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In Reply to: RE: What's the fuss about Telarc!!?? posted by jazz1 on November 27, 2008 at 05:03:02
I have a large collection of Deccas, Londons, EMI, RCAs, Lyritas, Mercurys, and Telarcs. I agree that the LPs with the best performance and the best sonics tend to be Decca, London, or EMI. However, I have found the sonics on the Telarc LPs to be pretty exceptional. I think they are well recorded. Only time will tell whether or not the performances are considered classic or not. I enjoy them enough that I own 54 Telarc LPs.
Some of the Telarc LPs I especially like:
Copland: Appalachian Spring, Shaw-Atlanta, 10078
Holst: Suites, Fennell-Cleveland, 5038
Rachmaninoff: Symphony 2, Previn-Royal Philharmonic, 10113
Saint-Saëns: Symphony 3, Ormandy-Philadelphia, 10051
Shostakovich: Symphony 5, Maazel-Cleveland, 10067
I also have 71 Telarc CDs and enjoy listening to them very much. I have virtually everything that Robert Shaw recorded on Telarc. This is is a great collection of choral music in terms of sonics and performances. While I find that I may occasionally like a given performance of a major choral work a bit better by another conductor, I would be loathe to give up any of the Shaw recordings.
The only negative I have found is when I compare the CD of the "Holst-Suites" or the "Shostakovich-Symphony 5" to the LP, there is a deadness and lack of air on the CD. I seldom listen to those CDs. I prefer the LPs much more. I don't hear this deadness on the later Telarc CDs. That said, the most natural sound I have heard from CDs has been from Reference Recordings.
Happy Listening.
DLB
"Music is framed in silence."
Follow Ups:
never heard anything that quite compares to it. extraordinary (and i'm a 2-track reel tape fanatic).
It mirrors and perhaps slightly improves the sonics of your wonderful LP version. The biggest problem with the CD version was the awkward conversion from 50kHz to CDs 44.1kHz and that is why it sounds dead and lacks air. Even though 50kHz is much lower than the resolution possible with SACD, the SACD version is the first in which Telarc claims the master can be heard it all it's glory. Most of the other Telarc Historical 50kHz Soundstream SACDs sound great as well.
Modern music's biggest irony is that if Sony/Philips would have been willing to wait 9 months as suggested by the American's, lead by Soundstream, Telarc and RCA then CD could have been 50kHz instead of 44.1kHz. Those extra 5,900 samples per second represent for many of us the difference between unlistenable and listenable digital or good and bad digital. If CD had been 50kHz instead of 44.1kHz I would have had to find something else to complain about over the last two decades.
I love Telarc SACDs and LPs, but find Telarc CDs too cold and dry even the 20 bit ones.
Happy listening,
Teresa
Modern music's biggest irony is that if Sony/Philips would have been willing to wait 9 months as suggested by the American's, lead by Soundstream, Telarc and RCA then CD could have been 50kHz instead of 44.1kHz. Those extra 5,900 samples per second represent for many of us the difference between unlistenable and listenable digital or good and bad digital. If CD had been 50kHz instead of 44.1kHz I would have had to find something else to complain about over the last two decades.
Those 5,900 samples up in that octave represent slightly more than a whole tone (basically, F to G) - why do you think this difference is decisive? You're just talking about extending the range by one note name.
Check out the link which shows the note names (and MIDI note numbers) which correspond to a given Hz measurement.
"Those 5,900 samples up in that octave represent slightly more than a whole tone (basically, F to G) - why do you think this difference is decisive? You're just talking about extending the range by one note name."
For attaining 20 kHz HF bandwidth, the filter would have had to have been steep, but not "brickwall" steep. The ringing would have been a lot more damped, as a result. The problem with 16/44 is the very top end of the spectrum is too "synthesized" with the reconstruction. (Or too modulated if the filtering is minimal.) This has given CD playback its "generic" quality. Only the best DACs bring out real differences between CD recordings. Differences that I think are a lot more apparent amongst vinyl recordings.
The problem with higher resolution (24 bits 96 kHz) is the RFI becomes obtrusive. 16/50 would have been ideal, in my humble opinion.
. . . that might be a legitimate reason for preferring the 50 kHz recordings to the 44.1 kHz recordings (as opposed to the mere extension of the frequency range itself - the whole tone in question), but would you care to elaborate on the RFI? I'm not sure I agree here - I've been pretty satisfied with most 24/96 recordings I've heard.
To best demonstrate the RFI, get a portable AM radio and with a station dialed in, hold the radio near an active CD player or DAC...... In a lot of cases, the noise from the digital source will drown out the station. The circuit in and near the DAC is being bombarded with RFI..... Although it is almost never tangibly audible in actual playback, I do think it alters our perception of music. A lot of great performances prior to the digital age are now deemed sterile and lifeless. (Emerson, Lake, & Palmer and Sir Georg Solti are maybe the biggest victims here.)
which would give a more accurate picture of all frequencies from the lowest bass to the highest treble and especially in the midrange.
Just compare a Soundstream 50kHz LP, especially those from Telarc to any LP from a 44.1kHz master. Those extra 5,900 samples benefit all aspects of the sound. Sony/Philips was so close but they were still a mile away, they should have waiting that 9 months for consumer 50kHz CD. But they got greedy!
Happy listening,
Teresa
this is the only way you will hear it for yourself. More resolution means more resolution, more samples per seconds means each second can be more accurately measured. It's not all about extended frequency response, it's about getting closer to the source. 5,900 is a hell of a lot more samples per second!
Sony/Philips screwed up by jumping the gun and racing to market with 44.1kHz, only nine more months and they could have had consumer 50kHz CD players. Music lovers paid a big sonic cost for their expensive mistake.
Happy listening,
Teresa
I'm almost certain that the Beethoven "Eroica" Symphony with Cleveland/Christoph von Dohnanyi was done at 16/44. (This is a later release. The packaging still says "Soundstream", but I think it's 16/44.) This recording to me sounds just like Redbook, save for the RFI. The recording simply lacks stage specificity (or "air") and microdynamics compared to other Telarc vinyl. And the CD sounds very similar.
Edits: 11/29/08
First of all, I have to decline your invitation to listen to LP's from 50 kHz and 44.1 kHz masters. As you may know, I can't abide the gross distortions of LP's (warp wow, off-center hole wow, motor wow and flutter, belt slippage, tracking distortion, tracing (inner groove) distortion, vinyl resonance, vinyl deformation, non-linear frequency response, restricted dynamic range, etc.) These gross types of distortions would more than mask the differences in the two sampling rates.
But to answer your post, I think there's a big misconception that's still around decades after the introduction of the CD, and that is that digital recording is a kind of "connect the dots" reconstruction of the original waveform, and that, for a given frequency spectrum, the more dots you have, the more accurate your waveforms will be. (I'm not talking about bit depth here - just frequency.) This misunderstanding is exacerbated by the stair-step diagrams that you see in many audio journals and books. A lot of people tend to get hung up on this, not realizing that, in actuality, a sample rate of twice the highest frequency you're recording (with a bit extra for a guard-band) is all that's needed to reconstruct the original waveform PERFECTLY - anything beyond that (in the form of additional samples) is redundant.
So when you start talking about getting closer to the source with those extra 5,900 samples per second, you're basically arguing for redundancy (which, in fact, gets you no closer to the source), EXCEPT for that extra little whole tone way up at the very top of the spectrum that I mentioned in my previous post.
Going back to the original question (as to whether the 50 kHz Soundstream Telarcs sounded better than the 44.1 kHz digital recordings from that time, or for that matter, sounded better than the subsequent 44.1 kHz Telarcs), there may be many valid reasons for this perception. For instance, at that time, Telarc was using a MUCH more minimalist microphone set up than Sony and Philips were. Also, I understand that the analogue components of the Soundstream recorder were transformerless. But IMHO the simple difference in sampling rates between 50 kHz and 44.1 kHz by itself would make only a minimal impact to listener perception, for the reasons cited above.
"Going back to the original question (as to whether the 50 kHz Soundstream Telarcs sounded better than the 44.1 kHz digital recordings from that time, or for that matter, sounded better than the subsequent 44.1 kHz Telarcs), there may be many valid reasons for this perception."
The big reason is the superior technology in the Soundstream analog to digital converters, compared to the 44/16 converters others were using:
1. The 50 KHz sampling rate allowed for a gradual roll off from the top of the audible range (20 KHz) to the Nquist limit (25 kHz). This made it possible to use filters with less time distortion than required at 44 KHz where the transition region is from 20 to 22 kHz. Filters for 44 kHz sampling will either ring, alias (distort) or soften the upper portion of the audible range.
2. The Soundstream recorders were the only early recorders to use correct triangular dither which meant that they could have significantly better low level resolution and avoid noise modulation that other systems had. Soundstream kept this technology a trade secret for a number of years.
Even so, there were early audiophiles who did not like these Telarc LPs. They even dumped some of them in Boston Harbor in protest back in 1983.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
its more reolution. its too bad you cant bring yourself to get over the vinyl stigma. there is REALLY more there THERE. but thats your choice and i dont expect youll change that.
suffice it to say that the 50k LPs from telarc surpass their rbcd efforts. the sacd DOES represent the vinyl sound so thats a way to hear it for yourself.
...regards...tr
. . . the enlargement of the sampling rate from 44.1 to 50 kHz extends the frequency range by a bit over one whole tone (in other words, not very much). Now, you're right - you will not hear this difference on CD - which is limited to 44.1 kHz anyway. And I understand that the original "shoehorning" into the CD format was accompanied by some loss of resolution (compared to the master - per Tony's post below). But my point was that the sampling rate difference by itself is probably so miniscule, that listeners would not hear it anyway, and that the audible differences must be accounted for by other factors.I understand that the SACD reissues have taken advantage of technological development over the last 20 years and do sound better than the original CD's. That's not hard to believe. (Even the CD-layer of the SACD's reportedly sounds better than that on the original CD's - no surprise here either.)
Sample rates only correlate to the limitation or extension of frequency response - and sample rate extension only gives you more resolution in the sense that the more extended high frequencies may allow listeners to sense more of the inaudible overtones. (Notice I don't say "hear".) In that respect, I'm very enthusiastic about extended sample rates - DVD-A's at 96 or 192 kHz, or Blu-Ray discs at 192 kHz. Those sampling rates at least give us another octave or two of high-frequency extension. That would be way more noticeable than the whole tone which represents the difference between 44.1 and 50 kHz.
Edits: 11/28/08
I am still awaiting an explanation why compared to some other brands Telarc cd's and SACD's lack air and ambience.
My question has nothing to do with 44.1 or 50 kHz or wathever.
as the bit rate does not apply to Telarc only.
I suspect that recording venues may have something to do with it??
or maybe microphones placement??
The problem is shoehorning the analog signal (or high rate digital signal) down to 44.1 kHz. If no filter or a weak filter is not used, then harmonics above 22 kHz will beat down into the audible range and be heard as amusical distortion. This can be avoided by (a) smooth filtering out of highs starting at about 15 kHz, (b) sudden filtering out of highs that preserve the original signal up to 20 kHz or so. The problem with the first approach is that audible harmonics are lost, hence the loss of air. The problem with the second approach is that transients are blurred, because the sharp filter necessarily rings, leading to loss of dynamics and imaging. Different engineers, producers and labels have used different tradeoffs. In addition, there has been a better understanding of the impact of filters on sonics over the years, and more complex filters are practical because of advancement in computer technology. So it is possible to make less constrained tradeoffs when remastering today then when it was done in the early 80's. However, there will be tradeoffs, one way or another. It's like squeezing a balloon into a small suitcase —as you push one part in another part pops out.
With sampling rates at 48 kHz or 50 kHz the same tradeoff between ringing and frequency response exists, however the frequencies being rolled off are now sufficiently high that they are out of the range of most people's hearing.
Mastering engineers who start with high rate formats and are forced to resample them to 44.1 kHz for release on CD appreciate these tradeoffs. Part of their artistry is figuring out how to do the least damage to the sonics. This will depend on the type of music, type of recording, and the engineer or producer's taste. There are a variety of sample rate converters that can be used. For some graphic examples of what these do to sound, see the link.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
My problem soundwise with Telarc is the lack of air which even on cd is not always the case with other labels (why should that be??)
That has nothing to do with 44.1 kHz
I do admit that their SACD's is a improvement but it still not perfect as far as ambience and air.
Last night I was listening to a cd on the Seraphin (EMI) label of Sibelius tone poems and soundwise it is streets ahead of any of my 20 or so Telarc cd's or SACD's
One explanation could be the recording venues accoustics themselves?
I think I know what you are saying at least about the redbook CD's. They do sound somewhat dead and dry. Unless you turn them up.
I find this same dry quality on M & K CD of Bill Berry's For Duke and (less so) Earl Hines Fatha. Lost my LP (sold?) long ago.
Having said that, I believe that's simply what they recorded. I can only comment some on Cleveland, having lived there and hearing them live.
Severance Hall in Cleveland is drier but cleaner sounding a bit vs. Masonic Temple recordings (try Mahler 4th Dohnanyi). I remember also that the early team who pioneered the recordings used headphones to monitor and adjust balances.
My old LP's, EMI/Decca-London and some RCA and Mercs do have a air and extension. So do original Command classicals and some others. I might cite Paray's French Overtures, same type of material by Ansermet, Karajan's Philharmonia and BPO EMI records, and multiple other LOndons.
Yes you do have to turn up Telarc's cd's and SACD's but to my ears, in my system they still lack air.
You mentioned the Paray's French Overtures which I have on RBCD's and
it is very obvious that ambience and air are not purely dependant on
having SACD's.
BTW, this is a wonderful recording and great music.
and even explain why Teresa said that you had to play Telarc's loud to get some bloom (at least that is how she was quoted. If they aren't as compressed as other recordings perhaps the highs need more amplification than the mid range/bass will allow for in small rooms. Remember how some folks complain that in some recordings that by the time they could hear the quiet sections the loud parts would drive them to the volume control.
Yesterday I was listening to one of Vanska's Beethoven Symphonies (RBCD) and noted how much better is sounded with the volume up substantially. Fuller sound stage, more forward, more drive. I suspect it suffers from lack of compression and I was missing the 'highs'.
While I haven't found volume an issue with Telarc I haven't really had a reason to think about it either. Perhaps I've been missing something.
FWIW.
Teresa, thanks for the information. I will get an SACD version and compare it to the LP and standard CD version.
A question, is the cd layer on the newer sacd version improved from the old cd layer? The reason I ask, I have a rather cheap Sony SACD player which never sounds as good as my Audio Research CD2 playing the regular CD layer of SACDs.
Someday, I will have to break down and get a better SACD player. I keep putting it off because most of my listening is on vinyl. My friend has an Esoteric X-03SE with a separate Esoteric clock and it is remarkable so I know SACD can sound great.
DLB
"Music is framed in silence."
Playback on a standard CD player still results in superior playback quality due to improved sample rate conversion and transfer from the resulting DSD master.
So it would seem that the conversion from 50kHz to DSD to 44.1kHz is supposed to give better results than the conversion from 50kHz to 44.1kHz.
I'm not a big fan of Sony but I do know it takes a long time for SACD players to break-in. If you are not using it much it may not be fully broken in yet? My Yamaha DVD-S1700 Universal player took over a year of daily use to sound it's best.
Happy listening,
Teresa
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