George Chkiantz, Engineer – Reviews and Commentaries

Listening in Depth to Led Zeppelin IV

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Zep’s mighty fourth album.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

We always have a great time doing Zep IV shootouts. It’s one of those all-too-rare cases where amazing music and amazing sonics coexist on the same slab of vinyl. You just need to find the right slab, a proposition that turns out to be much harder than it sounds.

You probably know by now just how tough it is to find audiophile quality sonics on this album. Far too many copies just leave us cold, but the best pressings, whether British or domestic, are so good, and so much fun at the loud volumes we employ, that it ends up being worth all the time, trouble and expense it takes to wade through the vinyl dreck to find them.

But the best copies are so good, and so much fun, that it was definitely worth the trouble. Because the best copies ROCK, and it is a positive THRILL to hear this record rock the way it was meant to. If you have big speakers and the power to drive them, your neighbors are going to be very upset with you.

This link will take you to the Hot Stamper pressings of our hardest rockin’ albums currently available on the site.

Here are some of the other titles that have earned a place on our none rocks harder list.

Side One

Black Dog

The key to both of the first two tracks is to find a copy with a solid bottom end. Next look for an extended top end, easily heard on all the splashing cymbals.

Now listen for a tonally correct Robert Plant. The copies with lots of top will typically have him sounding too bright.

The copies with little in the way of high frequency extension will have him sounding veiled and dull.

One out of ten copies (with potentially good stampers) will get all three right: the top, the bottom and his voice. When you hear it you know it immediately, but you sure do have to go through a lot of copies before you have much of a chance of hearing it!

Rock and Roll

“[Rock and Roll] was a little tough to record because with the hi-hat being so open and [Bonham] hitting it that hard it was difficult to control. But I managed somehow or another.” Andy Johns

“The better copies prove once and for all that these are some of most up-front, lively and above all real sounding rock cymbals ever put on tape.” Tom Port
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Letter of the Week – “I have been listening to a first pressing Decca, but your copy made it sound egregiously insipid.”

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

This LET IT BLEED is a gorgeous monster. Everything just jumps off the page, so to speak. I have been listening to a first pressing Decca, which I have owned for years, but your copy made it sound egregiously insipid. As I kept turning up the volume, the room seemed to be nodding its head and egging me on to keep increasing it. I never reached the point where too much was too much. Great copy.

The Mahavishnu EMERALD was brilliant. It brought out all the exciting dimensions of my system. The exquisite strings floated above the musical melee which tattooed its obligato deliriously across its raucous underbelly. The sound reached out like tongues of flame making the speakers completely disappear in their rocking wake.

This is an amazing record that projects and dances the music in every direction and then some. Everything is alive. So completely alive. A real treat. A great recording that tells me my system is completely responsive.

Phil

Phil,

We’ve known for a very long time — since roughly 2005 — what an awful pressing the original mono Decca is of the album.

When we last heard one, it did not evn pass the laugh test, and we never bought another.

Even the original Decca stereo pressings of the album are not that good, and at the prices being charged these days, a very poor choice if you want the best sound.

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On King Crimson’s Red Album, How Good Are the Polydor Pressings?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of King Crimson Available Now

Harsh and congested.

Not remotely competitive with the British originals.

Clean copies on the UK Island label may be hard to find, but they are the only game in town if you are serious about sound.

Want to find your own killer copy?

Consider taking the following moderately helpful advice.

As of 2024, shootouts for this album should be carried out:

How else can you expect to hear the record sound its best?

Based on our experience, Red sounds better:

That’s about it. They are neither easy nor cheap to find, but they are definitely the best sounding.

There’s more collecting help where that came from. Click on the top link below to learn about the pressings that win shootouts.

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Led Zeppelin / II – A New Player Joins the Fun

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Aaron writes to us often about records. Here is his latest offering. (I’ve made some comments of my own. They are the ones that are not italicized.)

Hi Tom,

Today I did something I’ve wanted to do for years – I played The Two Game.

The Two Game is based on The Blue Game, the one we created for Joni’s Blue Album way back in 2007. That game was apparently harder to play than we thought since nobody seemed to want to play it.

The Rhino pressing’s shortcomings were clear to us at the time, all the way back in 2007, and we noted that it was even superior to the best Bernie Grundman-mastered vintage pressings in one respect. But it seems that no one besides us could figure out what was going on with the sound of the record, even after we gave our customers a free copy so they could play it at home head to head against our Hot Stamper pressing.

With my stereo finally dialed-in and my family all out of the house, I dived in to the Page remaster of Zep 2, side by side with my White Hot Stamper. To help the comparison, I backdropped it with a bunch of other copies I’ve accumulated over the years.

Tom, I figure I’ll need several tries to get to the bottom of this, but it’s going to be an awesome ear-training experience for me, and if I have to listen to any record on repeat, this is a good one. So let me share my thoughts from this first comparison, and maybe you can point out some directions to go in next time I’m up for trying it again.

I chose The Lemon Song, because it is awesome, and because I view it as one of the tracks that’s most balanced overall, with all the instruments contributing about equally, and relatively devoid of studio tricks. Like a kid left to eat all he wants of his favorite candy, I had to eventually stop just from fatigue and satiation.

I recommended The Lemon Song to a customer who wanted to play the game, writing:

Pay special attention in your shootout to The Lemon Song. I am going to discuss some things I learned about it recently. See how all your versions do on the song and what you think each version is doing right and wrong. Enjoy and have fun.

I think the Page remaster actually corrects a problem with this track that exists on all the original versions of the album mastered by Robert Ludwig. For anyone else who wants to play the game, please consider this a clue.

Another piece of advice would be that The Lemon Song is not a good track for overall testing.

There are much better tracks for that purpose, tracks that will make it much easier to recognize what is so fundamentally different about the two pressings.

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Can Houses of the Holy Get Any Better? Apparently It Can

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling Led Zeppelin power – our most recent Shootout Winning copies of Houses of the Holy knocked us out with their Demo Disc sound.

The Tubey Magical acoustic guitars here should be a wake up call to everyone that any attempt to remaster this album — to outdo Robert Ludwig and his awesome tube compressors and hi-rez transistor cutting equipment — is bound to fail.

This kind of sound is gone and it is never coming back.

Here are our notes for the top two copies from our recent shootout, each of which had one Shootout Winning side and one that came close but did not quite earn the top grade.

Side One

Track Three (Over the Hills and Far Away)

  • Upfront and detailed and breathy
  • Spacious
  • Big and wide when it kicks in

Track One (The Song Remains the Same)

  • Huge and rich and weighty
  • Vocals are less veiled
  • Richest, with the most extension high and low

Note that we played both a rocker as well as a quieter, more acoustic track. This is standard operating procedure. Both of these very different sounding songs have to sound their best.

Side two had a few problems which kept it from doing as well as side one.

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Led Zeppelin II on Classic Records – Seriously, What Could Be Sadder?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

An unmitigated disaster — ridiculously bright and ridiculously crude.

In short, a completely unlistenable piece of garbage, and, along with the MoFi pressing from 1982, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.

Over the years we have done many Led Zeppelin shootouts, often including the Classic Heavy Vinyl Pressings as a “reference.” After all, the Classic pressings are considered by many — if not most — audiophiles as superior to other pressings.

What could be sadder?

In fact, you will find very few critics of the Classic Zep LPs outside of those of us (me and the rat in my pocket) who write for this Better Records, and even we used to recommend three of the Zep titles on Classic: Led Zeppelin I, IV and Presence when they first came out.

Wrong on all counts.

Since then we’ve made it a point to review most of the Classic Zeps, a public service of Better Records. We don’t actually like any of them now, although the first album is still by far the best of the bunch.

Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years.

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Led Zeppelin IV – The First Two Tracks on Side One Are Key

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

We always have a great time doing Zep IV shootouts. It’s one of those all-too-rare cases where amazing music and amazing sonics potentially coexist on the same slab of vinyl. You just need to find the right slab and be able to clean it right, a proposition that turns out to be much harder than it might sound.

You probably know by now just how tough it is to find audiophile quality sonics on this album. Far too many copies just leave us cold. However, the best pressings, whether British or domestic, are so good, and so much fun at the loud volumes we play them at, that in the end it turns out to be worth all the time, trouble and expense it has taken to find them.

On these two tracks, the best pressings of Led Zeppelin IV were capable of producing some of the biggest, boldest sound we have ever heard.

It’s clearly a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels. The louder you play it, the better it sounds.

Warning: do not attempt to play this album on any system that looks like this one.

The two tracks we discuss below are the ones that can truly test the energy and musical drive of whatever pressing you are playing. If you are fortunate to be able to have one of our better Hot Stamper copies on your table, the energy and musical drive of Black Dog and Rock and Roll might just take your breath away.

Side One

Black Dog

The key to both of the first two tracks is to find a copy with a solid bottom end. Next look for an extended top end, easily heard on all the splashing cymbals.

Now listen for a tonally correct Robert Plant.

(more…)

Physical Graffiti on Classic Records

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Classic Records Rock LP badly mastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes.

Tonally correct, which is one thing you can’t say for most of the Zeps in this series, that’s for sure. Those of you with crappy domestic copies, crappy imported reissues and crappy CDs, which make up the bulk of offerings available for this recording, probably do not know what you’re missing.

What’s Lost

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is transparency.

Modern records are just so damn opaque.

We can’t stand that sound. It drives us crazy. Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found. That audiophiles as a group — including those that pass themselves off as champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

It is our contention that almost no one alive today is capable of making records that sound as good as the vintage ones we sell.

Once you hear a Hot Stamper pressing, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly-cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the newer ones.

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Led Zeppelin / II – Jimmy Page Remasters a Classic, Part III

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our customers did his own comparison with two pressings he had on hand. (Emphasis added.)

I briefly listened to the recent JP copy against the RL pressing I have from Presswell. I think that (according to Robert Brook) the Monarch or Specialty ones usually win your shootouts, and that the Presswells don’t often sound as transparent. The copy I have is pretty good but probably still falls into this category.

Having said that, my main takeaway was the almost complete absence of reverb on the JP copy. This was especially apparent when listening to the big drums and the vocals. The RL cut seems to give a much better sense of the studio and more space around the instruments, on my system.

The imaging and placement of the musicians is clear and distinct, but not as spacious as the RL pressing. The tonality and timbre on the JP cut are very good though, and the mix is not muddy and does not fall apart in loud complex passages like most other modern pressings I have heard. But this may have been his intention: to focus the instruments and tighten up the way the compositions come across without the “echoey” quality of the reverb and the overwhelming bass of the RL cut.

Also the JP cut is a bit more angular sounding and less tubey magic, but that could be my pressing — which is definitely tubey.

The overall sound of the JP is surprisingly good, but it sounds a more compressed to me than the RL, and the dynamic range also seems a bit more constricted.

Ian

Ian,

A lot of what you are hearing I would have to check again, since a lot of what you note is not something that stuck out to me, although it ties in to the one big issue that is fundamental to the difference in sound between the two pressings.

I’ve just been reading what different reviewers have said about the sound of the new album versus the old one, and most of it does not sound very much like the albums I played, but double-checking all this now that I live in GA is going to be hard!

I may have my main guy Riley give it another listen for some things, like reverb and compressed dynamics, and see what he thinks.

Best, TP

Click here to read the original story from January, 2023

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Led Zeppelin / II – Jimmy Page Remasters a Classic, Updated

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

A customer who bought one of our Hot Stampers was sent the Page remaster, free of charge of course. He wrote us a nice letter about what a thrill it was to hear such an amazing record — the original, not the reissue — and we made the following comment to him about the shootout he said he was going to do.

Bill,

Pay special attention in your shootout to The Lemon Song. I am going to discuss some things I learned about it recently. See how all your versions do on the song and what you think each version is doing right and wrong.

Enjoy and have fun.

Click here to read the whole story from January, 2023