Re: [ARSCLIST] discography of "direct-to-disk revival"?

[George Brock-Nannestad <pattac@xxxxxxxx>]

From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad

Tom, you wrote

> OK, no offense but anyone who hears "perfect sound" on 78 has tin ears! That
> medium is low-fidelity by any serious definition. The only reason I can see
> listening to a 78 is if the performance is so to your taste that you can
> imagine it sounding good -- because what's coming off those grooves ain't near
> sounding good!

----- maybe you just did not get a chance to listen to some outstanding 
recordings. By that I mean recordings where the signal chain is so 
undistorted - non-linear as well as linear - that your ears will only have to 
deal with any gritty noise off the surface. You should realize that if your 
pickup cantilever and its support have undampened resonances that are excited 
by the impulsive character of the gritty noise, you have coloured noise 
added, and that is another layer of work. However, that is a reproduction 
problem, not inherent in the recording.

----- I have many recordings that fulfil that criterion, and some are vinyl, 
in which the gritty noise is gone. A very few are metal mothers, and boy, do 
they punch you physically by their presence of sound - but they need very 
good loudspeakers.

I have an example: 

Berlioz: 
Damnation of Faust: 
Hungarian March 
Philharmonia Orchestra
cond. Rafael Kubelik
HMV C4031
Mx: 2EA14660-1 ca. 1950

that is very dynamic, broadband (you can hear a triangle sufficiently clearly 
in the background), it has depth (something so very lacking in many modern 
recordings) and a natural ambience. In fact this record even sounds good on 
lesser equipment.

----- assisting to a demonstration of the ELP Laser Turntable in Boston in 
2002 I had brought a shellac pressing and a vinyl pressing of a 1936 
recording of cello and piano. Both were equally impressive on the good system 
provided. You could say, "well, a cello is not a good test signal", but it 
is. It is no use that the bow scrape you hear is just a tizz on the sound, 
sort of added fuzzyness, it has to come alive - and it did. 

----- I usually say "there is no such thing as a bad recording, only bad 
reproduction", and to a surprising degree that holds through until the era of 
tape editing.

Kind regards,

George

P.S. I have retained the subject line, although we have drifted