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Audio Empire Audio Empire is offline
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Default Hi Rez digital vs. LP

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".


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?