[78-L] Recording Quality - a relative term

[David Sanderson]

On 7/7/2014 1:16 AM, Mike Harkin wrote:
>
> .>CYLINDERS< sound better than today's pop music
> productions!  Never mind the garbage 'lyrics.'
>
> Mike in Plovdiv

I don't think it's been mentioned specifically, but one of my big 
objections to current consumer fodder is that it's all engineering, not 
music, piled up like the famous McGee closet and cascaded onto the 
listener with no particular regard for the result. Singers don't 
enunciate, lyrics are incomprehensible, accompaniments drown everything.

Had an interesting experience recently. I got a 1960's LP on the 
Canadian ARC label, by Hal Lone Pine and Jeannie Ward, this apparently 
from the period following his divorce from Betty Cody, when he was 
operating out of Regina, SK. ARC was in Toronto, and I don't know 
anything about their operation, but when I played the record it was a 
surprise - clean, full sound, nice separation amongst the instruments, 
good reproduction of solo and duet singing. Maybe someone knows more 
about ARC and will tell us; but this is certainly the best example I've 
heard lately of what people have been saying about the state of the 
recording art during this discussion. ARC's liner notes make much of 
their technology and care; and they're right, I think you'd be hard put 
to find a CD this good.


-- 
David Sanderson
East Waterford Maine
dwsanderson685 at roadrunner.com
http://www.dwsanderson.me