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I just received my first two Petatone sacd's and while I like the music I have the Sa chen Chopin and the Julia Fischer Violin Concertos I find myself dissapointed in the recordings. I dont think they light a candle to the Telarc SACD in quality. I find then dark. I have Reference CD's that are much better. Anyone else feel this way. I dont know if they take getting used to but these two are only ok recording wise. I give them two and half stars recording wise. Boy am I going to miss Telarc. Why Concord bought that company and destroy it is beyond me. Does anyone else feel this way about Pentatone.
I have a few Pentatone recordings, and I find the sonics variable.
Sergei Taneyev Ivanovich • “At the Reading of a Psalm” The sound is dark and uninvolving. I have yet to try it on my Oppo BDP-83, but I was disappointed at the recording's sonics when played through my predecessor Oppo SACD player.
Franz Joseph Haydn • Elly Ameling - soprano • Jörg Demus - piano; this recording is lively and has plenty of presence.
I find it difficult to pinpoint a 'house sound' with PentaTone. Some of them I find overly dark and murky (like the Janowski/Pittsburgh Brahms 2/3 that I mentioned below), while others are too bright and brash (the Berglund/RNO Shostakovich 8). And then some are just right (the Jarvi Stravinsky 'L'Histoire du Soldat' suite and other chamber works). As someone else said, it has a lot to do with the venue and miking. I have no problems with PentaTone's RQR series of remastered Philips recordings, though, which for the most part sound wonderful.
Russell
. . . try the Brahms symphonies with Janowski and the Pittsburgh Symphony. Pentatone used 15-18 microphones for these recordings - you will certainly hear more detail. But remember, detail is not the only consideration in a good recording. What bothers me is that some details that I hear in some recordings are not natural and have obviously been pushed forward in the control room - this is only possible when the engineering team is using a plethora of microphones. Although multi-microphoned recordings have gotten more sophisticated over the years, they still lack the realism of the best minimally microphoned recordings (at least to me). For a modern equivalent of the golden-age Living Stereo or Living Presence recordings, try to hear some of the recordings on the Nishimura label (five channels - five microphones!).
Overly dark and murky to me (though I agree that in that respect, it resembles what Telarc did with Cincinnati, which I often found opaque-sounding). Didn't like the performances, either. (I had the Brahms 2 & 3.)
Russell
. . . I was not thrilled with the Pentatone Brahms symphonies from Pittsburgh either. I didn't find them particularly dark and murky, but certainly I agree with you that there was an opaque quality to them - generally a tell tale sign that too many microphones were involved.
Chris: Do you have a source for the Nishimura recordings? All I can find on the internet is a list of his recordings and his email address. Is there a place where the recordings can be purchased on the internet?
I got all my Nishimura discs from HMV Japan. The two I would recommend the most are the Mendelssohn Lobgesang Symphony and another entitled "The Acoustic of the Leipzig Gewandhaus" -this latter does not appear to be available at the Hungarian site. As I peruse this site however, I'm not even sure I would know what to do to purchase a disc - and the date shown is April 2006. Caveat emptor!
I haven't the foggiest idea what the Hungarian says, but after using Google Translator, I did manage to get to an order page. It's hard to know if the site is still active, but the order page appears to be a request for a price quote, as there is no commitment to buy. Price of each disc is high at 6900 forints, which comes to almost $36.
I did listen a little to samples of Franz Vorraber solo piano playing on another site. The sound quality seems promising over my tiny computer speakers. But the pianist pulls the tempos and dynamics around like salt water taffy. This is on a disc called Wiener Abend.
I think I will email directly to Tatsuo Nishimura himself to see if he answers and has a cheaper source for the discs. His website is in German. Hard to figure how he sells any of his recordings.
...were made by Denon in the late 80's early 90's. They employed a digital delay technique that was intended to sync the sound of the spot mics with the main mic array in order to eliminate/minimize phase distortions. The result was a much more coherent and natural-sounding orchestral soundstage with plenty of detail but where that detail didn't stand out as it can in most multi-mic'd recordings. The Inbal/Mahler series is an example of this technique. I found the sound of those CD's to be excellent (the performances not so much - hence I don't have them anymore). I wish I would have kept at least one so I could listen again after these many years since their release.
I have most of the Inbal Mahler series, the most successful of the set is the M5, both performance and the audio, the others are low key interpretations.
I find considerable variation in sound quality of these Denon CD’s, the Berlioz Requiem is one of the dullest performances by anyone accompanied by an exceptionally dim recording.
Vahe
Was this the Inbal/Mahler series recorded at the Old Opera House in Frankfurt? If so, I have a couple of these.
Actually, the *very* first CD I purchased was a Denon Mahler (not the series you have referred to) that I bought in 1982 (that's right, before the official 1983 launch in the US).
I have to pull them out; I have forgotten what they sound like.
Robert C. Lang
From Gramophone, April 1987 on Sym 6:
Denon explain in the accompanying booklet that their preference for simple two-microphone recording has been relaxed in this case because of the large orchestra. Spot-microphones were used to capture the celesta, whips, cowbells, etc. To obviate the loss of a natural time relationship in how one hears the sound, a method has been employed whereby the time lag between signals has been corrected by delaying the output from the spot-microphones by an amount corresponding to the distance between the main microphones and the spots. It sounds alarming, but it seems to work. There is copious indexing, I am glad to report, but the type is so microscopic you could easily miss it. M.K.
From Stereophile, August 1993 on Sym 10:
The FSRO sounds, if anything, better than it did in Symphonies 1-9/Das Lied, and Denon's standard-setting minimal miking of Frankfurt's Alte Oper has as much limpid, liquid clarity and convincing sense of space and orchestra as the best of that cycle. Chailly's over-produced London recording provides a telling contrast: the famous funereal drumbeats that close the fourth and open the fifth movements are juiced-up, multimikedly false—they caused my Vandersteen 2Cis' woofers to bottom out, which has never happened before at this volume with any recording, including many speaker-killing "audiophile" discs. On the Denon CD, this same instrument, whacked just as soundly, sounds loud and powerful, moving a good bit of air—but also sounds perfectly natural, lacking any trace of exaggerated boom. This is also the most exhaustively indexed and annotated recording I have ever seen—a true boon to musicologists and Mahler scholars. Thanks, Denon.
.
Posted by jazz1 on June 30, 2009 at 22:27:13:
I have a few and they do vary greatly in quality, the ones I have are mostly remasters from old recordings, thus the recording itself was not made by Pentatone. The last set I received are the Beethoven string quartet by the Quartetto Italiano and although the music is sublime
and the remasterind did improve on the originals it is obviously not in the same league as some of the chamber music released by Praga.
As far as Telarc, I never heard a recording that I would give a full 5 as to me they always lack a certain ambience (air)compared to some recording of the late 50's and 60's the Paul Parray's and the Detroit symphony orchestra do come to my mind, especially the Bizet "La Patrie" which is my ultimate demo disc, those are just spectacular and would merit a full 5 for realism and sound quality, a few been isuued on SACD's. The last 2 Linn purchases I made are also pretty good, but we are human and we always compare to the best we have and for me it is difficul to give a full 5 as I can always find something that could be improved on.
Its nice to just pickup recordings and experiment. To not make quite
as many boo-boos try some published reviews. Within a very few days
PFO should have the review of the so-called Trout Piano Quintet up
and running! It is of demonstation quality and a test for near realism
even for audiophiles that have to have bass drums to really be happy.
And Yes -it is on PentaTone. Running a close second you should also
find a rather subtle TUDOR gem of Mahler's Sym #4-few posters have bothered to search out labels such as TUDOR and every label has
variability and there is where we reviewers should come in.
They are 2 different "Trout" on Pentatone, one with the Beaux Arts trio and then the other with various musicians, which one are you talking about? I need a new trout!!!
I think there is a certain consistency to the "house" sound of Telarc which Pentatone lacks. There are some great Pentatone discs, but it does vary considerably depending on the orchestra and the hall. I personally think the Polyhymnia team has done some of their best recording for other SACD labels and not necessarily for their own label. I particularly like some of the RCO Live recordings.
Anyway, you can criticize Telarc too. Some of the recordings sound "glazed" over to me and lack immediacy, despite the dynamic range.
Agee about the Telarcs some arent as spectactular but all the clssical I own are extraordinary. Some of the jazz not so but still will miss my favorite audiophile label as I discovered it along with Sheffield Labs over 30 years ago.
I find Pentatone recordings to be *different* than Telarc. Telarcs can have a bit more "wow" factor. One might be more "enjoyable" than the other but not necessarily "better", in my opinion. Your decription of the Pentatones you have as sounding "dark" is interesting. I don't agree or disagree; I will listen further.
Yes, I do, overall, "enjoy" the Telarc sound quality more. But one thing for certain I do not have any Pentatone recordings (new) that I would rate as low a 2.5 stars. I actually rate them at 4.5 to 5 stars. I have several of the Fischer recordings, including the violin concertos (Mozart?) that you reference. I think they are great.
My opinions are formulated with a multi-channel reference.
Robert C. Lang
The Fischer is the Russian Concertos. I still believe I can hear more inner details in the RCA shaed dogs sacd and the Telarcs. I am listening to trhe chopin chen and she plays beautifully. I just expected more in recording quality as I get from Telarc. The Pentatone are good recordings but fsr from the best the format offer IMHO.
As it happens I listened to that disc over the weekend, as well as one of her Mozart concerto discs. I preferred the Mozart disc (which I thought sounded quite good). I also preferred my Living Stereo SACD of Heifetz doing the Glazunov, as it had greater warmth and tonal color.
Please read my comments (below) about the Russian Concertos made almost exactly two years ago in this forum. Interestingly, in the fourth paragraph there is actually a tie to your comments here in this thread.
Robert C. Lang
Thanks for that Robert perhaps I need to listen further. Sometimes I am too quick to post. I will listen more and perhaps draw the same conclusions as you did. Have you heard the Beethoven box set they did of the Quad recordings. Amazon has them for 43.00
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