Led Zeppelin Mothership


I just got Mothership on LP. After loving the re-release of the Song Remains the Same I am a bit disappointed.

While Jimmy Page has done a good job at removing the sibilance, and over-saturation of the treble on the Classic Records versions of Zep I and II, he has also removed the excitement. The "Oh my God I feel like I am in the studio with Zeppelin" feeling has been replaced with a dull but clean sound. By mixing it so that no one instrument stands out over the other he has taken all of the "fun" out of the music.

Oddly enough he did a better job with the cd version. It sounds more analog then any of the prior Zep cd's. While it doesn't sound as good as the lp version, or the classic records albums, it is some of the best digital rock I have heard.
nrostov

Showing 7 responses by geoffkait

that's weird. According to the Official Dynamic Range Data Base Mothership suffers from overly aggressive compression. Yet it sound sounds very good. What's up with that? Now, I could give a rat's behind if recording engineers wish to compress some pop music but for heaven's sake keep your twitchy fingers off my Zeppelin and Stones and Dylan which happen to be among the worst cases extant of severe dynamic range compression.
Phasecorrect, I'm not sure at least judging from your response that you understand the severity of the problem. Compression is logarithmic so there really is no such thing as "no compression" as you infer. What j referring to is very heavy handed dynamic range compression that has been used not only for remastering rock classics but also for new releases. One need look no further than Dylan's Modern World about six years ago or the Stones' A Bigger Bang about the same time to see how crazy the problem is. I'm not hot dogging you.
The problem is it's not judicious. That's my whole point. The examples I gave are eviscerated dynamic range wise. It's like a color photo that's been made black and white. Think of it like this, you've got a Miss America contestant who has a beautiful face, gorgeous figure, except for one thing: she's bow legged. Kinda ruins the whole thing, no? The big selling point for digital was supposedly dynamic range. What they did was take away their big selling point.
From what I can tell after a cursory look at the Official Dynamic Range Data Base the new Led Zeppelin CDs and High Def files are quite compressed with the lowest level of most of them unfortunately being down in the RED and the average only in the orange. Oh, well, C'est la vie. Lol
You can keep the "transition" releases. I want the full dynamic range. Music is mostly dynamics.
The vinyl by and large crushes Digital when it comes to dynamic range. Just check it out on the official dynamic range data base. Nuff said.

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Led+zeppelin&album=