Listenin' to Classical Music and Conversation

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by bluemooze, Feb 22, 2017.

  1. crispi

    crispi Vinyl Archaeologist

    Location:
    Berlin
    Or 16/48.
     
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  2. Bachtoven

    Bachtoven Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    Not even close! It's 320 mps at best. A wav rip of a CD is 1411 mps IIRC. Many hi-res files have vastly higher resolution than CDs. (I mainly download 96/192k and 24 bit if available; otherwise, I go for 44.1/16 bit if that is all that the label offers.) Some offer files in DSD, which would be better yet, but they are expensive and HUGE! Sonically, I think true hi-res files sound better than CDs, but I miss the booklets, which often have to be downloaded and printed if they are available at all.
     
  3. J.A.W.

    J.A.W. Music Addict

    I'm on the fence about this set with Wilhelm Kempff's 1940-1943 Beethoven Piano Sonatas (below) - has anyone heard it? Opinions? The restoration was done by Mark Obert-Thorn.

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  4. bigstar87

    bigstar87 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukee
    Bitrate and bit depth, along with sample rate, are all different things. 320kbps mp3 is normally 16 bit/44.1
     
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  5. crispi

    crispi Vinyl Archaeologist

    Location:
    Berlin
    You can’t compare psychoacoustic compression with bitrate and sample rate. mp3 gets rid of information a different way than a low sample rate would do for instance (and better sounding at that). High bitrate mp3s can even have a bitrate as high as lossless files in case of historical recordings. I’ve seen lossless files with 290 or so kbps, while the constant bitrate mp3 of it was larger in file size at 320.

    Actually, I believe we’re both wrong. However, mp3s are designed to decompress at 16bit 44.1 or 48 kHz. It doesn’t mean they are that bitrate, it’s more complicated.
     
  6. Wes H

    Wes H Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia
    Playing this LP at the dinner hour...
    Chopin Waltzes -- Artur Rubinstein. I bought this in 1971.
    RCA, Recorded in Rome, 1964.

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  7. bigstar87

    bigstar87 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukee
    from the Szell Columbia Album box set:
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    Fantastic! Clear mono sound. I've loved every concerto recording I've heard with Szell. Mozart's 25th concerto is quickly becoming a favorite (his 27th is still tops)
     
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  8. bluemooze

    bluemooze Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Frenchtown NJ USA
    Now listening to "The Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach" performed by Nicholas Mcgegan (harpsichord & clavichord), Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (mezzo-soprano) and David Bowles (baroque cello) on Classical Express.

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  9. Bachtoven

    Bachtoven Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    No bit rate/depth or other confusing numbers...just glorious analog sound and spectacular playing!

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  10. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    I have many historical recordings reconstructed/remastered by MOT and have yet to be disappointed once ...
     
  11. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    I have owned this pristine 2-LP set since the early 80's ...
     
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  12. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    I have owned this recording for many years, though I prefer the following CD by Elly Ameling and Gustav Leonhardt more ...

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    I also have the whole shebang in the following CD twofer

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  13. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    I have noticed the filesize between the FLAC and the WMA format at 192 are not that different ...
     
  14. J.A.W.

    J.A.W. Music Addict

    OK, but apart from the sound restoration the playing also matters to me, and I've been listening to parts of the set on Spotify - I wasn't disappointed. I am now listening to even older recordings by Kempff, on the same label and also restored by Mark Obert-Thorn; the oldest recording dates from 1925 and is acoustic; it sounds remarkably good for its prehistoric age...

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  15. bluemooze

    bluemooze Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Frenchtown NJ USA
    Now listening to "Bach - Partitas for Violin Solo" performed by Viktoria Mullova on Philips.

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  16. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    I have heard some very nicely reconstructed/remastered recordings made during WWI on Naxos Historical. Speaking of some century old recordings ... :righton:
     
  17. vanhooserd

    vanhooserd Senior Member

    Location:
    Nashville,TN
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    Another Erato recording, this time on RCA from 1977. I've always thought Maurice looks like a headwaiter or bartender.
     
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  18. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    While I have a decent number of LP's by Maurice Andre, I do not have a single CD and need to remedy that situation ... :agree:
     
  19. Runicen

    Runicen Forum Resident

    It's funny. Before I decided to pick up Karajan's recordings, this was the first "album" of his I heard and I streamed it on YouTube. I was so intrigued by his Pachelbel that it kind of hooked me. I'd never heard the piece done briskly before and I rather enjoyed it. Can't quite get over the "Yanni's Greatest Hits" quality of the album cover though! :laugh:


    The drag about Apple deciding they were content to sell phones is that the iPod was an elegant little solution, whatever problems existed in iTunes regarding rip quality and the like (towards the end, I was ripping in EAC and then importing to iTunes). It gets harder and harder to recommend the stuff currently on the market to people less enthused towards the digital side of things because... well, it's a lot of bloody work! I can't tell you how many hours I've sunk into ripping discs, scanning artwork, pruning tags, coming up with a directory structure that makes enough logical sense that it can be used on its own to navigate the collection, etc. Granted, I'm the kind of horrible masochist who kind of enjoys this stuff, but even I hit my limits with the amount of time I'm looking to sink into this stuff.


    Hi-res, as a separate consideration from lossless, is very much a "case by case" option as far as I'm concerned. Some recordings benefit greatly from the added headroom in terms of frequency response. Granted, it's nothing I'd consider night and day, but there are these pleasing little improvements to room ambience and sometimes the extreme low end of recordings that I really enjoy when dealing with a really well-recorded and well-mastered recording presented in 24-bit/96kHz, for example. At the same time, there are plenty where it's just a bigger file size with no discernible aural difference from the standard CD rip. It's why I'm most happy to check out hi-res when it's bundled with a CD set rather than to go somewhere like HDTracks just hope I'm getting something above and beyond what a physical CD already provides (without a disc to serve as a backup, no less!).


    I ran into this for the first time a few years back. Funny enough, I was already ripping my MP3s at 320kbps constant bitrate, so I didn't expect any difference that my ears could detect. I was pretty convinced that I had my setup on lockdown with nothing to be desired. And then I ripped a handful of discs in FLAC, did some A/B-ing and realized I'd just created a ton of work for myself because I had NO intention of leaving things as they were!

    Granted, as with hi-res, this can be a horses for courses and I'd never suggest that high bitrate MP3 is unlistenable or anything. It's mostly a case of, if you have the choice, opt for the better of the two. Period.

    There are plenty of metal recordings in my collection where a direct A/B doesn't show much difference. The masters are already pretty junked and, in audio terms, they're just not great recordings. That said, even there, you'll get improvements to at least the low frequencies of the recording in FLAC vs. even the best MP3s, so it's not entirely a wash.

    Where FLAC really shines in comparison to its MP3 cousin is in decently mastered recordings that were made of musicians playing in a room where the ambience is a component in the recording. Reverb can be gutted by MP3's compression method and it's only in listening to the same recording uncompressed that you notice. It almost feels like you've got cotton in your ears when listening to MP3 afterwards. Likewise, there are some harmonics that just end up either whittled to nothing or removed entirely. One of my test albums was Phaedra by Tangerine Dream. The MP3 version sounded like it started silent. The CD or FLAC would reveal there's a synth drone that starts the album. That alone just floored me.

    Maybe boring to everyone else, but I found the results fascinating - not least of all because I expected the opposite of what I found!
     
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  20. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    Looks like this box should be on my wish list ...

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  21. vanhooserd

    vanhooserd Senior Member

    Location:
    Nashville,TN
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    1977 reissue with a rather uninspired label design. Recorded in Orchestra Hall, 10/9/60 (Concerto), 11/21/60 (Suite) & 3/13/61 (Creation). Poulenc issued on LSC-2567, 1961. Milhaud issued on LDS-2625, 1963. Producer: Max Wilcox. Engineers: John Crawford & Lewis Layton. Reissue producer: Peter Delheim. Remastering: Edwin Begley. Sound & pressing quality are good. I have the Poulenc on CD but had not heard the Milhaud before.
     
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  22. vanhooserd

    vanhooserd Senior Member

    Location:
    Nashville,TN
    If you like classical trumpet that much...
     
  23. J.A.W.

    J.A.W. Music Addict

    Not quite my music :)
     
  24. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    He was a man of the golden trumpet or was it a brass trumpet? :confused:
     
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  25. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    Now playing the following SACD from my Schubert collection for a second listen ...

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