Why not copy the greats- vinyl LP question


When LP's are reissued, why are some of the great interpretations of classic music not just copied?  For example Led Zeppelin II- I would love the RL-"hot" mix but cant swing $500+ for a less than optimal copy.  Why is there not someone looking into recreating  products like these?
ericblack
The plain fact is that tape deteriorates! Thus the master does NOT have the sound it had 50 yrs ago. Then there is the lost ones. Plus it wasn't "VINTAGE" then so the records only sold for $2.99 - $4.99. Lots of things happen in 50 yrs. More people went broke in the R&R business than ever  made it big, IE Woodstock Promoters. 
Yes good point about the shape of aging masters. However the thing about most LP’s from many years ago, is that cartridges of the era weren’t able to handle low bass and dynamics (as opposed to today), so there was very often a dub of the master mixdown made for LP cutting. So aside from extra limiting/compressing there was also an extra tape generation or more. Compounding the problem, many engineers that did work liked to label the tapes they worked on as "master," so it could be confusing to find and use best available tapes for reissues over the years. That’s why I like to have a great analog system and a great digital one as well (within limits). Galvanic isolation (like the Etheregen I use) go a very long way to making digital enjoyable.







so there was very often a dub of the master mixdown made for LP cutting. So aside from extra limiting/compressing there was also an extra tape generation or more. Compounding the problem, many engineers that did work liked to label the tapes they worked on as "master," so it could be confusing to find and use best available tapes for reissues over the years.

True, And there was more than one of these "masters" for cutting, each record plant received a reel, eg, US, UK, Germany, maybe Japan. This was during the great days of analogue production.


When the world went digital, record labels had their analogue masters transferred to digital tape. These became the new masters. As digital technology progressed, higher bit and sample rates were utilized.

Jimmy Page did go back to the analogue source tapes, which allowed him to remix. But, these tapes were transferred to digital. There's a very good reason for this besides being easier to work in the digital domain. Nobody would want these old magnetic tapes threaded through various ATR's and shuttled back and forth during a mixing session.
 

Classic Records redid the Zeppelin catalog in the early-2000's, and those pressings are now worth a fortune (Classic even made them available as single-sided 45RPM LP's!). Why? Because they sound better than the originals, all of them. Hardcore collectors who own both Robert Ludwig-mastered Atlantic/Swan Song LP's and the Classic Records reissues have compared multiple copies. Classic offered the complete set in a miniature flight case, and those sell for more than most of us have spent on our hi-fi's.

Classic was granted access to the original analogue masters, from which Bernie Grundman made new lacquers. Grundman, in one of the videos about the new Analogue Productions reissue of Kind Of Blue (which he again mastered, having done the same for Classic in the late-90's), states that the idea that analogue tapes deteriorate by the simple passage of time is a myth.

QRP---Analogue Production's in-house record pressing facility---is making some of the best LP's in the entire history of recorded sound. The way the LP's are pressed, every LP is in-effect a white hot stamper record. Analogue Production's Chad Kassem is deadly serious about making the best LP's humanly possible, and the ones I own are worth every penny. Is $35 a disc too much to ask for an LP? That's a lot cheaper than the same record from Better Records. I dare anyone to compare an Analogue Productions reissue to a white hot stamper version of the same title. Go ahead---prove me wrong.