{"product_id":"ledzeinthr_2605xx","title":"Led Zeppelin - In Through The Out Door - Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis may not be Zep's best album, but there are some great songs here, and the music really works when the sound is this good!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis vintage Swan Song pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to \"see\" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- \u003ci\u003ethis sound\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of In Through The Out Door Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe most Tubey Magic, without which you have \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%221979%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1979\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTransparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. \u003ci\u003ePlaying the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,\u003c\/i\u003e and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eZep's Last from the Studio\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe found the best sounding tracks to be \"Fool In The Rain\" on side one and \"All My Love\" on side two.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In The Evening\" can rock with the best of them, \"South Bound Saurez\" can be very rich and sweet, and \"I'm Gonna Crawl\" can sound out of this world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn fact, after playing two knockout copies we found back to back, I am a bigger fan of this album than I ever was.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On In Through The Out Door\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEnergy\u003c\/strong\u003e for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen: \u003cstrong\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e. The vocals aren't \"back there\" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Sound\u003c\/strong\u003e comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen \u003cstrong\u003etransient information\u003c\/strong\u003e -- fast, clear, sharp attacks for the guitars and drums, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTight punchy bass\u003c\/strong\u003e -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNext: \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtend the top and bottom\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003ci\u003evoila\u003c\/i\u003e, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAnd The Classic Pressing?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter finishing our first shootout for this album in August of 2007, our faces were sure red. We used to think the Classic version was pretty decent, but the best originals slaughter it! We had never done a shootout for this album before that. We didn't feel up to the challenge, because most pressings tend to be miserable -- gritty, grainy, hard sounding, congested mids, dull, and so on.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe better pressings of this album sound \u003ci\u003eamazing\u003c\/i\u003e, but they are few and far between. The test is an easy one -- a copy that makes you want to turn up the volume is likely a winner. The Classic does not pass that test.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe threw one on and just couldn't deal with the edgy vocals and upper midrange boost. As far as we're concerned, there's no substitute for the real thing. As hard as it is to find great sounding copies of this album, it's positively impossible to sit through Classic's version.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Led Zeppelin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51800487002408,"sku":"ledzeinthr","price":99.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/variantC.jpg?v=1755198629","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/ledzeinthr_2605xx","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}