Done with digital

godofwealth

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I agree multimiked recordings can sound awful, whether analog or digital. When I first heard the legendary Mercury Living Presence on CD remastered lovingly by Wilma Cozart Fine, who took exceptional care to transfer the 3 channel tube mixer and microphone made analog tape masters to CD, I was really impressed. Many of those 60+ year old recordings seem to have way more dynamic range than the average commercially made classical recordings from DG, EMI, etc. Clearly, the MLP series was a labor of love for Wilma Cozart in memory of her late husband Robert Fine, who was the producer on these legendary recordings. These recordings virtually always used 3 mikes that fed into a massive tube mixer or 35 mm tape machine with no equalization or compression. She used a state of the art system to monitor the digital remasters, but she always maintained the original three channel analog tapes were far superior. She felt despite her best efforts, the digital remastered failed to reproduce the hall ambience. Incidentally, the legendary Decca recording engineer Kenneth Wilkinson, who also did many of the famous Lyrita albums, felt exactly the same and said so in a TAS interview. On Hi Fi La Espanola (a Harry Pearson favorite), the dynamic range is stupendous, and with a large enough subwoofer system, like my two REL G1 Mk2, you can shake the walls. Another of my favorites is the Paul Paray Dances of Death, especially Dance Of The Seven Veils from Salome. Also, the incredible detailed liner notes on these CDs is a model that few companies emulate. Yes, there’s tape hiss and in several recordings, the limitations of the early microphones is obvious. But the sheer dynamic range is impressive. That entire collection, which I own, convinced me that CDs can sound really good if the recordings are properly done and mastered. Alas, they are a rare exception. Most commercial classical albums are so poorly mastered (e.g., SF Mahler series), it’s depressing.

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sbo6

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basically; i enjoy hanging with like minded folk who i share interests with. that sorta understand where i'm coming from. feeling a part of something and belonging. and chewing the fat. with no particular place to go.

the best plan.....is....no plan.

where was i? :rolleyes:
110% agree. And for me - it's ultimately about the people you meet through the hobby and the music. Everything else is a far second...
 
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Al M.

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I agree multimiked recordings can sound awful, whether analog or digital. When I first heard the legendary Mercury Living Presence on CD remastered lovingly by Wilma Cozart Fine, who took exceptional care to transfer the 3 channel tube mixer and microphone made analog tape masters to CD, I was really impressed. Many of those 60+ year old recordings seem to have way more dynamic range than the average commercially made classical recordings from DG, EMI, etc. Clearly, the MLP series was a labor of love for Wilma Cozart in memory of her late husband Robert Fine, who was the producer on these legendary recordings. These recordings virtually always used 3 mikes that fed into a massive tube mixer or 35 mm tape machine with no equalization or compression. She used a state of the art system to monitor the digital remasters, but she always maintained the original three channel analog tapes were far superior. She felt despite her best efforts, the digital remastered failed to reproduce the hall ambience.

Or perhaps it was her digital recording/ playback gear at the time that did not allow her to hear the hall ambience (she did the CD masterings from 1990 - 1995). At that time, especially on the playback side, digital had problems with low level signals, including hall ambience. My current CD playback renders hall ambience rather well.
 
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microstrip

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I agree multimiked recordings can sound awful, whether analog or digital. When I first heard the legendary Mercury Living Presence on CD remastered lovingly by Wilma Cozart Fine, who took exceptional care to transfer the 3 channel tube mixer and microphone made analog tape masters to CD, I was really impressed. Many of those 60+ year old recordings seem to have way more dynamic range than the average commercially made classical recordings from DG, EMI, etc. Clearly, the MLP series was a labor of love for Wilma Cozart in memory of her late husband Robert Fine, who was the producer on these legendary recordings. These recordings virtually always used 3 mikes that fed into a massive tube mixer or 35 mm tape machine with no equalization or compression. She used a state of the art system to monitor the digital remasters, but she always maintained the original three channel analog tapes were far superior. She felt despite her best efforts, the digital remastered failed to reproduce the hall ambience. Incidentally, the legendary Decca recording engineer Kenneth Wilkinson, who also did many of the famous Lyrita albums, felt exactly the same and said so in a TAS interview. On Hi Fi La Espanola (a Harry Pearson favorite), the dynamic range is stupendous, and with a large enough subwoofer system, like my two REL G1 Mk2, you can shake the walls. Another of my favorites is the Paul Paray Dances of Death, especially Dance Of The Seven Veils from Salome. Also, the incredible detailed liner notes on these CDs is a model that few companies emulate. Yes, there’s tape hiss and in several recordings, the limitations of the early microphones is obvious. But the sheer dynamic range is impressive. That entire collection, which I own, convinced me that CDs can sound really good if the recordings are properly done and mastered. Alas, they are a rare exception. Most commercial classical albums are so poorly mastered (e.g., SF Mahler series), it’s depressing.

Several people who listened to the discrete three channel recordings reports the same - two channel stereo is not able to create the ambience of the three channel system. But as someone said, we must live with and enjoy a "flawed" system. Although I am not a multichannel user for music, IMHO hall ambience is much better reproduced in some multichannel recordings.

Harry Perason wrote a long and interesting article in TAS about the Wilma Cozart Fine remasters for digital and later in 2010 he also wrote some words about it in her obituary https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/wilma-cozart-fine-the-muse-of-mercury. I quote :

" I learned from her experiences with the CD transfers, since I was able to hear some of the comparisons. She insisted that CDs and original LPs represented two different views of the original, that neither was a perfect replica, and that both told different, but equally valid truths about the originals. What I learned from this was to accept digital sound and its possibilities on their own terms and not get caught up with misguided euphonic tube-like colorations that were themselves a distortion of the original."

And , as Al. M wisely says in his post, all this happened in the late 80's, when digital recording was in its early and poor understood phase.
 

nirodha

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I am done with digital. After having suffered thru every digital format available over the years, and never liking the sound of any of it, I am putting all my time, money and effort into my analog front-ends (turntable and tapedeck).

How many of you have a similar story to tell?
:p Liner notes in cd version of Synergy’s album Sequencer.;) Couldn’t resist hihi
 

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godofwealth

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Several people who listened to the discrete three channel recordings reports the same - two channel stereo is not able to create the ambience of the three channel system. But as someone said, we must live with and enjoy a "flawed" system. Although I am not a multichannel user for music, IMHO hall ambience is much better reproduced in some multichannel recordings.

Harry Perason wrote a long and interesting article in TAS about the Wilma Cozart Fine remasters for digital and later in 2010 he also wrote some words about it in her obituary https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/wilma-cozart-fine-the-muse-of-mercury. I quote :

" I learned from her experiences with the CD transfers, since I was able to hear some of the comparisons. She insisted that CDs and original LPs represented two different views of the original, that neither was a perfect replica, and that both told different, but equally valid truths about the originals. What I learned from this was to accept digital sound and its possibilities on their own terms and not get caught up with misguided euphonic tube-like colorations that were themselves a distortion of the original."

And , as Al. M wisely says in his post, all this happened in the late 80's, when digital recording was in its early and poor understood phase.
I like that quote from HP. I was a long time subscriber to TAS when he was the editor in chief. TAS was wonderful in the old days. Highly opinionated reviews. Many components got roasted by HP, including as I recall, a famous Audio Research preamp, the SP-15, which HP claimed was inferior to the SP-10. That of course incensed William Zane Johnson, the chief architect behind ARC’s legendary designs.

To me, CD, high res, and vinyl are all noisy approximations of the original concert hall ( or jazz club) sound, and the more you hear live concerts, the better you understand the flaws in all reproduction media, no matter their design.
 

nirodha

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I like that quote from HP. I was a long time subscriber to TAS when he was the editor in chief. TAS was wonderful in the old days. Highly opinionated reviews. Many components got roasted by HP, including as I recall, a famous Audio Research preamp, the SP-15, which HP claimed was inferior to the SP-10. That of course incensed William Zane Johnson, the chief architect behind ARC’s legendary designs.

To me, CD, high res, and vinyl are all noisy approximations of the original concert hall ( or jazz club) sound, and the more you hear live concerts, the better you understand the flaws in all reproduction media, no matter their design.
Is just an opinion. Compared to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam I prefer my “flawed” system at home;). Why waste your time here btw?:rolleyes:
 

Mike Lavigne

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endless threads about live venues <-> home systems. no doubt our home systems are not capable of matching certain aspects of the live experience. OTOH high level home systems deliver their own set of attributes live does not deliver. listening to reproduced music has it's advantages.

i prefer home system listening. some recordings sound more real than others, just like live music experiences differ.

i seek an immersive, connective musical experience where i find it.

i fully respect those who focus on what reproduced music does (or does not) do to live up to the live experience. sometimes i think about those things too. but not very often.
 
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sbo6

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i seek an immersive, connective musical experience where i find it.
Where's the Love button? It's all about the music wherever it is, 110% correct IMO! :)
 
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godofwealth

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Is just an opinion. Compared to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam I prefer my “flawed” system at home;). Why waste your time here btw?:rolleyes:
So? You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to mine. By the way, I seriously doubt anyone on What’s Best forum will share your opinion that your “flawed” system at home sounds better than the Concertgebouw. I’m astonished anyone would think that. Certainly, if you said your system at home lets you listen to a wider range of music than the Concertgebouw, I get that. It’s certainly easier to stream music on one’s stereo than schlep across town to hear a concert. But “better”?

Wow! I’m amazed anyone thinks that the Berlioz Requiem with 500 singers, a 200 piece orchestra and a full brass ensemble arrayed across a large concert hall could reproduced accurately in a home system, even one costing 10 million dollars. Certainly in my. 35+ years of buying high end audio and going to concerts, I’ve never once felt that. But as you said, that’s only my opinion. But it was HP’s opinion, which is why TAS was called The Absolute Sound. Beautiful title. That’s what it is. Live unamplified music is The Absolute Sound.

One does not need to listen to an entire orchestra. I taught for 20 years at a lovely university campus with access to weekly chamber and choral performances. I remember one cold New England winter evening listening to a performance of Schubert’s Das Wintereise by our local music faculty member who was a tenor. If there’s a more heartfelt song sequence in classical music, I haven’t heard it. The entire song sequence, one of Fran’s Schubert’s greatest song cycles, is beautiful, full of pathos as only Schubert could express in his music. The staggering dynamics of a human voice in a small concert hall is amazing. Sitting 50 feet away from the tenor, I could feel the waves of sound from his voice blow over me like a sonic hurricane. And the last song in the cycle, The Organ Grinder, expresses the ultimate desolation of a lonely organ grinder freezing to death on a street cranking out a melody and begging for alms from the passers by. Here is the English translation of the last song in Winterreise. You have to hear it sung by a great singer, for example the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau. Even if you don’t do anything else this weekend, listen to the Winterreise if you have never heard it. It’s immortal music. Hear it live if you can.

“Just beyond the village
stands a hurdy-gurdy man,
and with numb fingers
he plays as best he can.

Barefoot on the ice
he totters to and fro,
and his little plate
has no reward to show.

No-one wants to listen,
no-one takes a scan,
and the dogs all growl
around the aged man.

And he lets it happen,
as it always will,
grinds his hurdy-gurdy;
it is never still.

Curious old fellow,
shall I go with you?
When I sing my songs,
will you play your hurdy-gurdy too?”
 

nirodha

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Aug 11, 2010
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So? You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to mine. By the way, I seriously doubt anyone on What’s Best forum will share your opinion that your “flawed” system at home sounds better than the Concertgebouw. I’m astonished anyone would think that. Certainly, if you said your system at home lets you listen to a wider range of music than the Concertgebouw, I get that. It’s certainly easier to stream music on one’s stereo than schlep across town to hear a concert. But “better”?

Wow! I’m amazed anyone thinks that the Berlioz Requiem with 500 singers, a 200 piece orchestra and a full brass ensemble arrayed across a large concert hall could reproduced accurately in a home system, even one costing 10 million dollars. Certainly in my. 35+ years of buying high end audio and going to concerts, I’ve never once felt that. But as you said, that’s only my opinion. But it was HP’s opinion, which is why TAS was called The Absolute Sound. Beautiful title. That’s what it is. Live unamplified music is The Absolute Sound.

One does not need to listen to an entire orchestra. I taught for 20 years at a lovely university campus with access to weekly chamber and choral performances. I remember one cold New England winter evening listening to a performance of Schubert’s Das Wintereise by our local music faculty member who was a tenor. If there’s a more heartfelt song sequence in classical music, I haven’t heard it. The entire song sequence, one of Fran’s Schubert’s greatest song cycles, is beautiful, full of pathos as only Schubert could express in his music. The staggering dynamics of a human voice in a small concert hall is amazing. Sitting 50 feet away from the tenor, I could feel the waves of sound from his voice blow over me like a sonic hurricane. And the last song in the cycle, The Organ Grinder, expresses the ultimate desolation of a lonely organ grinder freezing to death on a street cranking out a melody and begging for alms from the passers by. Here is the English translation of the last song in Winterreise. You have to hear it sung by a great singer, for example the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau. Even if you don’t do anything else this weekend, listen to the Winterreise if you have never heard it. It’s immortal music. Hear it live if you can.

“Just beyond the village
stands a hurdy-gurdy man,
and with numb fingers
he plays as best he can.

Barefoot on the ice
he totters to and fro,
and his little plate
has no reward to show.

No-one wants to listen,
no-one takes a scan,
and the dogs all growl
around the aged man.

And he lets it happen,
as it always will,
grinds his hurdy-gurdy;
it is never still.

Curious old fellow,
shall I go with you?
When I sing my songs,
will you play your hurdy-gurdy too?”
I never used the word “better” ;)
 
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nirodha

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A Sunday morning session. Enjoy whatever and wherever you are listening (to)
 

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Pokey77

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1. OTOH high level home systems deliver their own set of attributes live does not deliver. listening to reproduced music has it's advantages.

2. i prefer home system listening.
1. I fully agree Mike.

2. I also agree here. I've been to hundreds of shows and I'm now to the point my ears ring sometimes (not wanting to write or speak the technical term to acknowledge the phenomenon I'm experiencing.) It is far more important for me to now focus on retaining my hearing than to be in the live event.
 
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microstrip

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Is just an opinion. Compared to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam I prefer my “flawed” system at home;). Why waste your time here btw?:rolleyes:

IMHO they are not comparable - my hearing works differently in life or in reproduced sound. o_O Read Wilma Cozart Fine on the subject: (a very interesting interview, although dating from 1995) https://www.kcstudio.com/wilmacozartfine2.html

BD: Do you ever feel that you’re in competition with live concerts?


WCF: No, I don’t really, I think they compliment each other, in all honesty, and in fact I can’t imagine that anybody would really think that, because going to a concert in one kind of experience, very rich, very wonderful, and listening to a recording is another. Just think about it. If you do a concert and see an artist there on the stage you see this being done live and it’s marvelous, you love the artist you love the piece. If you buy a recording, even if the same artist has recorded it, you can go back and study it, you can play it, you can track different places, you can hear things as many times as you want to. Then if you enjoy it, you can listen to it any way you want to - in your pajamas, after dinner, when you first get up in the morning, whatever. If you also want to know how another artist might play it or interpret it, you can go buy another record. You might not be able to hear that artist again. The person might not be around anymore, might not be performing anymore or might not be performing in your city for several years. With records, I find they compliment each other.
 

microstrip

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(...) You have to hear it sung by a great singer, for example the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau. Even if you don’t do anything else this weekend, listen to the Winterreise if you have never heard it. It’s immortal music. Hear it live if you can. (....)

Not sang by Fischer Dieskau, but I listened to Matthias Goerne and Markus Hinterhaüser. It is just my opinion, but no sound reproduction system can transmit the gloomy and sad atmosphere of Winterreise as a top life performance in a good concert hall. As you I was fortunate to get a good place at about 20 feet. Music is not just the physical sound, the soul of the performers is also part of it.
 

Lee

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I agree multimiked recordings can sound awful, whether analog or digital. When I first heard the legendary Mercury Living Presence on CD remastered lovingly by Wilma Cozart Fine, who took exceptional care to transfer the 3 channel tube mixer and microphone made analog tape masters to CD, I was really impressed. Many of those 60+ year old recordings seem to have way more dynamic range than the average commercially made classical recordings from DG, EMI, etc. Clearly, the MLP series was a labor of love for Wilma Cozart in memory of her late husband Robert Fine, who was the producer on these legendary recordings. These recordings virtually always used 3 mikes that fed into a massive tube mixer or 35 mm tape machine with no equalization or compression. She used a state of the art system to monitor the digital remasters, but she always maintained the original three channel analog tapes were far superior. She felt despite her best efforts, the digital remastered failed to reproduce the hall ambience. Incidentally, the legendary Decca recording engineer Kenneth Wilkinson, who also did many of the famous Lyrita albums, felt exactly the same and said so in a TAS interview. On Hi Fi La Espanola (a Harry Pearson favorite), the dynamic range is stupendous, and with a large enough subwoofer system, like my two REL G1 Mk2, you can shake the walls. Another of my favorites is the Paul Paray Dances of Death, especially Dance Of The Seven Veils from Salome. Also, the incredible detailed liner notes on these CDs is a model that few companies emulate. Yes, there’s tape hiss and in several recordings, the limitations of the early microphones is obvious. But the sheer dynamic range is impressive. That entire collection, which I own, convinced me that CDs can sound really good if the recordings are properly done and mastered. Alas, they are a rare exception. Most commercial classical albums are so poorly mastered (e.g., SF Mahler series), it’s depressing.

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I am personally one who loves the ORTF live to two track approach but my music collecting (mainly LP and CD) has taught me that multimiked recordings done well can be equally as good.

Examples include Jim Anderson's work and that of Mark Waldrep at AIX.
 

microstrip

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I am personally one who loves the ORTF live to two track approach but my music collecting (mainly LP and CD) has taught me that multimiked recordings done well can be equally as good. (...)

We should separate multimiked recordings (more than a stereo pair) from closed miked recordings abusing from panning and artificial reverberation. As you say we have great multimiked recordings-
 
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godofwealth

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It's okay but not my favorite, either. Do you have a Mahler series on LP that your prefer?
One of my favorite Mahler albums on vinyl is the legendary Solti Decca recording of Symphony No 2 with soprano Heather Harper. In the first few seconds of this mammoth work, Mahler begins with growling double basses and cellos. On vinyl, the sound is astonishingly lifelike. I recall an old TAS review by Mike Fremer (welcome back to TAS, Mike, we missed ya!), who compared this legendary recording to the then latest EMI digital recording that critics were raving about by Simon Rattle with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, before he moved to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic (and now he’s back in the UK). As Fremer put it, somewhat sarcastically, in this precious few initial seconds of the piece that sets up the ominous atmosphere for the fabulous symphony, one hears instead of growling double basses and cellos, a “blob of sound” that moves from one channel to the other. That about sums up what I hear with far too many modern digital recordings of the famous symphonies of the classical repertoire. And I’m puzzled as to why. Why does the modern Rattle recording of Mahler 2 sound so much worse than the great analog Solti recording on Decca. It doesn’t make sense. Digital should sound way way better, but except it doesn’t, although as with the legendary Mercury Living Presence series, one can make the remastering sound very good. Even for the MLP series, I recently bought some test pressings of the famous vinyl releases of the MLP albums released by Michael Hobson for Classic Records. To my ears, they completely blow away the digital remastering in terms of their tonal richness and sense of ambience. Something really striking I’ve noticed on many CDs is the almost complete absence of ambient space. This of course makes sense. Ambient noise of the recording venue is very low in level, where digital resolution is likely to be the weakest. I recall an old Gramophone review of the SME 30 turntable where the reviewer compared a series of vinyl albums on EMI, Decca etc. with their digital remastering, and concluded the SME was far better at revealing the ambience of the original venue than the digital remastering. I mean, Gramophone is about as old fashioned and stodgy as you can get for audiophile reviews. This magazine is largely devoted to reviewing classical albums and has been around for many decades. These guys are not audiophiles!

1658977052164.jpeg
 

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