jeff@tesla.UUCP (01/25/84)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 84 18:14:51 est From: jeff (Jeff Frey) Message-Id: <8401242314.AA22474@tesla.UUCP> To: audio@net Subject: CDs again. All the subjective chatter on "CD sound", or whatever, reminds me of the early days of transistor amplifiers--remember "transistor sound"? Of course there's a difference between Class A and Class AB or B operation, particularly in the nature of the harmonic distortion components, but the distortion in the Xistor amplifiers was so low it was difficult to understand how anyone could hear it anyway. And so, the argument petered out. Now in CD's the distortion level and the other bad things that have plagued us in analogue records for years is a few orders of magnitude lower than possible before, and people are still hearing things. I doubt that the CD dilettantes in the audience, who have perhaps listened to two or three on an equal number of demo systems, on separate occasions, have much to tell us about the problem. In three weeks I will have lived with CD's for a year and after an appalling investment in software the only thing WRONG with the technology is the variability of the software, with some manufacturers selling us analogue (i.e., with hiss) or otherwise imperfect recordings at the same price (around $20) as really superb recordings. The most egregious manufacturer in this respect with its earlier recordings was CBS, which released a really bad Shostakovich 5th Symphony and a mediocre Prokofiev 5th, in the latter of which you could hear when tapes from different master recorders were spliced together. The Denon Philadelphia Orchestra recordings also suffer, but more from ambience than from nuts and bolts problems. On the other hand, the potential of the medium can be heard in the Dutoit/Montreal Symphony recordings, and in the Julian Bream solo records, and probably many others which I haven't heard yet. And finally, CD's will never take off until some real music is offered, not just more versions of Mahler's 9th Symphony (which is "real music" of course but must everybody release it at the same time? Perhaps the reason for this is that the record manufacturers do not also manufacture the disc players; more money is as yet being made from sales of hardware than from sales of software; some cooperation may be necessary to accelerate the pace of both player and disc sales. My personal gripes are that (a) I've spent a lot of money on CD's that have turned out to be duds; and (b) having bought one new recording of every kitsch classical thing I ever wanted, there's nothing else left to buy. Jeff