Hi-Rez Highway: Water Lily Russian Recordings and turning the other cheek.... by music@waterlilyacoustics.com New high resolution SACD releases, players and technology.

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Posted by music@waterlilyacoustics.com (M ) on July 24, 2005 at 22:40:40

In Reply to: Re: Water Lily Russian Recordings and turning the other cheek.... posted by Chris from Lafayette on July 24, 2005 at 19:11:06:

In all my postings where the issue of reality has been raised, I have been very clear that the "view" projected is mine. Read the third posting, wherein I discribe the mike placement, that posting ends with the words "per my ears".
I may have not been clear, so I will delineate: I find the orchestral recordings that the audiophiles venerate for great sound, the offerings from Mercury, RCA and Decca, to be highly unrealistic, yet I do activly seek them out and buy them (used and reissues). Why? because I enjoy great music making. I never said that the recordings from Mercury, RCA and Decca were BAD, only that their sound was nowhere near the real thing. I still love the Brahms violin concerto on RCA and own an original pressing that I enjoy for the sheer brilliance of the artistry and the way that music moves me. But sadly, the image of the violin is five feet wide and the violinist is not well integrated with the orchestra, due in effect to spot miking. In contrast the EMI recordings of the "Lark Asending" portray the violin in realistic size and the violinist better integrated within the orchestra. I find the EMI recordings to be far closer to the real thing, not as bombastic as the Mercurys and Deccas and not as cold and bright as the RCAs. Same thing applies to many of the older jazz LPs I buy, again both used and reissues. Often ping pong stereo with hard right, hard left images, but to hear Prez blow his sax or the Duke lead his big band into a great arrangment is to forget about the mockery that most recordings really are. I am a music lover first and formost. Yes, I am stubborn and doctrinaire, because if you do not passionately belive in what you do, you might as well not do it.
Mercury stared out as a country/pop lable and I am sure Bob Fine had Pultec (some of the best made) EQs. The booklet you quote says that no controls were touched once the recording began. Nowhere dose it say no EQ was applied. And what if the EQ had been set during the mike set up? I listen mainly to LPs and thus have only Mercury LPs. I can only speak about the things I know and have experienced. The Mercury LPs were certainly EQed and compressed during mastering.
Some of the tube mikes used by Mercury, Decca, RCA and EMI are still sought after and daily used in stock form in the pop and rock world for their "rich", "fat" sound. Often as vocal mikes. This is a fact.
The comment "the sound of one had slapping" reffers to Teresa's posting that my Svetlanov recording "was a slap in the face..."

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