Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #52)

I'm convinced the allure of vinyl is watching the disc spin, seeing this arm slowly traverse the surface, and actually hearing music despite all the physical laws that dictate why this contraption should not work -- or at least not work as well as it does. Plus, the cleaning of the disc and the turning over of the disc adds participatory and ritual notes of the music making for the listener.

 

One thing that strikes me about their sound is cellist David Soyer's rock-solid foundation. I don't quite know if it is he, his instrument or the recording.

I remember in a documentary I saw about the quartet.....

.....that Mr. Soyer is a little older than the others and that he gigged around for a while before joining the group. He played on some of Billie Holiday's last records.

 

All that plus the more immediate and enjoyable sonics.

 

Now Listening To

Schuetz. Symphonia Sacrae Book 2. Rilling. Bahrenreiter Germany. (This was the original for the more common Nonesuch pressings.)

 

John, Have you ever heard a record? More importantly, have you ever heard a record that sounds better than its CD counterpart? Just asking, not being confrontational or anything.

As I write I'm listening to a vinyl copy of Mozart's PC 23 performed by Murray Perahia and the English Chamber Orchestra. It sounds better than the CD, which I also own and recently listened to. Nothing in your post has anything to do with why I play vinyl for some of my listening. As a person who listens to vinyl, I am convinced that its allure is the way it sounds.

 

Now playing CD4 - Beethoven Symphony N0. 6, Haydn Symphony No. 92 and Strauss Die Fiedermaus Overture from the following box for a first listen ...

 

Actually my box says "EMI Classics" on the upper left corner.

 

Now playing, Disc 7 of the RCA Kapell set, containing:

Sergei Rachmaninoff — Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op.19
— Edmund Kurtz, cello, William Kapell, piano

Johannes Brahms
— Sonata for Viola and Piano No.1 Op.120/1 — William Primrose, viola, William Kapell, piano
— Sonata for Piano and Violin, No.3 Op.108 — Jascha Heifetz, violin, Kapell, piano (RCA Red Seal Sony Classical)

 

Back during the Mozart Bicentennial I got a 6 disc set of the Academy performing all of Mozart's works for wind groups. Only problem was that one of the discs was wrong in the several sets I tried. So the store gave me a copy of K. 375 and K. 388 by the Amadeus Winds

 

Now playing CD5 - Schubert Symphony N0. 8, Wagner Siegfried Idyll, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg and Mahler Kindertotenlider from the following box for a first listen ...

 

I think you are both right. A lot of my vinyl sounds noticeably better than CD counterparts--but, on the other hand, there are some exceptions. Yet, I cannot deny that there is a certain visceral quality that vinyl brings out much more than CDs--that sense of physically interacting with the medium, including the large artwork, but also the fragile medium itself that seems like it should not possibly be able to work the way it does.

 

No doubt that is an experience very different from download and streaming ...

 

...and even moreso from 80+ year old platters of shellac.

...and even more moreso from 100+ year old tubes of wax!

 

Well, I'm not. I'm Pathé.

 

There's a marvelous passage in Pynchon's "Against the Day" as regards the documentation of seances on discs played back on a Parsons-Short Auxetophone:



Rare Records Glendale had a fine collection of shellac discs, wax cylinders, acoustic players and your choice of Steel or Cactus needles, all in the late 1970's. You would plotz, I tell you, plotz.

 

A very majestic and authoritative performance of the Meistersinger by the British Symphony Orchestra (??). I have never heard of this orchestra before ...

 

Now playing CD1 from the following box, which has been sitting around for almost a year for a first listen ...

 

In my opinion there are few things as pointless on this forum as generalizations about what format is best, be it analog vs. CD vs SACD vs DVD-A vs Blu-Ray vs download. It is worthwhile for us to compare individual recordings, but each format has certain advantages and disadvantages, and we each weight them differently.

 

I agree. I hope my post didn't come across like I was trying to declare the superiority of one format over another (please note that the only time I used the word "better," I qualified it with "a lot of" and quickly pointed out that there were exceptions). I was mainly just agreeing with a previous poster that I really enjoy certain aspects of the vinyl "ritual," while also acknowledging to another poster that I often enjoy it for sonic reasons as well, and that the two are not incompatible. None of this means that I love my CD collection (or listening to streaming albums on MOG) any less. I apologize for my poor choices in wording.

 

Now playing CD12 - more Variations from the following box for a first listen ...

 

If you are not at fault no need to confess. You were quite civil. We all await a medium where the best attributes of both are combined and their faults removed.

 

I thought SACD was touted as the best format - has the precision of the CD format but the warmth of the analog vinyl. Then why did Sony run away from this format ...

 

Sony also said CD was perfect sound forever. SACD was flawed by the copy protection built into the format i.e. one bit. My understanding is that the original format was 2.8MHz x 4 bit and that it sounded fantastic. It is also possible that the sampling rate of 2.8 is still too low. People who have heard 2 x 2.8 say it is better. That may mean 4 x 2.8 is the ultimate sampling rate really needed. Enormous files would result from that. I agree that SACD has more natural transient sounds than CD but there is still something slightly odd about the overall sound. The noise shaping at 2.8MHz does still affect the high treble resolution which makes SACD have less dynamic headroom than even CD at high frequencies.

 

I certainly have no problems with the built-in copy protection in exchange for better sound than redbook CD.

 

I understand, but I was talking about why SACD didn't fully reach its potential. Also too many SACDs are sourced from CDs or at best 96/24 PCM. Sony never marketed aggressively the DSD editing and mastering applications needed and in consequence didn't encourage third party applications to add DSD features. Thus engineers find it easier to edit in PCM and run it through the DSD processor afterwards.