Deutsche Grammophon Original-Image-Bit-Processing

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Taxman, Dec 17, 2004.

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  1. Taxman

    Taxman Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Fayetteville, NY
    My daughter, a grad student in NYC, recently complained to me that the Mahler Symphony No. 1 on DG (Richard Kubelik, conductor 1967) she received didn't sound right. She complained that the flute and the triangle sounded out of proportion, too loud relative to the rest of the orchestra. I listened and I agreed it did sound relatively aggressive with each specific instrument being pushed to the front for its bit.

    I started reading the liner notes which describe DGs "original-image-bit-processing" technology which, it says, "makes it possible to remix older recordings in order to "recreate" the original sound image. This is achieved by employing physio-acoustical principles to compensate for delay factors such as the time required for sounds to reach the main microphone and by an extremely high-resolution processing of the musical signals....For the listener to these performances, the audible results will be greater presence and brilliance and a more natural balance that previously attainable."

    The end of the story is that we went to Tower Records and found the same performance on a Penguin Classics disc. Without all the after processing, it sounded much nicer.

    I guess DG has been using this processing for awhile because the disc was issued in 1997. When I started looking through my rather limited classical CD collection, I found a few discs that use "original-image-bit-processing." I know we are primarily about RnR around here but I wonder if any forum members ever had a positive or negative experience with one of these DG discs. The part about remixing older recordings, some acknowledged classics, for greater brilliance makes me wonder if these discs are better avoided in favor of discs that have not been reprocessed.
     
  2. poweragemk

    poweragemk Old Member

    Location:
    CH
    Do the Karajan 1982 performances use that? Those were the worst-sounding classical discs I've ever heard...not sure if it was the recording, the performance, the processing, or some kind of magical conglomeration of the three.
     
  3. GoldenBoy

    GoldenBoy Purple People Eater

    Location:
    US
    It's a coincidence that this came up because I just mentioned this in the thread I just started a minute ago asking about the Karajan SACD's. I used to think the sound of the Original-Image Bit-Processing CD's were good (in the dark days before the Hoffman forum) but I always thought they sounded inferior to many of my other CD's. Is that a contradiction? I guess I always liked the performances which made the sound sound better? Does that make sense? Anyway, in answer to Michael's question, the Karajan digital recordings from the 1980's were all(?) reissued by DG as part of the Karajan Gold series using the Original-Image Bit-Processing and were released on CD and, of all things, Digital Compact Cassette (DCC).

    Besides the Karajan Gold CD's and a few other DG CD's that used the process, I have always hated the sound of those DG '90's re-releases that used the Original-Image Bit-Processing and the all-digital so-called 4D recordings. They were atrocious, IMO. The '4D' recordings in particular were very cold, shrill, and, in loud passages, seemed to distort and compress the dynamics. Bad. Very Bad. :( At least one of these 4D recordings has been released on SACD (Holst The Planets/Gardiner) and any improvement is extremely minimal, it sounds just as bad IMO.
     
  4. grx8

    grx8 Senior Member

    Location:
    Santiago, Chile
    I have some DGs "original-image-bit-processing" discs but I don´t remember having problems with them, probably I didn´t listen detailed to them.
    A Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) is like a DAT?
     
  5. MartinGr

    MartinGr Senior Member

    Location:
    Germany/Berlin
    The original CDs not, the reissues yes.
    I think, the reissues of Karajan's digital Beethoven sound much better. Part of the concept (explained to me by someone working a lot for DG) is, that they remix multichannel tapes now (since around the second half of the 90s) with proper delays. Usually, you'll find a stereo microphone system on two or three tracks, room mics, and separated instrument groups. I don't now how "Stützmikrofon" is called in English, but these last mentioned tracks have to be mixed in at a low volume (as they always did). And: they have to be delayed, which wasn't possible in the "old days". Now, they calculate exactly, how much earlier the signal reached these instrumental mics than it reached the stereo main system and compensate the difference. I had a chance to hear the difference in a DG studio and to my ears the versions with the delays sounded a lot more "natural", as you don't have two attacks from one instrument (through a near and a distant microphone) but only one.
    Sorry, my English might be a problem explaining such things...

    Martin
     
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  6. GoldenBoy

    GoldenBoy Purple People Eater

    Location:
    US
    The DCC was Phillips' direct competitor to the MiniDisc. It looked somewhat like a standard cassette and the decks also played standard cassettes. I believe it was still 44.1khz only (unlike DAT) but the one advantage it had to MiniDisc (besides the players being backwards compatible with analogue cassettes) was that it was 18-bit rather than 16-bit.
     
  7. MartinGr

    MartinGr Senior Member

    Location:
    Germany/Berlin
    4D wasn't much more than the idea, to place some custom AD-converters very near to the microphones to have very short analogue cables.
    So I wouldn't blame that for a bad sound alone... O.k., on the other hand that meant digital console, and maybe the Yamaha DMC1000 (don't know anymore if that was exactly the name) is part of your problem. But other companies like Teldec used that too, and did some very nice recordings with it (maybe still do).
    I once (1998) attended a DG recording session in Roskilde/Denmark with this "4D" equipment (Schütz, Christmas Oratio) and I still think it sounds great.

    Martin
     
  8. I don't really know the Kubelik Mahler 1, but I'm not a fan of DG's orchestral recordings in general. My guess is that some time after the early stereo era they got in the habit of using too many mics. Not long ago I was listening to a DG CD reissue of Fricsay's mono Bartok (Concerto for Orchestra, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta) and I couldn't help thinking that here was a more realistic and satisfying sound than most of their stereo recordings.
     
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