Recording - October 2014 - 17

What made some songs take longer?
You're constantly trying to get all the pieces sounding effortless,
but there's a hell of a lot of effort that goes into it with the original tape edits and dropouts. Some of the tracks had Dolby A on
them, and you thought, "Hang on," it wasn't right-and you took
the Dolby out and it became really hissy, but sounded much better. Sometimes you were taking the Dolby A out and doing a little bit of NoNoise stuff on it using CEDAR audio restoration
(cedar-audio.com) and getting better results.
So looking at the albums, of the first three that are out so
far, which one gave you the most trouble?
I think it was probably the live gig on Led Zeppelin I. With the
concert there was obviously a lot of edits that they [Jimmy and
his engineer Drew] did, taking out the the radio station IDs and
stuff, but it was hard because it just didn't sound that great. It's
frustrating when you can't make things sound better. I listened to
loads of cassettes and bootlegs, and after a while I realized that
what we've got was three times better than anything else. But
that was the one that was the hardest thing to update, or to just
try and get some life into it, because it is what it is.
What about the alternate studio takes?
All of the outtakes were fantastic, 'cos obviously they'd come from
tapes that have been played once or twice, whereas the masters have
probably gone through the mill a bit. I mean, like the demo version of
"Whole Lotta Love"-it sounded like it was recorded yesterday.
The alternate mix of "Whole Lotta Love" and especially
"Immigrant Song" you can hear the instruments a lot more
clearly. There's no post-reverb in the mix, so it's like, "Holy
crap, that's Page's amp with a mic in front of it, a little room
sound and that's it!"

Everything I have heard so far is simply amazing; you and
Jimmy have definitely breathed an amazing new life into
these records with all of your hard work. But let me play
Devil's advocate for a minute. What about the critics who
argue, "Why remaster it? Just give us the flat transfer!"?
People forget that the tapes are like 50 years old... it's not as simple as getting a tape machine out, putting the 1/4" on, and doing
a vinyl cut of it. They were really well looked after, but just because
they are so old with the quality of the tape, the dropouts and edits,
you would never be able to do it. For every minute of program
there probably was 8-9 hours work just salvaging it, really.
At one stage there was a dropout on "Stairway to Heaven",
and I had to get the 1/4" out and I'm watching the ATR... you
just don't want anything to go wrong with it. I was really stressed
out by it.
Did you see it all the way through to the end? Did you have
a hand in the mastering of the vinyl or the cutting of the
vinyl?
Yes, I did all of the vinyl cuts. I'm a massive control freak and
I wouldn't have let anyone else touch it. We did all of the cuts
in the same room that I did the mastering of the album, so we
did it all in here, in Metropolis.
One rumor that's been out there is that the entire remastered catalog was released on iTunes last year in their
Mastered For iTunes spec.
Yeah, that was a classic, because it was all put out there and
nobody said anything. People were just finding out, like, one
person at a time, that the remasters had all been put out, but
there was no marketing at all.
So what's on iTunes...?

http://www.cedar-audio.com http://www.lewitt-audio.com http://www.trunorthmusicandsound.com http://www.lewitt-audio.com

Recording - October 2014

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