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RE: " Many of the classic recordings from the early stereo age are available in uncompressed form...."

Vinyl may have the stereo component of low bass compressed out. CD transfers are probably uncompressed.

It is not hard to tell whether an orchestral (or any other acoustic recording) is compressed. I can usually tell after a few notes play and I have made volume control settings to what appears to be natural concert level. I then look at the calibrated volume control (on my Mytek DAC) and can guess whether or not the recording is compressed. Recordings that have been compressed require a lower volume control setting than recordings that include the full orchestral dynamics. Recordings that are dynamically compressed can sound natural in the ppp sections or natural in the FFF sections, but there is no consistent volume setting that will allow a complete orchestral recording to sound natural if it is compressed.

It helps to have experience recording live music, including using the reel to reel tape machines used to make the classic recordings. These machines can produce clean and uncompressed results if the mastering engineer was conservative on the gain settings (e.g. Mercury) but often has some tape compression, even obvious saturation distorion (e.g. Reiner Mahler 4 on RCA as made by Lewis Layton). It used to be the case that classic recordings that did not have audible tape hiss were probably over recorded and suffered a certain amount of compression. Digital transfers today can be made that can remove the tape hiss while preserving the tonal balance of the original. Unfortunately, this process only works well for studio recordings that have little concert hall ambiance, because the method removes ambiance. So if you listen to a modern digital transfer of a classic recording and don't hear tape hiss, you won't be able to use tape his as a proxy for dynamic range. Incidentally, modern reel to reel recordings can provide much greater dynamic range than in the classic era, because of technology improvements, especially if wide tracks are used at high tape speeds. ($$$ for tape budgets).

It is not really possible to understand the tradeoffs if you are an audiophile who just buys recordings and plays them back.



Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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  • RE: " Many of the classic recordings from the early stereo age are available in uncompressed form...." - Tony Lauck 03/13/1617:47:01 03/13/16 (0)

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