"B&D" wrote in message
...
On 7/19/04 7:34 PM, in article cUYKc.122965$IQ4.70903@attbi_s02, "Michael
McKelvy" wrote:

I think, though, it is an apples to oranges a bit - because the
mastering
standards of CD has only recently reached the potential of the medium.
Just
as SACD comes on the horizon.

Nonsense. There have been great sounding CD's and Mastering since about
10
minutes after the first recording engineers got their hands on the
format.

Which recording engineers would that be?

Most of the ones recording Classical music and any number of
expierienced-not-afraid-to-learn engineers involved in other types of music.
The only real stinkers I've heard were those thaty started with a bad
master.

CD has some definite advantages over vinyl - more convenient, no surface
noise. And both have some real stinkers as far as mastering quality is
concerned - though I have noticed that the standards of quality have risen
generally so that there are more good CD's now than there ever have been -
I
recall a lot of CD's that got released in the early days with hiss (!) and
other nasty artifacts from the analog transfer as well as recordings that
sounded rather emphasized on the high end (like fingers on a chalk board
passing as violin) or full of grain (like Karajan's conducting Beethoven's
5th the CD vs. the Vinyl is pretty clear).

IIRC correctly he also conducted a recording of Shaherazde(sp?) that was
outstandingly recorded on the Chalfont Label.

Noise reduction is not a fault of CD, it is simply a testament to how much
more you could hear.