It would seem that despite the fact that former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has been vital to his old band's music being brought into the digital age, he is not very fond of the limitations the format presents listeners with.
In a recent interview with Kerrang! Radio Page discusses why he decided to go through the time consuming and tedious job of remastering the band's entire catalog for the deluxe sets that are currently being released. Unsurprisingly, a lot of it has to do with how appalled Page was by the lack of quality found in digital music; primarily with MP3 files.
Page says, “I’d be confronted with Led Zeppelin music on MP3. It almost sounded like it had been remixed, and not very well at that. The songs lost their transience and depth on their way to MP3. They were mixed in stereo with a depth-of-field to them, with everything in focus. To have it squashed down is not how it was intended to be.”
Page has been working to make sure that with these remasters that no matter what may come in the future, the songs will be ready and properly preserved for any possible digital format.
“If you review the situation of how things are listened to, and approach vinyl, CDs and digital separately, it’s not one size fits all. We’ve got high-resolution files for whatever’s going to come down the line. It was essential to do that, to make sure you don’t have to remaster again for a number of years.”
Personally, I can't say I blame him for being so upset with digital music; primarily MP3's. When you convert something MP3 you condense it heavily; taking away much of the presence and depth of the original song as Page said. It feels like a great deal of the soul of the song has been removed in order to save space on a hard drive. If you want to have a better idea of what songs should sound like but still use a digital medium, listen to WAV or FLAC files. They may be drastically bigger than MP3's, but the quality is that much greater as well.
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