Recording - October 2014 - 18

I sent Apple the mastered 24/96 files to all the albums and
they did all the conversions there, on their end.
You mentioned to me earlier that you have some sessions
booked with Jimmy in the next few weeks. What are you
working on now?
What I'm working on now is the bonus discs. All the albums have
been done. All the bonus material has yet to be done-everything
after Houses of the Holy. So everything from Physical Graffiti
onwards, we've still got to do them, the outtakes and all the business.
Hey, if you have any influence, I know Jimmy is trying hard
not to use outtakes that are out there already in bootleg
form, but there was an early and very different version of
"In The Light" that is just so amazing!

That's my favorite track, it's just such a great track. Oh it's so
fantastic, but that album...
One of the great things about this project is the availability of
high-resolution 24/96 downloads both on the Hi-Rez sites as
well as in the Deluxe editions, but playing Devil's Advocate
again, why didn't they didn't release 24/192 versions?
I think one of the main reasons is that 24/96 is really good
enough right now. The difference between 24/96 and 16/44
is huge. The difference between 24/96 and 24/192 isn't huge.
Bigger files don't necessarily sound better at all.
You've got to realize that 24/192 is still in its early days and there's
hardly any kit that you can use. I've got everything [captured] at
24/192, so it's all future-proofed. Until everyone's got upgraded
equipment and companies start manufacturing stuff for people to master at 24/192 it could all come out at some stage... at the moment it's
just too far ahead, you have to invent the kit in order to do it.
I've "foolishly" said things like this on some of the online
forums and of course people argue and argue, but I remember when we jumped from 16-bit recorders to 24-bit
recorders. To my ears the difference between 16-bit and 24bit is greater than just 44.1 kHz to 96 kHz...
Yeah, exactly. That's what's good about iTunes now. I can
send them 24-bit versions with the whole Mastered For iTunes
thing. I check everything here with an Apple computer and a little applet which mimics the conversion, so I can make sure
there's no inter-sample peaks and check through things.
18

RECORDING October 2014

You mentioned you're kind of a control freak with the final
products, so I'm assuming you prepared the 16-bit CD masters as well?
Yeah, we'd go through the SADiE software and then [we were]
checking it with the [Weiss] SARACON, checking it through the
[Merging Technologies] Pyramix, and really finding that different
material worked better with different units, so I ended up using
all of them for different albums.
Wow, that's a lot of care, that's awesome!
Yeah, that was important to me, not just whacking it in something and making 44.1 spin out the other end. I think I ended
up using the Pyramix most for downsampling, it just had a bit of
a musicality about it; the SADiE sounds really good on one of
the albums, and then the SARACON sounded pretty bad on

some but then was good on others... so it was the mixture, I just
used everything. I was never happy until I'd checked everything,
asked all the questions, and we'd covered ourselves.
So you used multiple EQs and processes on various passages
and edits in the songs, made sure all of the songs hung
together both as complete albums and a whole collection,
cut the vinyl, did hi-rez masters, and used different converters for downsampling for CD based on which ones sounded
the best! Do you sleep? You need a holiday! [laughs] Any
final thoughts on mastering or the Lez Zeppelin catalog?
Realize you're never going to please everyone, you just have
to please yourself and the client, and the fact that Jimmy keeps
coming back makes me happy-I must be pleasing him. And
I'm just well chuffed with how it's gone down!
Thanks, John, we are too!
A final note: speaking of holidays, John did get one a few
months ago, thanks to the birth of his son Eden. Special congratulations to John and his family from all of us here at Recording!
Learn more about the Led Zeppelin remasters at ledzeppelin.com;
Metropolis, the studio discussed here, is at thisismetropolis.com.
Paul Vnuk Jr. (paul@recordingmag.com) is a recording engineer, musician, sound library creator, and lover of great audio,
living and working in Milwaukee.

http://www.ledzeppelin.com http://www.thisismetropolis.com

Recording - October 2014

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