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

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger and Allison Kulp" <thorenstd124@xxxxxxxxx>
> OK Tom,  You're welcome to your opinion,but I still maintain,there were a
lot of great recordings made,in the years from 1925-35, especially from
RCA,and Brunswick (Jazz/Popular),and RCA,and Deutsche Gramophon
(Classical).Some of these sound better on the Lp transfers,from the
50s,while some sound better on the original 78s.For my money,good mono
recording,was perfected by The Depression,and only continued to improve in
the postwar years.The early mono Mercs,being an obvious revolutionary
improvement,but the RCA Stock/CSOs were nothing to sneeze at either.I have
yet to hear a bad sounding Columbia Masterworks 78,on the early blue
shellac. The early electrical Brunswicks,have a very unique,etherial,and
fragile tubey sound,unlike any other records I have ever heard.Almost an
audio equivalent an early handblown tube.
>
First...it is likely the best-sounding (but probably far from the most
accurate) recordings were made in the late twenties and, possibly,
early thirties. The one advantage that electric recordings had was
the fact that they could record (and reproduce, once that process
was electrified) bass...and the equalization seems to have been
set up to prove that point! Combine the possibly-exaggerated bass
response with the comparatively noise-free surfaces of laminated
Columbia records, and playing a pipe-organ record can be an experience!

As far as the praise for early Brunswick electrics, that can only be
logically justified by adding the phrase "in the eye (ears) of the
beholder!" I always found them to be all too similar in sound to the
final Brunswick acoustics...which seem audibly to be more or less
"state of the art" for the dying art of recording acoustically!

Steven C. Barr