In Reply to: Not to put too fine a point on it... posted by Jim Treanor on July 9, 2014 at 11:49:33:
We can all make our own judgments. The fact that the engineering team used the original Ampex 300 to compare doesn't necessarily guarantee that all the subtle decisions needed in the transfer would have been the same if Cozart had been intimately involved. It's certainly not the same as when Classic Records reissued six Mercury titles and Cozart sat at Bernie Grundman's elbow, insisted he use tube equipment, and urged him to cut another master when she thought it necessary. There's a great account of this in the December 1997 issue of Fi magazine.
With good recordings the goal of any transfer should be transparency to the original source. I'm the first one to admit that this is a subjective judgment and is system dependent. We often end up talking about different experiences. I'm only relating mine. I relistened to some of the recordings last night. I hadn't heard some of them in several years. I did notice that the digital transfers tend to diminish the acoustics of the recording venue. On the tapes and LPs it's easier to identify the characteristics of the various locations used by Mercury.
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Follow Ups
- The proof is in the listening - Botanico92007 08:26:10 07/10/14 (0)