Zep remasters: 1993 or 2003?

I'm looking to get the albums again.
Should I get the '93 (or whichever year it was) remasters, or should I get the Japan mini sleeve cd's?

All I care about is sound quality. Do the 2003's sound better?

 

same mastering exactly, the 2003 MAY be boosted even louder but nothing else is different......both use Page/Marino masters

 

then there is the question of the NEW remasters.

I've heard they sound better then anything else.
The guy who did the remastering job said some remasters are from digital and some are from analog.

I think the page / marino remasters sound pretty good. Is there anything else out there on cd that I don't know about?

 

There are threads all over the place about Zep cds and which are best. I prefer the ones that Barry Diament did. The early masterings. For the best sound quality though imo you need lps.Its just one of those things with the Zep stuff.

 

2003 remasters? I thought there were the originals done by Barry Diament and the Jimmy Page/George Marinos done for the boxes in '90 (?).

 

Get the ones Barry Diament did. (The originals)

 

They both sound good. The remastered Physical Graffiti is the better disc. The original had the L and R channels reversed in a couple songs when I compared to the LP. I prefer the orginal master for Houses of the Holy though. The rest of the discs sound about equal to each other.

 

As other have mentioned, the 2003 mini-LPs are the same mastering, but some seem to have been boosted by a couple of dB. I'm also someone who prefers the Barry Diament 80's CDs. The first album is quite close on both version but the rest can be quite different. I much prefer Barry's PG, II, HOTH and ITTOD. As johnny33 wrote, the LPs are best, but if you don't have a turntable, I`ve found that Barry's original CDs are much closer to the sound of the LPs. In fact, a couple of times when I've done needledrops of the Classic Records reissues and then compared the waveforms, it's been uncanny how close they are to Barry's work. Same dynamics, same peaks, etc.

 

found in one russian forum:
"Thank you for writing to us with your question about the Led Zeppelin CDs mastered by Barry Diament.
The first Led Zeppelin CD to be released as LZ 4 (also known as "ZoSo" - the one with "Stairway To Heaven") was mastered by Joe Sidore at Warner Brothers Studio in Los Angeles, California.
All of the other Led Zeppelin albums were first mastered for CD by Barry Diament when he was at Atlantic Studios in New York. His name was not always put on the artwork (and sometimes his name was put on CDs he did not master) but all of the original Led Zeppelin CD releases, except for Led Zeppelin 4 were mastered by Barry.

Best regards,
Campbell"
http://www.barrydiamentaudio.com/

 

Most people here would advise you to get the original unremasted cd's.


Evan

 

Yes and all these original LZ CDs are easily identifiable by the note on the back about the "limitations of analog recordings" and with no mention of "remastered by Jimmy Page" (all the post 1990 CD releases do have the remastered mentioned either in print on the back and/or on a silver sticker on the shrink wrap). The CD labels on the original CDs were either green (teal) color for the early target issues, or silver with black print. I'm not sure about the 1990s CDs but the 2003 mini-LPs have replicas of the Atlantic red/green and Swan Song labels.

Somewhere in another thread on here, I posted scans of the artwork for the original Joe Sidore-mastered IV (it has a script font for the writing on the spine and the hermit artwork on the back cover).

 

I guess I am in the minority here in that I prefer the Marino discs, but it has been a LONG time since I've heard the original CDs. I still have the Barry D. Song Remains the Same. Listened to it not too long ago and It was very nice. I will probably keep it even though I will get the new version.

As for vinyl, I had 80's/early 90's pressings of 4, PG, and HOTH when I was a kid, but didn't appreciate them at the time, nor did I have a decent TT. Someday, I hope to get some good sounding LZ on wax ... I am anxious to see what people here think of the Mothership vinyl when it arrives.

 

Or you could just ask Barry yourself! He is a member here! (HI Barry! )

 

Hi Paul,

Campbell has my assistant for many years now.
He got it right.

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

Ok...ok...I know soemthing about this....but maybe not all there is to know...but maybe enough...


The first mastering of Zeppelin was quite good to my ears.


The second mastering for the two small box sets was OK muchly.

I'd say some of the first masterings are more musical than the later Marino/Page fiddlings. That could be because the original masterings were done in an album context, with the tracks flowing from one to the next. Sound consistency was more assured as opposed to the Juke-box juxtifications of the latter mini-box sets.

That said, if each song was mastered on its own, it was given specific treatment and MIGHT be made to sound better - theoretically...but good luck.


The re-compilation back into album form came later (brainchild of who?) and everything was taken from tthe earlieir mini-boxes and returned to a normal album sequence.

THAT took quite a bit of work and consternation on my part. The songs when put back into their earleir reincarnation order were of inconsistant sound and hiss levels and did not match left as-is. So some additional finagleing was required and so therefore the levels might not match with the mid-life mini-boxed audio, but the mastering was in fact EXACTLY the same.

EXCEPT for two songs, which are the only songs that Zep crossfaded in their sonic history. The reason these were done over afresh was because I flagged the production folks at Atlantic and told them that I could not join the songs together because the change in ambient hiss was too irritating, so these songs were remastered (twice*) until the sound transition was smooth and acceptable.

*They were remastered twice by Marino until they could be joined together and sound natural like it sounded on the origianl release.

And so, those two songs WERE remastered for the 10 CD Studio Recordings of Led Zeppelin release, otherwise, everything else came from the mini's, with levels adjusted for smooth song transition.

Hope this helps.

 

LZ1 by BD is the best sounding Led Zeppelin cd ever. EVER.

 

I agree with this assessment.

The originals use inferior tapes (so I hear) with better mastering (thanks, Barry!), but the remasters have better tapes (they made it a big point to say MASTER TAPES) with inferior mastering. Meh.

Personally, I'm collecting the original ones, I'm a Diament fan

 

Yeah, I've got Diament I-III, Sidore IV, Diament HotH and Physical, that's enough for me.

 

I noticed the inferior tape thing also. I wasn't going to mention it because the same artifacts are on all the LP pressings I have around too. Its really hard to prefer one set of discs over the other and I'm glad I own both. The remasters are a tad hotter in places but it seems to be for effect. Rock music can sound kind of rickety at times otherwise.

 

Hopefully some who remembers specifics can chime in, but I remember 2 other problems with the remasters that prompted me to get all the originals again. One is that there's some unnatural distortion at the beginning of the Rain Song (I think that's the song), and some of the tracks on side 2 of II are shorter by 5 or 10s on the remaster vs the original. Faded out early.

I lived with the '93 remasters for years, but after having gotten the originals again, in general, I prefer the top end of the originals to the remasters. Smoother, more laid back, easier to listen to at higher volume. But the differences aren't dramatic.

 

I'm not sure you heard correctly.

As far as I know, the SAME tapes were used.

Ahem.

Yes, it says the MASTER TAPES were used, but to my knowledge, the SAME tapes were sequestered from our tape library for the Marino/Page mastering session(s) as the ones that were used for the original mastering. No new tapes passed through our studio before OR after the re-mastering.

It doesn't say that the original tapes WEREN'T used on the original CD masterings, does it?

Of course, the truth should be audible. IF the levels of hiss are readily apparent in the first mastering and they are considerably lower in the remastering version, a better source tape was used.

You be the judge.

 

Well, here's where I got that info from... this post and this post. I'd like to see what Barry says.

Didn't I already say I'm collecting the Diament ones?

 

Zal, thanks for this explanation. So, were you the one doing the level matching on the remastered proper albums? If so, shouldn't you have gotten remastering credit along with Page and Marino. Setting levels is a big part of remastering I'd assume.

So, "Your time is going to come" and "Black Mt side" are different masterings from the 2 boxes. Again, thanks for the info.

I kind of remember reading way back that some of the Zep master tapes had to be baked and then transferred to digital for the remasters. Any recollection of this. Of course this would have happened for the boxes which I guess you were not that involved in. Anyway, just figured I'd pry some more.

 

Where can I find the Barry cd's?

 

Amazon is the easiest place. Just look up the CDs by title and you want the 1990 version of the CD not the 1994. They won't have any new but they will have a ton of them used. They normally start at about $1.50 + $2.98 shipping.