Mark Lanctot;243186 Wrote: > That's it, this is my breaking point, this is where I draw the line. > > I am a huge Led Zep fan but I will NOT be buying this album. > > Send a message with your wallets.
Sorry, but I was intrigued by the article, and so annoyed by the Amazon reviewers who gave Mothership low ratings without actually having listened to it at all, that I decided to get a copy and try it for myself. (I bought it at Tescos for a tenner - more than Amazon, but I had a "6 pounds off if you spend 30 pounds" offer which was about to expire, and they didn't have enough sachets of cinnamon hot chocolate :-) Remember, Remasters cost a fortune when it first came out, even the 2CD version that I have; Mothership - in the UK at least - can be found fairly cheaply.) I was prepared to be disappointed, but my initial impressions are that it's rather good. I haven't listened to the whole thing properly yet, so it's still possible I'll find things I don't like, or that I'll find it becoming wearing; but where I've listened in comparison with Remasters, Mothership shows more detail and clarity. The vocals at the start of Stairway have much more presence (and before that, I can make out more detail in the different recorder parts). I haven't compared with Remasters, but the entry of the drums in No Quarter was breathtaking - my wife and I exchanged looks of awe at that point. Sure, it's louder; but I'm sure there's more to it despite that (*). If it's more compressed, then somehow that's not lost detail - at least not in what I've heard so far. One thing for sure is that it's *different*, so if you're wedded to how Remasters sounds then you may well not like it. Two things that did underwhelm me were: the entry of the drums in Stairway didn't seem as dramatic as I expected from memory; and the repeating phrase at the end of Achilles seems to cut off suddenly rather than fade. I've yet to go back to Remasters to check what happens there. I need to listen a lot more, and more carefully; but so far Mothership seems promising. I'm comparing against Remasters partly for convenience but mainly because I haven't heard Led Zep on vinyl for many years; indeed, I probably only ever had IV and Presence on vinyl. I was listening on an Arcam Alpha 6 player, through Delta 290/290P paired amps, biamping Mission 751s (I had to look at the back of the speakers to rediscover the model!) Mothership also sounded fine on the iPod through my car stereo, but that's not saying much. :-) I have no hesitation in admitting that I do not have golden ears. (*) Heh: time for the Squeezebox and ReplayGain; that should eliminate that "louder == better" psychostuff :-) > Of course the industry would attribute any imperceptible lack of sales > as piracy. Personally I would rather illegally download older > recordings than pay good money for overcompressed garbage anymore. > > And it's not going to change. It looks like mastering engineers are > doing this all on their own now, and it'll stay that way: > > <sigh> If he thinks that then he deserves all the 'offensive' comments > in Hoffman's forums. Actually, this (missing nested quote) gives me hope that future engineers might do (I dare not say "even") better. As is said in the article, the original engineers had no idea of what might be possible with future media. (Maybe we can even hope that some modern album mastering disasters can be superceded.) I had refused point-blank to buy the expensive new Genesis remasters when they came out - the last ones were "Definitive" after all - but have ordered one (fairly cheap, from the US) to try it out. -- Brian -- Brian Ritchie ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Brian Ritchie's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2319 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=40295 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
