and told Marc the drummer ... "Uh...." He just said "well, see what you can do." So I spent 18 hours straight on that. Turned out way better than I thought it would and somehow got pretty close to what Scott (the writer) was looking for. In that case I had no reference as I did in the WLL original mix to what the band's intentions were.

I'm not sure if there will ever be a definitive remix unless Page and Kramer do it. I'm sure some of the things I've done with it would give them both heartburn. It became more of an academic exercise - to see if a remix would solve some of the issues I heard in the original.

 

Unfortunately we will have to wait until after Page passes. If a better mix were to come out under the Atlantic/Led Zeppelin banner it could potentially sully his reputation as a 'legendary producer' when the comparisons came out in a public manner.

 

As a Zep fan I tip my Les Paul to you, sir! As a person who writes and performs music as a layman and records when I get the opportunity I can appreciate what you have done here and the attention to detail you have taken.

 

Thank you! I'm glad people enjoy it. I recently had a few requests to remix the rest of the album. As i mentioned before I'd think Steve Wilson or someone like that would do one even better. Be interesting to hear what he'd come up with. Better yet would be to have Eddie Kramer and Page get involved. But as mentioned by rockclassics - that might be a stretch.

Page shouldn't feel embarrassed or less of a producer because of it.

I've said this before - and having worked back in the late 70's in studios (a good decade after LZII) it's just amazing they were able to get it that good back then; esp. under the time and equipment/technological constraints they were facing at the time. It took me - with modern equipment - breaking it up (as I show in the screenshot) into 30+ tracks to even get close to what they did on that little 12 channel console.

If anything I'd say it shows just how good he and Kramer were back then.

In the meantime, my offer still stands for someone like Rhino to release a lossless of the one I did. I'd gladly hand it over to them for free - I didn't do it for money. I just wanted to hear what it'd sound like without the mix bus overload. When you A/B the Davis 2014/15 or Diament with it, it's quite interesting how well it cleans up. I still don't understand how the LedZep forum guy didn't hear much of a difference.

Still, it'd be nice if Page had someone remix some of that back catalog.