Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Music Lane ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

RE: ??? - I'm not following

Posted by learsfool (A) on August 13, 2012 at 17:14:09

In Reply to: ??? - I'm not following posted by Chris from Lafayette on August 13, 2012 at 00:12:34:

Hi Chris - yes, I do indeed really mean that. This isn't really the place to get into an analog vs. digital debate, but I will say that I know very few (especially orchestral) musicians, and especially wind players, who would disagree (even the young 'uns hearing a good analog system for the first time). Analog recording most definitely resolves the timbres of our instruments, especially the subtle differences we work so hard at achieving, much better than digital recording does. I am convinced that much of the superiority of the older analog recordings, from the so-called Golden Age, has to do with the miking, too, not just the technology. They just hung one or two mikes out in the hall (or in the case of all those amazing Mercury recordings, about 18 feet above the orchestra). This results in a much more realistic sounding recording than today's multi-miking and multi-tracking. The remix almost never sounds like the real thing.

Now I'm not saying it sounds bad, mind. I'm merely saying that it is not as good. Digital recording technology has gotten better over time, yes. But the miking remains pretty much the same, unfortunately. And as I'm sure you know from experience yourself, a great many "recording engineers" out there still have no clue what they are doing. Almost all of them are very largely self-taught, and every single one, even if they use similar set-ups, will mix things completely differently, often with absolutely no thought to what the actual recording space sounded like (assuming it was done in a nice hall).

As for Abbado, no the recordings he did in the 80's, which were incredible performances, unfortunately did not sound very good, being done in the very early days of digital. This has unfortunately caused many audiophiles to ignore his performances/interpretations completely, which is a crying shame, as some of those are still some of the finest Mahler performances out there, especially the ones done with the CSO. The not so great sound isn't Abbado's fault.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Atma-Sphere Music Systems, Inc.

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---