Audio Empire wrote:
On Mon, 7 Feb 2011 06:38:35 -0800, Scott wrote
(in article ):
Here is a website that has extensive info on all things Mercury Living
Presence.
http://www.soundfountain.com/amb/mercury.html
The original pressings were cut from the orginal three track masters.
It does not look like there was all that much difference in the signal
that went to the cutting lathe back in the 50s and the signal used to
master the CDs. I can't speak for the reissues on vinyl made by
Classics or Speaker's Corner. I was not aware that Wilma Cozart Fine
was even involved in those reissues. With that said you can be sure
that minimal tinkering would have been done by Bernie Grundman. He is
a purist almost to a fault.
Agreed. Grundman is probably one of the most fastidious vinyl mastering
engineers working today. He believes in letting the master tape speak for the
recording and does not believe in reinterpreting it if he can help it.
Thanks for the link the the Mercury Living Presence site. It's pretty good,
but I do take exception to the statement that a stereo recording is only
true-to-life when made with three spaced microphones. This is simply not
true.
Compared to good binaural recording of a live event that occured in a
reverberant or open-air space, listened to on headphones, no stereo recording is
'true-to-life'.
And now with recording for multichannel delivery formats,
stereo is really a pleasant old compromise that we're no longer constrained
to use.
--
-S
We have it in our power to begin the world over again - Thomas Paine