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Added delay on DG recordings

Posted by C.B. on July 12, 2004 at 10:12:52

In Reply to: Re: DGG's 4D vs Denon's implementaion ) decade ago posted by markrohr on July 12, 2004 at 09:23:42:

I know of (2) DG recordings from the '80s that have added delay, both by Claudio Abbado and the Chicago Symphony. In both cases the added delay (reverb) and remixing ruined what are otherwise excellent recorded performances.

In Abbado's first Mahler Fifth, recorded around 1982, the added reverb is low-level but annoying. It sounds rather like a buzzing or ringing in the high frequencies that becomes more noticeable with high-resolution equipment such as planar speakers.

When Abbado recorded the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique with the CSO in 1985, the DG engineers were even more brazen with the reverb. The disc borders on the unlistenable, which is too bad, since it's a very decent performance. Were the engineers trying to compensate for the notoriously dry acoustics in Orchestra Hall?--if so, they failed miserably.

Things certainly got better for DG in the early '90s with the advent of the "4D" process. At the very least, gone were the wierd experiments of the '80s, replaced instead by more natural mike placement and minimalist mixing and editing. But I think DG has a long way to go in equaling the super-realism of Telarc, Reference Recordings, Dorian, BIS, and any number of smaller, independent labels from the U.S. and Europe. Heck, even their sister company Decca produces consistently better-sounding, more realistic recordings.

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Kimber Kable

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