greg@olivej.UUCP (Greg Paley) (02/01/85)
Interesting as the discussions of sampling rates, D/A-convertors and 14-bit(w/oversampling) vs. 16-bit technology might be, I can't help but feel that the sonic effects induced by these factors are few and subtle compared with what is happening in the recording producer's hands during the master recording. I have heard several good classical CD's, but, as of yet, none that matched the extraordinary clarity and "presence", despite surface noise, of the best analogue LP's. This has included extensive listening to Telarcs, English Decca's, Philips, DGG, EMI - you name it. I have, however, heard this kind of clarity with the benefit of CD background silence on material that was of less interest to me, specifically African tribal music (male voice and percussion) on a Swedish BIS label CD, and the difficult-to-categorize sound effects on the Telarc "Time Warp" CD. Greg Rogers gets mad at people with no technical expertise who theorize as to the underlying causes behind the audio phenomena they perceive. Unfortunately, the temptation is irresistable to anyone who consistently hears certain things and cares enough about it to want to delve further into it despite lack of experience. In my case, the fact that the few CD's mentioned capture the sound quality that they do indicates to me that the hardware itself is capable of living up to its promise. This brings us back, then, to the question of microphone choice, arrangement of performing forces for a recording session, and choice of a suitable recording hall. Recent players with recent CD's no longer display some of the most obvious defects of the first products - lack of ambience, edgy and metallic upper midrange, lack of depth and perspective. However, anyone with a good analogue LP playback system (I don't mean a direct-drive table with a Shure cartridge) who is lucky enough to have original pressings of the 1959 Mercury recording of Stravinsky's "Firebird" (Dorati/London Symphony) or the 1956 RCA recording of the same composer's "Song of the Nightingale" (Reiner/Chicago Symphony) will know that there is still an intangible quality of realism that evades the best classical CD's. This quality evades even the best Telarc recordings which, as I've been told, have painstakingly attempted to replicate the miking setup used in the early stereo Mercury "Living Presence" series. My conclusion? Not an original one: many of the basic ground rules of analogue recording simply don't apply to digital recording. Many producers seem to have taken this to mean simply that a return to the earlier analogue setup (fewer, more distanced mikes) is sufficient. I think that this is not enough and will still require extensive and expensive experimentation before the potential of the new medium is exploited. I suspect that the worst problem, at least as far as classical recordings are concerned, will be finding that recording halls which were adequate for analogue recording will simply not work for digital recording or that, at very least, the current techniques for modifying the sound of a hall (moveable partitions and wall-hangings) will be proven obsolete. I continue to experience that listening fatigue that others have mentioned in conjunction with digital recordings, and CD's in particular, on a variety of equipment. In my own case, I've been able to attribute this, on recordings that don't have the obvious "early-digital" glare, to an exaggeration of the resonant properties of the empty halls in which the recordings are taking place, which was not apparent on analogue recordings made in the same halls. Obviously, I'm making guesses rather than speaking as one who knows. I'd be delighted to be knocked down by someone who has direct knowledge of these things and who can point out where my guesses might be erroneous. - Greg Paley