Post by terence November 8, 2014 (91 of 107)
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Johnbs said:
Now can download the complete high res set for 200 pounds versus 160 pounds for CD set. Seems a small premium for this of us who do not have the same for box sets. John
I bought that, Johnbs! And I thank you for flagging it up here.
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Post by Lunna November 8, 2014 (92 of 107)
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terence said:
I bought that, Johnbs! And I thank you for flagging it up here.
How much hard drive space do the downloads take up? Can you download them at your leisure (say, one this week, another in a couple of weeks, etc.)? Will you be able to download them even if you let your membership lapse/expire?
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My first post here(-: I thought this link might be a useful contribution to the debate:-
http://www.mcelhearn.com/the-new-maria-callas-remasters-good-or-bad/
Although I am not an opera or Callas fan, I find the issue interesting. I have enjoyed quite a few of the EMI Signature series remastered by Simon Gibson and thought they sounded excellent. However, Andrew Rose, whose work I also respect highly (he was involved in the uncovering of the infamous Joyce Hatto scandal) seems to hear no qualitative difference between an earlier remastering, only a difference in loudness? Surely he must have pretty good ears? And Mr Gibson too, is highly respected in his field. What is going on here?
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Post by Cicero November 8, 2014 (94 of 107)
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Thank you for this helpful post.
I do not quite know what is going on, to (not) answer your question; the 24/96 transfer may or may not be worth your money.
However, the new Warner edition does correct pitch in some of the recordings (something Andrew Rose acknowledges in passing), with quite a noticeable effect in some of them. In an earlier post on this thread I provided links to articles that discuss the problem of incorrect pitch in earlier CD transfers.
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Post by Astral November 8, 2014 (95 of 107)
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gammarayson said:
My first post here(-: I thought this link might be a useful contribution to the debate:-
http://www.mcelhearn.com/the-new-maria-callas-remasters-good-or-bad/
Although I am not an opera or Callas fan, I find the issue interesting. I have enjoyed quite a few of the EMI Signature series remastered by Simon Gibson and thought they sounded excellent. However, Andrew Rose, whose work I also respect highly (he was involved in the uncovering of the infamous Joyce Hatto scandal) seems to hear no qualitative difference between an earlier remastering, only a difference in loudness? Surely he must have pretty good ears? And Mr Gibson too, is highly respected in his field. What is going on here?
Andrew Rose is hilariously biased. He cites the same old tired trope about hi-res being irrelevant in old recordings as there is no high frequency content on the original tape, as well as dubious comments about loudness that ignore (or he just doesn't understand) that lowering the noise floor will increase perceived loudness.
Of course, Rose himself makes a living "remastering" old recordings that he need pay no royalties on, from whatever sources he can get his hands on, and himself sells 24/192 "transfers" that contain even less hi-frequency content than the Callas tapes - but does not warn his customers that there is no benefit (in his opinion) to anything above 16/44 for those transfers.
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Post by AmonRa November 8, 2014 (96 of 107)
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Astral said:
lowering the noise floor will increase perceived loudness.
Please elaborate. When transferring analog tapes to digital domain the dynamic range will be the one the tape has. How can you lower the noise floor, which is the tape hiss in this case? Digital noise floor will be anyway about 60 dB lower with 24 bit system or DSD.
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Post by Astral November 8, 2014 (97 of 107)
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AmonRa said:
Please elaborate. When transferring analog tapes to digital domain the dynamic range will be the one the tape has. How can you lower the noise floor, which is the tape hiss in this case? Digital noise floor will be anyway about 60 dB lower with 24 bit system or DSD.
"PERCEIVED loudness".
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Post by AmonRa November 8, 2014 (98 of 107)
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Astral said:
"PERCEIVED loudness".
How do you lower the noise floor? By lowering the level (which does nothing) or using noise reduction software?
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Post by Astral November 8, 2014 (99 of 107)
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AmonRa said:
How do you lower the noise floor? By lowering the level (which does nothing) or using noise reduction software?
Jeez, this is boring. A superior transfer chain in of itself will lower the noise floor existing on the analog tape.
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Although McElhearn and Rose rightly make the same points that some of us had made earlier in this thread, I would like to go back to Claude's post #79, where he links to Russell's posting of the spectrograph of the new 1953 Tosca reissue. If you click on that link, you get the posted plot that I'm importing into this post (shown above), which certainly appears to indicate that there are musical signals from this recording up in the ultra-high frequencies. Frankly, I'm baffled by this graph - Russell and I had a short exchange about this on the Audio Asylum site and (if I may take the liberty of speaking for him) he was also very surprised by it. Neither of us can explain it, knowing what we think we know about the frequency response limitations of mono recordings from the 50's. The only thing I can suggest is that the noise up above 22 KHz is somehow being modulated by the lower frequency signals, but I'm obviously not very certain of this.
Hey! Swit meestry of life (for all of you who remember Sergio Franchi's RCA album of duets with Anna Moffo)!
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