cheesehead1204 Posted May 24, 2011 Share Posted May 24, 2011 Are there entire Zeppelin albums in mono? I know of singles and 45s in mono, but I've never seen a mono Led Zeppelin album. If there are no Led Zeppelin mono albums, why not? Do the stereo mixes sound that much better? Any info would be much appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reswati Posted May 24, 2011 Share Posted May 24, 2011 LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin II (This is something we've never had before because it's as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth, an original 1969 US 9-track white title label promotional MONO vinyl LP with no 'SD' prefix to the catalogue number on the label, custom stickered 'DJ Copy Monaural' gatefold picture sleeve. What makes this so unusual is that unlike most mono promos, this isn't simply a left channel blended with the right channel mono but has actually been specifically remastered using the CSG process, exclusively for AM radio stations. This was done because the lead vocals & instruments would often sound too loud when heard played back in mono. When the left and right channels were simply added together, the lead vocals or instruments, being equal in level on both channels, would add up to be 3 decibels louder than the mix in Stereo, so the CSG [Compatible Stereo Generator] process was used to neutralise this effect & create a more natural sounding mono from an original stereo master. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PerpetualMotion Posted May 24, 2011 Share Posted May 24, 2011 ^ That is still a blending of the two existing stereo channels and NOT a dedicated MONO MIX. To obtain a TRUE MONO MIX you'd need to go back to the multi-tracks and remix ALL of the tracks into a dedicated MONO. It'd still be interesting to have that^ version though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swandown Posted May 24, 2011 Share Posted May 24, 2011 I think the first 4 (or possibly 5) albums were pressed in fold-down mono for promotional use. There has never been a confirmed Led Zeppelin record that was in dedicated mono. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zepps_apprentice Posted May 24, 2011 Share Posted May 24, 2011 I personally can't stand mono audio. You can't hear different instruments very well. A band like The Doors who uses stereo very well wouldn't sound as good if they used mono. I know iPods have setting for Mono Playback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Only Way To Fly Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 According to CMR - http://www.collectorsmusicreviews.com/uncategorized/led-zeppelin-releases-this-month/ Led Zeppelin I mono has been ripped form a mint Brazilian Atco LP - would love to hear it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutrocker Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 I personally can't stand mono audio. You can't hear different instruments very well. A band like The Doors who uses stereo very well wouldn't sound as good if they used mono. I know iPods have setting for Mono Playback. Give Revolver or Sgt Pepper by The Beatles the ol' mono/stereo Pepsi Challenge and then get back to us. The whole "vocals on one side, instruments on the other side" primitive stereo mixes they made back in the sixties get real old real fast. Not only that but in a lot of cases the mono mixes might not have the wide instrument 'spead' that stereo mixes do but they can still be 'superior' mixes. But to each their own... According to CMR - http://www.collectorsmusicreviews.com/uncategorized/led-zeppelin-releases-this-month/ Led Zeppelin I mono has been ripped form a mint Brazilian Atco LP - would love to hear it. Yes, but is it a dedicated mono mix or simply a fold-down? Keep in mind Brazil issued "mono" versions of Abbey Road and Let It Be -only available in stereo elsewhere in the world- but they were simply fold downs. Unlike the aforementioned Revolver (for example, where the mono mix is superior) I can't imagine mono mixes of the Zeppelin albums, specifically LZII. That thing was literally made to be listened to in stereo- all of the panning effects etc would be lost in mono. I can imagine Atlantic approaching Glyn Johns or Eddie Kramer to do mono mixes of the first two Zeppelin albums and their response being, "What, are you fuckin' crazy?!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plantpothead Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 The original mono Sgt Peppers is supposed to be far superior to the stereo version according to Macca. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutrocker Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 The original mono Sgt Peppers is supposed to be far superior to the stereo version according to Macca. Never mind Macca...for me hearing Pepper, Revolver and the White Album in mono for the first time was like rediscovering those albums all over again. There are so many subtle little differences in the mix it's a real treat to hear them. "You haven't heard Sgt Pepper until you've heard it in mono." - John Lennon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrybonzo Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 Never mind Macca...for me hearing Pepper, Revolver and the White Album in mono for the first time was like rediscovering those albums all over again. There are so many subtle little differences in the mix it's a real treat to hear them. "You haven't heard Sgt Pepper until you've heard it in mono." - John LennonRevolver too! so many great things that aren't in the stereo mixes and they are wonderful, its no good just listening in mono, you need to hear mono mixes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tisjsgsgtZU Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pb! Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 I, II, III, and HOTH all have US mono promo issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutrocker Posted November 5, 2015 Share Posted November 5, 2015 I, II, III, and HOTH all have US mono promo issues.Yes, but are they actual mono mixes or just stereo "fold downs"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pb! Posted November 5, 2015 Share Posted November 5, 2015 As mentioned earlier, there are no dedicated Mono mixes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Only Way To Fly Posted November 7, 2015 Share Posted November 7, 2015 I, II, III, and HOTH all have US mono promo issues.Wonder why there was never a Zeppelin IV Mono mix? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woz70 Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 Wonder why there was never a Zeppelin IV Mono mix? Probably due to the increasing popularity of stereo fm radio broadcast - especially for rock music - in the US in the early 70's. Mono promos were generally produced for AM radio broadcast.Doesn't explain HOTH though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pb! Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 The question to ask is why was there a mono HOTH? Does anyone know of any mono edition of the fourth album? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutrocker Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 If they're just fold downs and not dedicated mono mixes, then they're not really mono, are they? Like I said before, of all the Zep albums, the first one would really be the only one worth doing a dedicated mono mix for- the rest of them have too many true stereo effects on them that would be lost in translation on a mono mix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woz70 Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 If they're just fold downs and not dedicated mono mixes, then they're not really mono, are they? Like I said before, of all the Zep albums, the first one would really be the only one worth doing a dedicated mono mix for- the rest of them have too many true stereo effects on them that would be lost in translation on a mono mix. Even the first album was recorded on 8-track tape, and that gave so much more flexibility and choice at mixdown (compared to 4-track) that making a mono mix, as opposed to a 'natural' sounding stereo field probably wasn't even considered. Why go mono if you can do stereo properly? Mono is yesterdays technology! Why go backwards when you have the future available? At the time it must have felt like the choice between filming in black and white or technicolor - pretty much a no-brainer.Recording on 4-track tape meant you were really limited as to how you went about recording. The choice of making a stereo mix has already constrained you and limited your choices at mixdown - for example, if you want a stereo sounding drum kit you have to use two tracks (one L, one R), and that only leaves you another two tracks for, say, bass, guitar and vocals, which means you can either: commit to the balance of the bass and guitar and record them on the same tracks as the drums (probably having bass one side and guitar the other), which leaves you one track for vocals and one for guitar overdubs. The trouble is, if you make a mistake during the recording and the bass is too loud, or the guitar too quiet, you can't do anything about it other than asking the band to play the song again.Or you could: record the drums in stereo (tracks 1 & 2), and record the bass on track 3 and the guitar on track 4. Then you have to mix (or bounce down) the 4 tracks down to stereo (2 tracks) on another 4 track recorder to free up the other two tracks for guitar overdubs and vocals - bearing in mind that the bounce down process adds another layer of analogue noise (tape hiss), and also if you've done the bounce down and then decide that, for example, the drums were too quiet then you have to go through the whole process again. If you wanted to do more overdubs you would have to repeat the bounce-down process - again adding noise in the process.Once you have taken these things into account, it makes it really easy to understand the odd placing of instruments in the stereo field on the first Jimi Hendrix albums, much of The Beatles output (stereo releases) and various other bands who recorded in that era. Because of the limitations they'd decided that the drums would be mono - only on one track - giving 3 extra tracks for bass, guitar and vocal. At mixdown the early mixing desks didn't tend to have a sweeping pan control (like the balance control on a domestic amplifier) like we do now. Instead they had three postitions - Left, Centre and Right - and in some cases only L and R. This is why you could end up with drums and vocals in one speaker and bass & guitar in another speaker. It's purely because of these limitations that albums like Sgt. Peppers and Revolver sound much better in mono - it gets rid of those often weird instrument groupings in the L & R speakers, and the producer then has to work much very much harder to get everything to blend together and be heard clearly in a mono mix because they can't rely on one ear hearing one thing and the other ear hearing something else.The introduction of 8-tracks meant that bands could commit 2 tracks to the drum kit, and then have 6 other tracks to play with - which meant that producers like Page could indulge far more in the art of capturing ambience and make a recording of a band sound far more three-dimensional and 'real'. Mono mixes then become pretty pointless but for the consideration that you'd want your music played on the radio, which was predominantly AM and therefore mono. If you were diligent, you'd still have to make sure that nothing weird happens to the levels in the mix during mono playback as can sometimes happen due to phase relationship issues (but that's a lecture for another day...). This is why we only really see promotional releases in mono (and always a stereo reduction rather than a dedicated mix) - purely for radio play, not for general consumption by the public. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutrocker Posted November 10, 2015 Share Posted November 10, 2015 Thanks for the history lesson, woz (even though you didn't tell me anything I didn't already know), but you want to keep in mind most stereos in the late sixties were still mono compatible. Especially in Great Britain, stereo was considered almost an audiophile/elitist kinda thing. THAT is why they were still doing mono and stereo editions of albums, it's just that as the recording technology improved the engineers started getting fuckin' lazy and instead of doing dedicated mono mixes they just did fold downs from the stereo mixes (even The Beatles started doing this in the White Album era).Even though the site is chock full of pompous audiophile assholes, you should check out http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/ -topics such as this one are like their bread and butter over there... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sathington Willoughby Posted November 10, 2015 Share Posted November 10, 2015 Thanks for the history lesson, woz (even though you didn't tell me anything I didn't already know), but you want to keep in mind most stereos in the late sixties were still mono compatible. Especially in Great Britain, stereo was considered almost an audiophile/elitist kinda thing. THAT is why they were still doing mono and stereo editions of albums, it's just that as the recording technology improved the engineers started getting fuckin' lazy and instead of doing dedicated mono mixes they just did fold downs from the stereo mixes (even The Beatles started doing this in the White Album era).Even though the site is chock full of pompous audiophile assholes, you should check out http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/ -topics such as this one are like their bread and butter over there... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woz70 Posted November 10, 2015 Share Posted November 10, 2015 Thanks for the history lesson, woz (even though you didn't tell me anything I didn't already know), but you want to keep in mind most stereos in the late sixties were still mono compatible. Especially in Great Britain, stereo was considered almost an audiophile/elitist kinda thing. THAT is why they were still doing mono and stereo editions of albums, it's just that as the recording technology improved the engineers started getting fuckin' lazy and instead of doing dedicated mono mixes they just did fold downs from the stereo mixes (even The Beatles started doing this in the White Album era).Even though the site is chock full of pompous audiophile assholes, you should check out http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/ -topics such as this one are like their bread and butter over there... Yup. The point I was trying to make was that until the advent of 8-track recording most multi-tracked 'stereo' recordings - which only really happened for 'popular' music - were very much a compromise as I explained, and were pretty much a novelty - at least until the late 60's. The only genuinely 'stereo' (or binaural, to use the correct term - for example Sgt. Peppers is certainly Stereo, but definitely not binaural) recordings that the true audiophile of the era would drool over were live recordings of orchestras or bands that didn't involve overdubbing or mixing - at least in the way we understand it today.Once stereo recordings started to outsell the mono editions, producers stopped bothering doing dedicated mono mixes. I don't think it was down to laziness, but more down to economics. Why pay the engineer to do two mixes when one that can be reduced to mono will do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutrocker Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Why pay the engineer to do two mixes when one that can be reduced to mono will do?No, yer right, but thing is a stereo fold down into mono isn't really mono- it's a stereo fold down. Sound is lost, because when you do a fold down anything panned hard left or right comes to the middle but anything centered in the stereo spectrum loses 3db.Oh yeah, just reading some of the goddamn discussions at Hoffman's forum is enough to toss yer cookies. I never wanted to be a member there, and besides I probably wouldn't last too long over there because yer expected to play nice, etc. That said, Sathington, you should check out stereocentral.tv for a whole other perspective on Steve Hoffman and his forum... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sathington Willoughby Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Oh yeah, just reading some of the goddamn discussions at Hoffman's forum is enough to toss yer cookies. I never wanted to be a member there, and besides I probably wouldn't last too long over there because yer expected to play nice, etc. That said, Sathington, you should check out stereocentral.tv for a whole other perspective on Steve Hoffman and his forum...I haven't been there in like a month now, I couldn't handle all the Beatles fanboys, and I love the Beatles lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutrocker Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 I haven't been there in like a month now, I couldn't handle all the Beatles fanboys, and I love the Beatles lol. Oh yeah, I mean, I get it, they're all baby boomers over there but some of those guys are fucking obsessed with The Beatles, they'd give Mark David Chapman a run for his goddamn money...I love the Beatles too, but I've heard the music so many times now (kinda like Zeppelin) that I don't even need to play the albums anymore, they're like permanently engraved in my brain. Back on topic, though, other than it being a cool novelty I don't see how mono mixes of the Zeppelin albums would sound anywhere near as good as the stereo mixes- again, just like with the later Beatles stuff they recorded so many layers and overdubs that the sound gets mushy. Somebody answer me this since I can't remember: the first Zeppelin album was recorded on 8 track, yeah? Everything else was 16 track? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woz70 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 No, yer right, but thing is a stereo fold down into mono isn't really mono- it's a stereo fold down. Sound is lost, because when you do a fold down anything panned hard left or right comes to the middle but anything centered in the stereo spectrum loses 3db.Er... that would be gains 3dB. If something is central in the stereo field that means it's coming from L & R speakers at equal volume. When you sum L & R together to make the stereo mix mono, the waveforms from L & R are added together. Anything that's the same on both sides will then reinforce itself. This means that anything panned centrally will increase by 3dB (double in intensity... or sound a bit louder). The only way sounds are lost are if they appear in the stereo image panned anything other than hard L or R - the sound must be coming from both sides simultaneously - and the L and R sources are not in phase with each other for some reason. The more out of phase, (and the more centrally panned - or equal volume in both speakers) the lower the apparent volume will be in a mono reduction. This effect can also happen if one of the speakers on your music system is wired out of phase (i.e. one is wired red-red/black-black the other wired red-black/black-red). If this is the case and you listen to a song in the 'sweet-spot' (optimal listening position) you'll often find that generally the vocals (which are usually panned centrally) either disappear or are considerably quieter (depending on the room you listen in...), and if you move your head from side to side out of the 'sweet-spot' they'll magically get louder and quieter.The upshot is that mono reductions are a cludge. But factor in how many people listen to mono music in high quality (and I say this specifically because the target for mono promos is only really AM radio, which cannot be called high quality and is also compressed to shit) and you get even more reason not to spend the time and money doing a dedicated mono mix. Plus, a good mono mix is a very hard thing to do and a skill that not many people have any experience of any more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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