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Can anyone explain this? Complete Studio Recordings


Skylark

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I’m essentially a Led Zeppelin newbie, (even though I’m no youngster); They’re one band that kept slipping through my fingers back in the day. But recently I decided to fix that, so I just bought The Complete Studio Recordings on CD. I had heard nothing but raves about Jimmy Page’s remastering job and I was really looking forward to the set arriving. I put the first disc in the player and… WTH? Several of the tracks had jarringly abrupt endings; they would begin to fade and then just stop! A few thoughts came to minds;
 
  1. I had been sold a bootleg copy.
  2. Page or somebody didn’t know what they were doing.
  3. That's the way they intended it to sound (it was an “effect”). What the heck did know?
 
So I ran and scoured amazon’s comments; almost unanimous with 5-star ratings. Among the highest I’ve ever seen for a box set. I went to YouTube to listen to a few tracks; all the same abrupt endings. And then I remembered something; I already owned Led Zeppelin II. So I compared it to the disc from the box set and… They ARE different! This is most noticeable between tracks 8 and 9 (Moby Dick and Bring It On Home). On my regular disc those two songs flow one into the other —without any silence between them— but on the “new and improved” disc the songs are separated by a gap of two full seconds! And —horror of horrors— when Bring It On Home begins you can hear the end of Moby Dick still fading out! WHAT?!?!?! It sounds like a splice made with safety scissors and duct tape!
 
So I’m hoping one of you can help me make sense of it all. Why does everyone seem so happy with this set? It strikes me as an inexcusable hack job! How can anyone be okay with this (even if there’s not another error to be found)? How can it be that a total newbie discovered this gaffe within seconds of tearing away the shrink wrap, yet I haven’t found a single mention of it among the hundreds of reviews at amazon?
 
Thanks for your time...
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Sounds like a bootleg disk made with outdated (think:"Disk-At-Once") technology... this was used to copy music or data disks, master disk in one tray, CD-R in the other, just like dubbing cassette tapes.. software then inserted unwanted space between index numbers (tracks) and had a way of gradually getting out of sync, cutting the ends of songs to make room for the second or two of silence between tracks.

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If you know someone who has a legit copy of this compare them. Originals will have sharp printing (on both the disc and cover art) and counterfeits will be noticeably worse. If you bought it on ebay, you can return it - you won't even have to pay the shipping.

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Thanks to all for weighing in with your thoughts. If this set is a knock-off, it's an amazing one (and no CD-R's) but --in any case-- it's going back.

Cheers!

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