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Listening now to Regine Crespin (with Ansermet & Suisse Romande) singing Berlioz "Les Nuits d'etre" on 475 7712 - recorded 1963. Goose bump material. Takes me back to my early LP collecting days which featured a lot of Ansermet on Decca. But the sound I'm now hearing from these CDs far outclasses what I heard previously on LP (and much more conveniemnt + no clicks and plops!) My wife is not wrapped in soprano singing but is most impressed with Crespin's singing on this CD. You can see what else is on this release on the link below. Thoroughly recommended.Some excellent releases in their "Originals" catalog. I also have Britten's "War Requiem" and it is similarly excellent. Looks like more "Originals" will be be soon on the shelf.
MDT list quite a few on "special" at
http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/search/Special Offers/SO_Decca_PhilipsOriginals/DPO 0506/
Not the cheapest (nor the most expensive) CDs around, but if the two I have are any guide, they would make excellent additions to any library.
John
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
Follow Ups:
Listened to 4 sides last night, a bit of clicking on my $1 Prey/Vienna Choir Boys RCA disc (lasted 1.5 min), but the other 3 sides had a total of 3 clicks, minor. The sum total of my purchase last Sat. was $4 plus tax US, which was 3 LP's and 1 4 LP box (Christmas RCA subscription, with almost demo sound).Thanks for the tip on London's newer discs. I wonder if the reissues I saw in the same store ($7 US) are the 24/96 ones. They incl. a lot of good material, musically.
.... you have no idea what was in the collection! FYI there were some excellent recordings there, but, like all formats, there were also quite a few that were not but they were in the minority.Now you might be closer to the mark if you said the Koetsu cartridge/FR am/Townshend combo was not optimal but I just got to the stage I was sick of messing around with it. No question that used LPs are inexpensive, but they are an ergonomic PIA. But that is me so no need to take offence if you like the medium and are convinced you can get better sound from them than from CDs.
Indeed, that was also the situation here until a few years ago until I woke up to the challenges of reproducing quality sounding music from digital. Few commercial products do justice to digital although the number that do it now is far better than it was 5 years ago - crazy for it to take over 20 years for the CD format to reveal what it is capable of.
SACD with MC is a further advance as discussed in another thread.
Bottom line is not the format that is important, it is the music and I'm inceasingly impressed about how good that can sound on some of the latest remasters via the systems in this house. Another batch of excellent CDs arrived yesterday (most reissues) and I was like a kid in a sweet shop sampling them.
John (a reformed digital Luddite)
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
In most posts where LP's are mentioned, or at least the great majority, you state LP's have clicks and pops, but they don't. I agree with Teresa on this point. But as to "PIA," yep, can be or can be "therapeutic."I would like nothing less than to ditch all the LP's like you did. I just cannot afford digital setup that is good enough (yet).
Re SACD and MCH, yep, I'd love to move to your house and enjoy! You have one of the most impressive galleries extant here.
c
even with them, often very listenable. Esp. with vintage old stuff that Clark listens to.
Originally I had absolutely no intention of EVER switching to digital - I hated the sound quality of it. I got seduced by the back door of (now very obselete) laserdiscs. Wanting a copy of a performance we had attended at the Albert Hall London (Solti conducting Berlioz "Damnation of Faust" with the Chicago Or & chorus), I "invested" in the laserdisc. The sound was not great so had to be improved. Actually the video quality wasn't too great either. So began the trip down the digital lane via Pioneer, then Theta, then Meridian and finally modded gear.So the main problem is that getting good sound from digital is no easier nor less expensive than getting it from vinyl. And I appreciate the absorbing challenge many find in getting great sound from LPs, but after fiddling with it for 4 decades from the early days of mono, I've finally moved on.
Thank you for your nice comments about the system here and apologies for missing the humour - too early in the morning (around 7 am when I first replied)!!!!
John
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
you are an inspiration to hopefully all on this forum and the others associated with AA. Such a pursuit of perfection and vibrancy to the golden age years!Your entry on the Athens Greece club led me to much of my internet surfing about audio. I blame YOU :).
Hope you're enjoying your McIntosh amps (if you still own them). About 8 months ago, I heard a mega buck McIntosh set up with the new B & W 800D's, using the SACD of Reiner and Pictures along with some other vocal and band material. Wow, great 2 channel at dealer.
I hope you have a great Christmas season and wonderful 2007. Just don't buy too much.
P.S. In answer to one of your posts, My wife tolerates my music fairly well. She is learning also. Last week, she remarked, "Wow, sounds real," about the LP copy of Ansermet/Delibes Coppelia I posted (in Vinyl). Won it for $6.50 plus shipping, true blueback, oops side 3 a bit noisy, other 3 sides near perfect London/Decca sound!
Although it may be an improvement in this particular case, I say 24/96 or 24/192 mastering is a step backwards for producing Redbook CDs. It basically utilizes asynchronous conversion between the master and the production disc. So the resultant data stored on the CD is not "bit-perfect."Using a common master for both DVD-A and CD production should be avoided at all cost. Otherwise one of the formats will be compromised.
... the technicalities of what is done in the analog masters -> 24/96 -> 16/44 conversions but surely it is not the conversions themselves that are critical but the way they are done. I'm still educating myself about video and a similar situation appears to occur there so generalisations like component is better than S-video or DVI is inferior to HDMI etc are not always valid because the video processing can be done in so many different ways with some good, others not.So are there not a number of different ways that a 24/96 can be downconverted to 16/44? A similar situation seems to exist for upconverting which some hate. It is not the process itself, but the way it is done so some are fine while others are truly awful.
Bottom line to these ears is that these new reissues, particularly the Decca "Legends" (now rebirthed as "The Originals" for some obscure marketing reason) are sonically excellent and so close to the sound of SACD there is no longer a chalk and cheese difference.
And even with SACD there are criticisms about the technology used. But the bottom line to me is how successful the reproduction, and subsequent enjoyment of the music is. So, I enjoy both CDs and SACDs and the very few DVD-As in this collection.
John
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
because DGG uses "The Originals?"I agree with John C. about enjoying the music. Playing a silent Gold Seal Reiner Wagner reissue, on my el cheapo Thorens TD 165/TP 11 and Shure M91ED, a table stored for 15 years or so by my brother.
Wow-- What a composer and music, what a production and recording, and what a conductor and orchestra!
"Using a common master for both DVD-A and CD production should be avoided at all cost. Otherwise one of the formats will be compromised."It should read: "Using a common digital master...." A common analog master does not pose such a problem.
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