It's extremely unlikely he has any multi-tracks sitting in the vaults that we don't know about, especially from the last half of the '70s. The main reason I say that is there are pictures of most of the shows from that time period and if any of the gigs were multi-tracked, there would be extra microphones visible in the photos. Unfortunately, people have gone over them with a fine tooth comb and there just aren't any that I'm aware of, which seems to indicate that they didn't bother to record any of those shows, beyond grabbing the FOH soundboards for reference purposes.

I downloaded RX 7 and have been trying out the Music Rebalance functionality. I don't see it being able to do what we hoped it would do, namely allowing a mono soundboard to be converted into a stereo recording with Jimmy in one channel instead of both. The program works decently on existing professionally recorded stereo tracks. For instance, you can mostly remove the vocals from a song. However, it didn't work nearly as well on front of house soundboards. I'll keep playing with it, but unless I completely misunderstand how to use it (which is unlikely, as the interface is pretty simple), I'm not holding out much hope. If anyone else wants to try it, they offer a free ten day trial version that has full functionality, except you can't record what you've done (which is why I didn't post any samples of my tests.)

Thanks for posting this. It's great to see video of such an iconic show.

I remastered the soundboard of the first 1977 New York show. Here's a sample. If anyone wants a lossless copy of the full show, send me a message.

There's a section of this site dedicated to musicians where they discuss stuff like this. You might have more luck posting there. Here's the link: https://forums.ledzeppelin.com/forum/17-musician39s-corner/

That's an interesting program. Here's a demo they put together. I'm not sure how well it will work on mono recordings, but they have a ten day working trial version so it's possible to try it out before spending the US$400 they're asking for the full version.

I did, thanks for the heads up. Interesting work. Here's the link: https://www.abbeyroad.com/de-mix. And here's a video they put together of some work they did on early Stones recordings. At the 4:45 mark there's a demo of them using their tech on a mono version of Satisfaction. It definitely updates the sound, but it's not the full left\right stereo effect I think we're hoping to be able to do to Zep soundboards. However, there's no doubt this kind of processing will improve significantly over time.

Sorry if this was posted before, but I haven't scrolled through all 85 pages of this thread yet. Not really sure if I love this or hate it, but it was interesting:

The soundboards, at least the front of house ones from '75 and '77 that Empress Valley typically releases, are stereo recordings and capture the way the instruments were presented to the audience. They seem like mono recordings most of the time because all of the instruments were pumped through the PA system together so the sound was equally distributed throughout the arena. The only time you hear that they are stereo (different sounds in one channel versus another) is during things like the violin bow section of Dazed when Jimmy intentionally has the sound bounce from side to side. I'm not aware of any way to add a stereo effect that puts Jimmy in one channel by himself during the "mono" parts. The problem with doing that is his guitar and Robert's voice overlap in the frequencies they cover, so they can't really be separated when the two of them are playing at the same time. There are fake stereo effects that can be added to a recording, but they won't be able to put Jimmy in one channel by himself. At best, they'll add some ambience to the recording, but there are other ways to do that that are more convincing.

Thanks for the clarification. You just saved me a bunch of money

AirRaid is listing The Night Stalker as "multi-track soundboard", so I'm trying to see if they're correct. If they are, it changes this for me from interesting to essential. It's also the only reason I'd pay that much money for a single CD.

Can you tell us if the soundboard is a multi-track? The easiest way to tell is that Jimmy's guitar will be in the right channel instead of the center, like it is in the front of house soundboards EV normally releases. Thanks.

Bron Yr Aur Stomp. 42 Years ago tonight. Send me a message if you want the whole show.

She's 16. The band is Asterism.

Nice. Thanks for doing this.