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I recently joined the club and purchased SACD and some software.Obviously like many of you I am very satisfied with those good recording especially those samplers.
I then moved to the classical. I bought the Bernstein Dvorak New World Symphony. It was recorded exactly 40 years ago. I would not call it enjoyable because the source has deteriated so bad that it will be a waste of time to process this source. The musical performance I would say is surely first class. I hope they will try their best to preserve such a valuable recordings and may be the best way to do it is to roll out the SACD version as fast as they can. This is just my narrow view point.
I hope I can have those Karajan, Horowitz... so famous but no longer available artist of the century to have their SACD released. Again, my wish.
Alan
Follow Ups:
Old tapes will have hiss, tape fallout, compression and a less-than-pristine sound due to less-than-perfect microphone technique and chain of electronics.Some things I CANNOT tolerate, which includes tape fallout and obvious splices or joins.
However, with a really good performance, I can adapt and learn to be oblivious to minimal tape hiss and other frequency response anomalies. This is because the performance is so good that attention is drawn away from these imperfect aspects.
Also, a good transfer of old analog tape to DSD can capture the subtle and expressive continuity of the music much better than most modern low resolution PCM recordings can, sometimes even better than high resolution recordings. On the surface, the old analog tape transfers will sound flawed, while modern PCM recordings sound so perfect and clean. However, the latter turn out to be well-scrubbed corpses of the music, while the former, while old, come to life with a surprisingly youthful spring in their steps!
if you want to hear an old recording done justice on SACD, try to get your hands on Ellington's "Blues in Orbit"...Tape hiss is the nature of the beast and i'd rather hear the tape hiss than have some engineer try to filter it out and affect the dynamics of the recording.. The blues in orbit SACD is hissy as hell, but it does NOT detract from experience the entire Ellington orchestra in your own living-room!
Sam
Wonder if people will say the same in ten years to audible watermarking of discs. Funny how tape hiss, which isn't part of the original music but a result of the recording process is accepted as part of the listening process but any type of watermarking is bad. Is there some logic I am missing here? Seems to be under the heading of all things old, great, all things new, bad.
gimme a break..... i would give my right-arm to have all the musicians that played on Blues In Orbit at that moment in time be recorded in pure DSD... it would have been outrageously incredible... however, this SACD, IMHO, get's me as close to being there as i could under the circumstances.. These are one-of-a-kind recordings of some great performances...kinda like the labum that started the bossa-nova craze in the US...eeeking-out the best audio from very old recordings is good enough for me!If this recording would have been made now, it would have been the basis for capital punishment for the engineer(s)....BUT IT WAS NOT MADE TODAY!!!
Sam
People who make lists of good sounding recordings have included those with some degree of tape hiss. Many acknowledged great sounding recordings of the analog era are prized and collected despite tape hiss.I wonder if watermarked disks will ever be on the lists of great sounding recordings, prized and collected. The watermark may not be discerible as any kind of distinct sonic attribute. The disks may be "good enough" for most people to accept uncritically. But maybe a subtle effect may eliminate these recordings from consideration as reference quality.
Just a specualtive question, I have no opinion one way or the other.
Tape hiss was an unavoidable side effect of the recording processes of the day. There is no way that watermarks are any sort of unavoidable side efffect of modern day recording practices. Watermarks represent a deliberately introduced distortion. This is very, very different. Can you not see that?
Actually, I see no need to make excuses for tape hiss. Yes it is present because of the technology of the day. As far as any watermarking that is audible(see, I am assuming it can be heard even though that debate is far from finished) well, I see posts that are against watermarking for "philisophical reasons". As far as the music industry is concerned, copy protection, via watermarking or otherwise is becoming mandatory. My comparison is not based upon whether tape hiss is right or wrong or whether watermarking is right or wrong but basically, if we have no choice, what will the future say about watermarking? To me there are semantical differences only, the end result is the same. Discs with tape hiss are much more intrusive to listening than the discs I have heard that are watermarked. If your logic of the limits of technology hold, then why do some "older" recordings have tape hiss and some have less? Maybe 10 years from now, others will not care about watermarking cause it will be the norm. I view it as hypocritical and comment because of it. Saying because one is inherent to the process of recording and thus is OK versus one is inherent to the production of the medium we listen to so is bad is splitting hairs. This, of course, is only my opinion.
...will not buy software that I know to contain AW, nor will I buy discs from a label that is known to use the AW for the format in question, unless the package clearly states that AW has not been used.You must be aware that once AW is considered accepted practice by the music industry, the more subtle AW used today may be replaced by a stronger, more intrusive form, which accomplishes the aims(whatever exactly they may be) even more efficiently than the current level of watermarking. The best way to avoid this IMHO is for large numbers to vote with their wallets, and send e-mails and letters stating the reasons they will not be puchasing AW'ed software. This applies to those corrupted 44.1 discs trying to pass as Redbook CDs recently, as well as DVD-A from labels like Warner.
despite the AW on DVD-A, we can look forward to more of the same as pirates WILL break the watermark and Warner's et al WILL respond with allegedly more robust (?) (aka stronger/more "acoustically objectionable") watermark schemes in attempts to fight a losing battle.Take a blowtorch to your Warner DVD-As now in protest !
Mobile Fidelity LPs. I was scarred to try a Warner's DVD-A, but I now feel that these are actually some of the best master tapes from a Major label, and you all know I don't trust major labels.What concerns me more is HOW a recording is made and how the finished product sounds and if I LIKE THE MUSIC, Watermarking is not important to me unless it degrades the sound quaility. In Warner's case I don't believe it does, as these Warner recordings never sounded so good.
Torch The Grateful Dead, are you out of your mind?
I am guessing they do not.And so how can you know whether the watermark degrades the sound or not? You have never heard them without the watermark. They may sound even better without it. Unless you think they could not possibly sound better. Which would be hard to believe.
may sound better without the watermark, we may never know? I will deprive myself waiting for something that may never come!
and I speak as one who still listens to and enjoys many many CDs which contain music that will never come out in any other format. So I am not criticizing anyone for listening to anything. All I am saying is that when you say the watermark does not degrade the sound, you do not have enough information to make this statement.
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*Maybe 10 years from now, others will not care about watermarking cause it will be the norm.*Maybe we will have to live with it as we do sometimes with tape hiss, but until then then I'd rather not have it in my music. Therefore, I prefer to support technologies that don't impose watermarking today.
We have to accept how an older generation was able to make recordings.The equipment of the day did not have high signal to noise ratios.Even at 30 ips tape sapeeds.We don't have the luxury of re-recording it,even if the musicians were around.
I also have Blues in Orbit and Miles Davis Kind of Blue.Hiss is part of the charm we just will have to live with, in order to hear an historical performance.Vinyl has it's intruding on the sound,noises.
Now on to modern day Hi-Rez, engineers are now capable of dead quiet passages.Our listening environments are the better for it. There's no turning back!!!
listen to a particular performance. This is different from taking what is available or can be created and then damaging it with the addition of audible watermarking. Attempting to remove the tape hiss can also damage important aspects of the recording.
Well - Tape hiss, although sometimes overbearing and disconcerting in some ways, is a NATURAL and mostly unavoidable byproduct of certain recording media. It certainly wasn't added after the fact for dubious means (even though one can argue that constant generational copying of the master tape will add distortions and extra hiss).Watermaking is added for one means only - copyprotection - and is not a natural byproduct of the recording process in any way shape or form.
The difference is most people (including audiophiles) can't hear watermarking, while everyone can hear tape hiss.
as I, personally, haven't heard watermarking on any of my DVD-Audio discs. But the principle of the argument is that watermarking, whether audible or not, is being added for reasons other than to add to the quality of the musical presentation.It is funny though in this day and age alot of people (audiophiles) revel in the fact that older recordings transferred to CD, SACD, etc. have hiss - which means that, at least, the transfer from tape to those media hasn't been tampered with.
The presence of hiss is no guarantee that there was no tampering. There are many ways to tamper with an older recording other than to diminish tape hiss.
Find out.
!!!
the Bernstein "New World" has some slight, and not unexpected, tape hiss, but I don't hear anything amounting to deterioration that makes it unenjoyable. There are no discernible dropouts, and the acoustic exhibits none of the "dried-out" characteristic of recordings I've heard where the source has obviously deteriorated (e.g., the Turnabout Johanos recording of Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances").What you may be hearing is a combination of the mikes Columbia used at the time and the acoustic of Manhattan Center, where the Dvorak was recorded. I've noticed that same-era New York Philharmonic Columbias recorded at Brooklyn's St. George Hotel (e.g., the "Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue" and "American in Paris") have a more "open" feel to them.
I agree that it behooves the industry to DSD-archive classic performances as soon as possible.
--Jim
developed for. We lucky people finally get a disc-based medium that allows us to listen to that archive at home. How can a music lover not love SACD?
I agree, and would like to see the industry do "flat" transfers. I'd go so far as to say a certain degree of tape anomalies doesn't bother me, including dropouts and analog hiss. I find it instructive to hear these anomalies, to navigate the music with them there, rather than hear them masked with no-noise and other digital fixes that jeopardize the production.
As most, " post " editing, almost certainly ruined a lot of music, we certainly can not, but agree.
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