[78-L] Recording Quality - a relative term

[David Lennick]

Artificial reverb is probably the worst offender. And miking string quartets 
too close or too far. Then there's CBC Radio, which seems to tweak the upper 
midrange AND add reverb while broadcasting recordings that are already 
over-engineered (I listen to the CBC only when desperate, i.e. when I can't 
pick up WNED-FM in Buffalo which produces as natural a sound as possible).

Incidentally, about 10 minutes ago I heard the start of a modern recording of 
Stokowski's transcription of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the Los 
Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa Pekka Salonen. From the very beginning, 
recording quality aside, it was clear that he should have stayed home. No bite, 
no attack..you're supposed to hear resin flying from the very first note, even 
on the ghastly Fantasia soundtrack recording.

dl

On 6/29/2014 4:58 PM, Julian Vein wrote:
>
> On 29/06/14 17:04, Ron L'Herault wrote:
>> I don't know if quality has improved but I think the overall result has gone
>> downhill.  Recording each musician/instrument independently and then mixing
>> them in at the end gives a one-dimensional sound image to these ears.  I
>> find it all most impossible to hear and understand modern vocalists because
>> they are lost in the sonic plane.  First off, you don't hear the interplay
>> of the instrumental sounds as they were created.  And then you don't have
>> the depth.  If you close your eyes it seems like there is a line of sound in
>> front of you, everything mashed together, including the singer, just another
>> sound in the jumble.   Even old mono recordings had a sense of depth.  You
>> could kind of feel the singer was in front of the band, and I am convinced
>> that you get a feeling for where instruments were place in relation to the
>> singer on an early mono recording (30s)  Was it just the time delay?  Once
>> stereo got over the "ping pong" era, one could easily spatially and
>> sonically place instruments and singers in a group recording as you hear it
>> played back.  There was definition and separation for a while, and not just
>> the side-to-side separation you'd expect.  It was a separation between
>> musicians/singers.
>>
>> Ron L
>>
> ==================
> My sentiments exactly. Early 50s recordings were "honestly" (i.e.
> simply) done. In the jazz world the problem seems to have started with
> Rudy van Gelder who, at Blue Note's Alfred Lion's bidding, starting
> using his mixing console to obtain a balance that suited Lion. It was
> thise "hear-all-instruments-equally" requirement that meant the end of
> hearing instruments in their natural ambiance. Of course, not all
> engineers followed this method. Ewing Nunn of Audiophile records
> continued to use natural ambiance, although he sometimes experimented
> with different methods to obtain a particular effect, and not always
> successfully. When I first started hearing van Gelder's efforts in the
> late 50s/early 60s, I was often straining to hear some aspect of the
> music, usually the recessed sound of the bass player. He wasn't an
> incompetent engineer--some of his efforts are excellent--so he knew what
> he was doing. With Blue Note he was "just obeying orders". Some of his
> mid-60's stuff was bad by any standard (Blue Note and Prestige). When I
> play a RVG recordings, I'm always conscious of the recording quality,
> and knowing that it isn't an accurate representation of what was
> happening in the studio.
>
> Perhaps there's a theory that using natural ambiance distracts from the
> music making, and that a distillation of the individual sounds is the
> best way to represent it?
>
> As it happens, I've been listening to a lot of George H. Buck's
> catalogue lately. Some of the sound is rough, to say the least, but they
> are mostly recorded using simple mike setups, and the best of them (even
> with imperfections) make you feel the band is in the room with you.
>
> The best recordings are those that don't make you think about the
> recording methods.
>
>        Julian Vein
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