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full soundboard recordings and remastering


DATguy

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Hi. This is my first post on this forum. You guys seem like a pretty laid back bunch; this and enough web prominence as a Led Zep site is what I needed to say/ask whats on my mind. If I don't come across as a very "warm" person I assure you it is only in my attempt to remain succinct, and I don't want to ruffle any feathers. This being said, I my post must be preambled with the following information:

1) i am 33, and i state my age so that it is known i am aware there are many users here who were at many of these shows; between that and having used to work for a music-tech shop that specialized in DAT repair where one of my co-workers was someone who used to follow around and tape the Dead, i want to reinforce how much i am NOT trying to ruffle feathers by making it clear i know how to respect my elders, especially elders who used to follow around bands and record them.

2) As to which I alluded in my first point, I am (IMHO at least), very well educated when it comes to recording and mixing audio; i have been doing it for a while now and at this point i barely even consider myself an engineer so much as just, like, a "DSP specialist" or something. It is very important to me I make this known and also say it right, because it will undoubtedly be from this "area" that any conflict or "flaming" arises. Obvsly I have lurked the board for some time and I see many subjective opinions about sound quality in context of individual recordings. I want you all to know, I am not here with the intention of becoming the forum's local sound expert or anything, nor will you ever catch me disrespecting someone else's aforementioned subjective opinion. However, pro audio is digital. Even in the case of, for example, LZ, whose entire existence prior to the death of Mr. Bonham (which, btw, i mean not that the death of any remotely good person isnt any less truly a tragedy, but who knows what rock would look like today had this band not been stopped in their tracks) obvsly predates anything digital about recording and mixing as we know it today. In a world of trying to preserve every last byte on computers trying to catch signals moving approximately 500x faster than they can, it is no longer about "turning the knob until it sounds purple enough" or whatever. I am saying this so that it remains perfectly clear that you can go ahead and keep your subjective opinion regardless of any science i drop. Ultimately my point is this: EVSD is quite obviously just someone using any one of a million generic EQ plug-ins for which they have a "led zeppelin preset" with all its parameters pushed to the max, it ALWAYS sounds like crap, and i'm sick of this idea amongst the community that i should be grateful to these people for anything. If nothing else, they are possibly the party responsible for the main thrust of my post, which shall soon be addressed.

Preamble over. OK let's talk turkey.

Here's a perfect, all-encompassing example of my issue with how these SBD releases are being handled: as collectors of LZ bootlegs, I'm sure you all have encountered many .txt files saying that the software used was Audacity. Have any of you ever seen this site? http://src.infinitewave.ca/ the desirable result is the top one: more black = more clean. bottom represents undesirable; color = noise added by processing. And as you can see on the site, yes, Audacity is capable of achieving desirable results. But HOW DO YOU KNOW if that was the way Audacity was used in any particular case? I listen to everything over flat-frequency-response monitors fed by an Apogee preamp, and I am telling you, if you take a lossless file that, say, has 30 seconds of silence at the end, and just cut off the silence, and then bounce it, then unless you have done EVERYTHING right, and it's not like we're talking about just a couple things here, you WILL hear the noise added by JUST having USED the program. You may love those EVSD releases where they seem to just run everything through the same exciter/enhancer/whatever using the exact same parameters regardless of individual recording, and that's fine, you go ahead and keep loving it, but there are a lot of factors to consider, such as what frequencies you've lost / still have in your ears, your pre-EQed stereo system if you're using anything even remotely consumer-level, the acoustic space where you listen if it's regularly the same location, how many times it's been messed with before EVSD got their hands on it, etc etc.

Here is the golden rule of manipulating audio: everything, EVERYTHING, you do to the signal, every time you TOUCH it, AT ALL, it will depreciate. This is why I emphasized my last line above. I'm not going to give a science lesson here but in the case of SBDs you should be trying to get as close to the source as possible. 1980 soundboards all run a little fast? Doesn't matter; original recording or GTFO. Don't want to do things like speed-correct it yourself? that's fine, completely understandable. BUT SOME OF US DO, BECAUSE WE THINK THE PEOPLE DOING IT FOR US REALLY REALLY SUCK AT IT.

Listen to Texas Hurricane's "Stairway to Heaven". Listen to the end. The last verse. Missing a line, isn't it? You ever hear an edit made due to tape problems that sounded like that before? I promise you, there's nothing wrong with that missing couple seconds of audio. It is quite obvious that someone purposefully took it out. So no, you still don't have the complete Ft Worth '77 SBD, sorry. But don't kill the messenger. Who distributed Texas Hurricane? Why does the bootleg community act as though they are so grateful for the scraps from someone else's plate every time we get something like this? Led Zeppelin is about to turn 50 years old. FIFTY. Half a century. So in other words, those of you who are older, sorry but looks like you really are going to actually literally die before you get to hear this complete soundboard. That one, and in some way or another EVERY last one, at least going from memory of my like top 20 or so. Again, don't kill the messenger; get mad at the right people. Don't lament the AUD edit; after 50 years, get mad at it! ask why the heck you're still putting up with it being there, when you know for a fact it exists somewhere in completeness.

Every SBD should basically sound like the KRW_CO releases of the 1980 tour. Every SBD should sound better than those even, because even those are incomplete, or do you think it's a coincidence that on every show the cut occurs during Kashmir. Again I refer you to the Stairway edit in Texas Hurricane. Take it from someone with a trained ear, these are not accidents, the tape absolutely did NOT run out ONLY during Kashmir over the course of that ENTIRE tour; maybe if it was like the first song played, but that late in the sets? absolutely no freakin' way. likewise, no, the taper of Texas Hurricane did NOT perfectly time his tape flip, nor did the editor in 2014 decide you'd rather be deprived of material. This is where the "correct me if i'm wrong" part comes in: so supposedly full soundboards of almost everything are in Jimi Page's possession? most certainly there are many SBDs still out there, since every now and then we're "blessed" with ONE like in 2014, and likewise someone is obvsly doing things like cutting a temporally perfect amount of Stairway out. 

So: why are we being deprived ANY of these soundboard recordings, why are we being deprived of ANY PART of each one of those soundboards, and thirdly why is someone screwing around with them before those people "bless" us with their table scraps?

If I am right about the true state of things concerning the SBDs, then why after 50 years are we not finally being showered with them? why am i devoting cumulatively who-the-heck-knows-how-much time checking for "new" material by a 50-yr-old band, and hunting on eBay for things based sometimes on mere rumors? It's not like if we get the soundboards then that's it no more way for monetary gain or anything, there are still the multitracks, which will bring in so much more revenue anyway that the point becomes moot. Yes, i DO want 500 slightly-different nearly-studio versions of Stairway, straight from that beautiful tape with its unique natural sound and possibly even higher bit-depths and sample-rates than 16/44. If I see one more txt file saying "here's your 6th-time-processed version of something we did in Audacity which is free and thus shows exactly how truly dedicated i am to efforts such as these, and who knows if we're people who have ever even heard of decimation, nyquist theory, dithering, etc, or even heard of better software we could use instead like Izotope" then i might hurl. So, if they exist, can we please get ALL COMPLETE AND UNTOUCHED SOUNDBOARD RECORDINGS before we LITERALLY die of old age, and if nothing else I want to know why not, since it's really not that big a deal since they are just bootlegs and it's not like we're asking for the freakin' Stairway multitracks or something. I know I wrote a lot, thank you for reading if you did.

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I don't know if those never heard before bootleg are in the possession of Page or in a private collection but we can be sure there are some that we never heard. Last year we had a new bootleg coming out of a 1975 show, a pretty damn good one of a soundboard. But hey I don't know why those people just don't release them, there's a lot of topic about new bootlegs coming out, but it's still rare to see one coming out.  I'm scared to see some bootlegs disappear forever because a selfish old guy died and never release them (Page or anybody else). If you like Led Zeppelin, check out the Magik studio release, some multitrack of LZ and a lot of never widely heard version of their songs but you probably know about it. (Which BTW has been criticize on this forum because Page refuse to release "clean/clear" version of those magik studio bootleg (which are raw) because they have been heard by 3/4 of big fan, 1/10 of "normal" fan and 1/50 of potential buyers of the campaign release, and still Page release a LZ I bonus disk with a freaking live in Paris that is already on Youtube and of the same quality, I mean wtf).

sorry if there's some mistakes, I'm french.

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The guys with the stolen SBD's are obviously making coin so why give them up? I personally would like them all made available, maybe one giant flac torrent, and the masters returned to Page since they were STOLEN from him - but I definitely would love them to be made available before return being the fan I am (I realise the somewhat hypocritical nature of that, and accept that / don't care :P)

Back to reality....

Not much anyone can do taking the "scraps" of the bottleggers and any dodgy edits/EQ'ing etc. they do. THEY have the SBD's, THEY decide on what to do with them. If they are fucking shit up, what can we do? I guess they can't really even ask for help or reveal themselves given the somewhat illegal nature of what they are doing ( a lot of assumptions in that, fucked if I know really). It is what it is. We will just have to wait another year or two for Jimmy to release a LZ live album (I think this is likely) for a better sounding live show release.

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i want to ask "but just why deprive us then, even if not all SBDs and follow same format, why keep complete shows from us?" but i cant, because something about all this really doesnt add up. 

1) i am listening to Lord Of The Strings right now, the 30th. listen to No Quarter. you cant seriously tell me there's anything accidental about how the AUD edit starts EXACTLY at that rockin part and also EXACTLY when it ends. just, why? you cant possibly tell me it's because of:

2) copyright. it's not like "if you leave an edit in there you can't be sued". every last one of these SBDs are in violation of copyright law four seconds into the first song. and speaking of which, whether it be specifically Jimmy or Zep's labels or both, if they cared why haven't they taken action? didnt EVSD begin well over a decade ago? there would be no Empress if anyone who mattered cared. but then why keep parts of shows from us, if not all the shows?

3) quality. even if they didn't know it before, now that they do, why arent we getting these re-released to us in full glory, and whether this idea appeals to you or not that means no processing including no track breaks. To get the show in full glory = proper digital transfer at same sample rate and bit depth 100% dry and all in one go, and that's it. it means giving us a copy

putting these three points together do not add up. the labels would not exist if page, plant, atlantic or whomever cared one even one tiny bit. that the labels defy copyright and still exist means that truly no one cares, because no one in that industry turns down free money and if you're just going to throw yourselves to the wolves aka lawyers like that, they not only will gladly take it, but you can be CERTAIN they wont turn down what they see as business opportunity. so no one cares who matters, and even if they did and they needed the actual bootleggers to do anything legally, the bootleggers could still follow the current model. so why aren't we really getting them then. even if we're not being "showered" with them, why the edits? most significant, why the apparent disregard for quality by supposed purists? i wont go on so as to not write a second russian novel but srsly does anyone have any insight to any of these matters whatsoever?

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btw just in case i need to point out the obvious, in 2016 we are at a technological point when every single last piece of hardware used for DAT transfer is obsolete. I can tell you from having worked in a place specializing in DAT repair exactly how rarely a DAT deck actually passed through our hands, they truly are on the verge of never being seen again. google if you don't believe me; there are literally entire businesses who just transfer DAT for people, that's how rare it's become, and it's only going to get more rare. CDs are long obsolete, and it's becoming difficult to even find a computer for sale now -- obviously not new -- that has a disc drive, even optical drives are going out the door. dropouts and compatibility issues stem from the recorders and tapes not the computers, and everything that is hardware will only depreciate further and these are already practically extinct, so the remaining option of a professional sound card won't even matter soon enough, and even then it's not like sector boundaries etc are common knowledge. so if you do in fact die of natural causes before you ever hear even one truly complete and untouched led zeppelin soundboard recording, don't worry, because no one else ever will either, because the data will be lost forever. do you guys see what i am saying? it's not a question of prying them from the hoarders' cold dead fingers, it's a matter of whether or not it will still be possible to retrieve the data on them by then. it is entirely possible that we are within one single decade of NEVER being able to perform a DAT transfer again, because at the end of the day you're talking about hardware that needs to be maintained and eventually the parts to maintain them go extinct themselves. holding out to sell them at $500 a pop on eBay on CD? cool. except for the part where no one has a CD player any more. time is the enemy. and it's been fifty years. you've had your fun, too bad you didn't have the foresight to unload your consumer-level physical mediums while they still, ya know, EXISTED, but you didn't, and now it's TIME to give up the goods. it just really bothers me that, for example, one of the 1977 recordings that is considered canon is Utah. that recording is literally unlistenable IMO, it's a giant steaming pile that i literally have listened to once and never will again because it really is that bad; and yet that's the standard. people shouldnt be OK with that. 

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I too find it difficult to get to the point that DATguy is making. If it is that the bootleggers should take more care/be more honest/release better versions of concerts then it is all a bit of  a pointless rage against the sky-bootleggers are in the business of making money out of illegal recordings and I doubt if they are even fans of the group whose product they put together and sell. 

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I'm little confused, I could have sworn the OP originally had UK as his location and thought he lived in the UK but now changed his location.   Do you live in the U.S. ?  I find it hard to believe the hardware will be fully obsolete.  Maybe in some parts of the country but I don't fully see it dying. 

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Did they have anything scheduled there that was cancelled? News to me.

Lot of folks would and do mark recordings that don't circulate, so if they find out something of theirs is up for sale and a week later circulating, they know who ended up selling it. By marking it in different ways for each person they exchange with. Obviously this would only be used for things that weren't widely available. Always be the smartest guy in the room, they say. Lot of legit LZ fans would completely overlook a cut in the middle of a long drum or piano or noise solo, so it was pretty smart. Especially if you knew the person you're trading with absolutely hates No Quarter (wtf, bad example but you feel me)

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I'm not sure how Utah '77 came into topic.  The show never existed and looked at a site and does not even show canceled.   Maybe he meant the complete Utah '73 show ?  I think the board recording was cut right when things were getting good in Whole Lotta Love , and / or cut somewhere and not complete show ?

Edit:  I have no idea, lol.   Isnt there a New Mexico show confused for another show and wrong date ?

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No expert here, but the raw 1st generation versions of many boots are available.  From there, you can go any direction you wish.  That's just a guess towards your question.  I don't see how anyone could determine what was originally there, be it soundboard or audience.

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