[Scott Dorsey]

geoff wrote:
On 2/12/2020 8:52 pm, Sean B wrote:
I was listening to some Michael Murray on the Methuen organ, and thinking about how it might sound without the damaging sample rate conversion in the way.


Probably indistinguishable.

There were never any files. When the Telarc records were released, the
conversion was done by playing back the Soundstream machine's analogue output
into the analogue input of a PCM-1630 machine. No computer or workstation
involved.

In 2017, Paul Blakemore demonstrated a restored Soundstream machine playing
back one of the Telarc recordings live at the AES show and it sounded pretty
good. At the time there was some discussion about whether it would be
possible to get a digital output from the Soundstream in order to directly
digitize some of those recordings and the basic answer is that it would be
possible but it might require some software to reproduce some of the
error processing and so forth.

I would suspect that a digital transfer would be a lot better than the CD
releases available, given how horrible the 1630 machine was. Although the
Soundstream used a state of the art ladder converter and sounded far better
than the Sony recorders, I suspect modern conversion would be audibly better.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."