drh, a participant of the other classical music thread mostly listens to 78 RPM recordings. I only listen to 78 RPM recordings that have been reconstructed/remastered to CD's via the Naxos Historical series ...
Gave this a listen- I'm a fan of both Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel, so it seems like an obvious choice as well as a true rarity. The music is beautiful, but the frequent French narration is distracting at best for a non-francophone. Recommended with reservations - glad I checked it out on Spotify.
On this point especially, I'd like to concur emphatically. Knowing what you're listening to is moderately interesting. Knowing your opinion - of the piece if obscure, or the performance if not, is much more interesting.
Wes H was curious about playback systems, so I thought I'd post this picture of my listening space. It's located in part of the basement area of our home so is somewhat isolated from the rest of the house. The room was built specifically for music play back with the dimensions chosen to space out the standing waves. For LP's I'm using my old Thorens 125 Mk2 with a SME 3009 series 3 tonearm mounted with a Benz Micro gold cartridge. For CD's I have a Denon DCD 3520 and for Spotify and playback of hi-res downloads I use a Cambridge Audio CXN. There is a sofa behind the recliner in the foreground but the room is set up mainly for one person sitting near field. I have a second setup in our living room which is more normal in layout.
Listening to #5 on Spotify Premium. I can't say I've listened to a lot of 20th Century string quartets, but these may very well be my favorites. Her rhythms, for one thing, are incredible. I will try to listen to 6 & 7 later today.
Here is my modest set up. The PC is not pictured, and to the right. There is an external DAC/headphone amp which allows me to listen to all my uploaded CDs/downloads/streams through my receiver and speakers. I tried to place the speakers using the Cardas Calculator. Room Setup Calculators The equipment is listed in my profile. Classical CDs are on a shelf behind all this.
Thanks for taking the time to post such a thoughtful response! Interestingly enough, many of your experiences and feelings regarding this forum mirror mine! I too lurked for years before actually joining. I got a lot of inspiration and information from posts here but never really felt I could contribute much of any value to anyone else. I am also non-confrontational and I won't ever engage forum bullies. I deal with too many people like that in my day job. Why do that to myself while I'm trying to relax? Fortunately, there is a lot less of that here than other music related fora which I have visited over the years. That's probably what finally convinced me to jump in here. Quick background to avoid boring all who read this: My history with music began as a small child when my mom used to "babysit" me with a stack of records on the family Hi Fi in the living room. She quickly discovered that I would sit mesmerized by the music until the end of the last record. Then I'd demand to hear them again! I grew up in a fairly rural area so my exposure to music was pretty much the radio and whatever other kids were listening to. That meant mostly pop/rock music. So, I grew up collecting mostly Rock records. When I went away to college, I was suddenly immersed into a world of very diverse people with very diverse musical tastes and here I was introduced to Jazz. This started my long love/obsession with this music and this is what I listened to and collected exclusively for years. (I still love it.) While I had bought some of the usual warhorses throughout the years (Planets, Also Sprach, Beethoven's 5th and 9th, 1812, etc), Classical was still just a fringe interest to me until I met a neighbor about 20 years ago who really got me interested in pursuing Classical music full time. It grew on me and now it's a huge part of my daily life. Also, my wife plays piano for our local music conservatory. She's not well versed in Classical works but through this conservatory we have had the opportunity to meet many excellent musicians and even have some at our home. I even was able to meet and converse with Ignat Solzhenitsyn after several of his local performances. Experiences which I will cherish for the rest of my life! OK, I've bored everyone enough for now. I can post responses to more of your questions in the future to avoid putting everyone to sleep all at once. .
Now on the turntable, record 2 from "The Orchestral Works Of Zoltan Kodaly" performed by the Philharmonia Hungarica led by Antal Dorati on London. Hary Janos Suite Minuetto Serio Symphony in C
My mom was a classically trained singer and my dad liked country music My older brother and I both took piano lessons but both quit when we had to practice for several hour daily when all our friends were outside playing. Mom said we'd regret it and she was right. While we had no playback systems in our house my grandparents (who both played in the local symphony orchestra) did. All I recall hearing was some old Spike Jones lp's which we thought were a riot.
Great post, I certainly try and add a bit about what I thought about a performance though for me that usually requires hearing it at least twice and often more times to feel comfortable commenting about it. IMHO this forum is quite civilized so I think it makes people cautious (including myself) of criticizing artists or performances especially when you have a rough idea in your mind that someone enjoys said artist quite a bit. ie this happened in the mega box thread with the criticisms leveled against Karajan; the discourse was certainly civilized, but again leaves me hesitant to say anything negative in the future. I don't feel as reserved in another classical forum that is a bit more "shoot from the hip". As such I think there is less resistance in just posting the piece/album art than expressing an opinion about it and one other person has expressed similar sentiment in another classical thread. Criticism is just one facet of it, I try and praise or give some opinion of the piece if I am familiar with it and honestly if I am playing the disc there is a good chance I like it... or I wouldn't be playing it . But I also find posting a generic "fine performance, great playing" a bit boring so I try and avoid that as well. I quite enjoy the tangents, particularly the recent car discussion (big 911 fan here; 997 generation TT the most "perfect" well balanced power to weight ratio and handling car I've ever driven).
Beautiful systems & listening spaces! Here's mine when I played NIB too loud many full moons ago. I built the stereo cabinet & TV stand/record storage Marantz 2275 & Denon CD & cassette players I replaced those KG3.2s with KG5.2s and that TT with a Technics 1300 That board across the front of the TV blocked the scrolling spoiler banner when I watched replays of Bruins games. Nothing more aggravating than seeing the final score of the game I'm watching.
I bought this as a "CD quality FLAC" file from Presto Classical...or so I thought. It's nothing more than a slightly upsampled MP3 file (its bit rate is 595 kbps...a CD quality FLAC is 1114.2 kbps). This is the second time Presto has ripped off customers by selling such files. They refunded my money the first I complained and requested a refund, but they didn't even bother to respond this time. They are dead to me. BUYER BEWARE WHEN DEALING WITH PRESTO. Oh, the music is very intense and powerful, and the sound is decent enough, but it would have been better as a true hi-res file or a CD.
A bit rate of circa 500 sounds quite low, but for classical FLAC it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Since classical doesn’t have much treble and especially when it’s quite dynamic, it tends to not have a high bitrate. That is normal, because the lossless codec can handle it very well. I have mono classical recording that I myself encoded from CD to lossless and sometimes the bitrate is even lower than 320. So I don’t think you should be too alarmed about it. It was similar in the LP era. When classical music has little bass and many quiet parts, it allowed mastering engineers to fit 30 minutes per side without any perceivable loss in quality. It’s the nature of the beast.
It's my understanding the all FLAC files are lossless in terms of data. There are different FLAC compression algorithms that can be used that will affect file size and require the processer to do more work when reading or writing the file but this does not affect the sound of the music. There is no compression of dynamics in the recording nor any loss in frequency response. I use level 6 when ripping CD's to FLAC and this will often result in bitrates of 600 to 900 or sometimes a little less depending on music content but nothing is lost in terms of music quality. FLAC encoders include optional compression algorithms to reduce the battery power processers use on portable playback units. Any CD quality downloads I've bought from Presto or other reputable sites are in the 600-900 bitrate arena. Hi-Res downloads tend to have bitrates around 2400-2900.
Listened to CD1 on my just completed late afternoon walk ... Feeling kind of stupid as I still cannot tell Sophie Daneman apart from the talented Mrs. Patricia Petibon as they are both soprano. Unlike the fabulous Emma whose angelic voice is always a cut above all other sopranos and therefore very easy to pick out, most other average sopranos just sound too alike.
I'm alarmed because they charge more for FLAC files, and since this is an upsampled MP3 masquerading as a FLAC, I'm doubly alarmed.
Again, if this were actually a FLAC, then that would be one thing, but since it isn't they are ripping off customers. Go ahead and continue to support them, but they have lost one loyal customer.
A lot of digital info has already been stripped out of a CD to create an MP3 file. As such, upsamping the MP3 file will do nothing to restore the original music. I would think if the streaming service is to provide FLAC files, the FLAC files must come from the record companies. This is a very confusing situation here ... I have never paid for any streaming, not even downloads.
My last arrival...playing the SACD layer through a vintage Pilot 264 Integrated amp (7591 OT). This release is stupendous. The instrument and playing are powerful yet clean. There are numerous pieces that are very strong melodically, which is sometimes the weak aspect of this kind of music. Composer: François Dufault David Kellner Charles Mouton Johann Pachelbel Esaias Reusner Silvius Leopold Weiss
