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Scott[_6_] Scott[_6_] is offline
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Default Hi Rez digital vs. LP

On Apr 29, 1:26pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Sat, 28 Apr 2012 07:49:16 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ):

On Apr 27, 2:46pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:35:56 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ):


[quoted text deleted -- deb]


And yet the CD that you find quite inferior to the Classics 45
rpm LP of the Firebird suite was mastered about as well as it
could be and in blind tests that series of CDs were found to be
pretty much indistinguishable from the master tapes. The "best
practices" were used in mastering that CD. So what you find to
be better (as do I by the way) is probably not more accurate. It
would seem that your "facts" are very much in conflict with one
another. If CD as a medium is "better" as you claim to be fact
then it does not jive with your opinion that the Classics 45 rpm
LP of the Firebird is "better" than the CD. They were both
mastered from the same tapes with the same playback gear under
the supervision of the same producer.


Not at all. The Firebird is an anomaly and neither you or I, I
dare say, have ever heard the Mercury "Firebird" master.


You are correct that neither of us have heard the master but the
Firebird is hardly an anomaly. Classics only did five titles from
the Mercury catalog on 45 rpm LP and all five of them excel. It is
no anomaly.


OK, the only two Mercury Classic Records releases that I've ever
heard are the "Firebird" and a Classic Records test pressing of the
remastering of a few cuts from the Mercury LP "Hi-Fi a la Espanola"
with Frederick Fennel and the Eastman Rochester Pops Orchestra
(Mercury SR- 90144). While the "Espanola" record does sound great,
it does not have the impact that the Firebird" has in my estimation.
I do have several Lewis Leyton recorded RCAs on Classic Records
single-sided 45 RPM series, and again, they sound great (better than
the SACDs BMG released a few years ago, and better than the original
Red-Seal LPs) , but they don't have the impact of the "Firebird".
That's why I called it "an anomaly".


OK but that certainly could be a function of the source material. But
what has not been an anomaly IME is the superior sound of these 45 rpm
audiophile reissues when compared to their counterparts.

We can't know which is the more accurate, the LP or the CD. We
can just know which gives us the greater illusion of an orchestra
playing in a real space. For me (and all I have played the two
for) it's the Classic Records release.


Well this is true if we completely ignore the blind comparisons
that Dennis Drake and Wilma Cozart Fine did for the press between
the CDs and the original master tapes. I don't see any reason to
ignore those blind comparisons.


If one DOESN'T ignor those "blind tests", then one would have to
conclude that the Classic Records single-sided 45 RPM release of
that title sounds BETTER than the master tape. But if Bernie
Grundman used NO mastering moves, how do we account for the
serendipitously spectacular sound on that particular release?


Euphonic colorations. I don't remeber if it was Doug Sax or Stan
Ricker but years ago one of them claimed that the LPs he mastered
consistantly sounded better than the signal fed to the cutting lathe.
A classic case of "better" and "more accurate" being at odds with each
other.