|
Home
/ FAQ
/ News Classifieds / Events |
Audio Asylum Thread Printer |
Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
67.188.253.246
In Reply to: RE: Pentatone Recordings posted by Frank I on June 30, 2009 at 15:47:10
. . . 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.
.
Post a Followup:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2009, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ Go Green ]
[ Take5 ]