Post by Peter July 20, 2006 (11 of 42)
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crac said:
Thank you for your interest in the Lyrita catalogue.....
Incidentally, I would be grateful if any correspondance you choose to send trying to persuade us about SACD could be sent to the Wyastone Estate address in previous posts rather than to Mr. Itter.
Regards,
Caractacus Downes
Recording Engineer
Nimbus Records
Welcome to the forum; it's always good to hear from people at the production centre. I'm encouraged by your comments on SACD and 24/96 DVD, and on the whole would prefer the former. Good luck with the venture; as a long time buyer of Lyrita LPs then CDs I wish you all success.
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Post by tream July 20, 2006 (12 of 42)
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crac said:
Thank you for your interest in the Lyrita catalogue. We have had very little discussion about whether to release any of this material on a high res format as yet. It will all certainly come out on CD. Beyond that it will depend on both feedback from the marketplace, the condition of the master tapes and, perhaps most significantly, the practicalities of managing a catalogue of recordings that will appeal to a dedicated but niche market.
Part of our ability to resurrect this catalogue is to do with our manufacturing technique - rather than using conventional CD manufacturing, which gets very expensive when making small runs of product, we use a series of automated systems to burn CD-Rs. This makes our production costs manageable, and allows us to make exactly the number of discs we need rather than being constrained by the minimum order quantities and short run premiums imposed by conventional manufacturers. This in no way impairs the quality of the discs we sell - as Nimbus Records and Nimbus Manufactruing we have over twenty years experience of all sides of the optical disc industry, and we have been very careful to ensure that the products we sell are just as good as if we had pressed them rather than burned them.
The reason I mention this is that it is this ability to keep running costs down which allows us to keep the Nimbus catalogue available, and which will allow us to reintroduce the Lyrita catalogue. As far as I am aware there is no equivalent manufacturing technique that can be applied to SACD. We can make DVDs in the same way we make CDs, so as the technology currently stands I think it is likely that, if we were to release the Lyrita material on a high res format, it would be more likely to be on DVD - and probably on 24/96 DVD-V rather than DVD-A, as there are just more players available that can handle the format and therefore a larger potential market. We already have all the DVD authoring equipment we would need in-house, and I tend to agree with BIS's Robert von Bahr's comment (on a different thread), that well-done PCM is indistingushable from well-done DSD but is very much easier to handle.
Of course manufacturing techniques will change, new equipment will become available, new formats are on the horizon and so on. None of this is set in stone, they are simply my opinions at this stage.
Incidentally, I would be grateful if any correspondance you choose to send trying to persuade us about SACD could be sent to the Wyastone Estate address in previous posts rather than to Mr. Itter.
Regards,
Caractacus Downes
Recording Engineer
Nimbus Records
Crac:
I think you might find that the incremental sales volume that you will get by putting these on SACD would be well worth the effort. We SACD aficianados are a dedicated lot, and given that there is lots of music out there worth exploring, are way more likely to explore on SACD than we would on CD. Let me put it another way -I would buy these if they come out on SACD. I am unlikely to buy CD-R's.
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Post by raffells July 20, 2006 (13 of 42)
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I for one would be happy with 24/96 Dads of the Lyritas if that were the only option but the benefits of sacd or dvda would be copy protection.I should also add that commercial sacd players seems to soften the treble on sacds giving that analogue sound.Which is what made Lyrita famous//?
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Post by Edvin July 20, 2006 (14 of 42)
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Dear crac,
will you keep the original artwork? And, SACD´s please.
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Post by zeus July 20, 2006 (15 of 42)
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crac said:
Thank you for your interest in the Lyrita catalogue.
Thanks for your response. I still have a lot of these old recordings on vinyl, many sadly now unlistenable due to the number of times they were played over the years. I also would dearly love the opportunity of buying these again on carefully remastered SA-CDs. Conversely, I would have little interest in buying these on CD or CD-R, nor DVD. It may be the case that 24bit/96kHz is theoretically adequate, but this ignores the fact that many (if not most) DVD players are used in setups optimized for movies. Hybrid SA-CD would see the maximum penetration and enjoyment for these titles, which is why it's the format of choice for significant/premium music issues. Your catalogue deserves nothing less.
Stephen
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Post by Jonty July 21, 2006 (16 of 42)
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raffells said:
I for one would be happy with 24/96 Dads of the Lyritas if that were the only option but the benefits of sacd or dvda would be copy protection.I should also add that commercial sacd players seems to soften the treble on sacds giving that analogue sound.Which is what made Lyrita famous//?
I would be happy too for issues at 24/96 if we are not to get SACDs. We don't need fake surround or anything like that just straight good quality transfers.
Can we have the Sir Adrain Boult's recording of the Moeran Symphony in the first batch of new titles?
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Post by Peter July 21, 2006 (17 of 42)
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Jonty said:
I would be happy too for issues at 24/96 if we are not to get SACDs. We don't need fake surround or anything like that just straight good quality transfers.
Can we have the Sir Adrain Boult's recording of the Moeran Symphony in the first batch of new titles?
Moeran and the Eric Coates disc, please.
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Post by brenda July 21, 2006 (18 of 42)
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Jonty said:
I would be happy too for issues at 24/96 if we are not to get SACDs. We don't need fake surround or anything like that just straight good quality transfers.
Can we have the Sir Adrain Boult's recording of the Moeran Symphony in the first batch of new titles?
dear jonty, yes, yes yes, - as much Moeran as possible, incl Peers Coetmore's classic rec. of the Cello Concerto, but everything else too, and as much Ireland as poss. And I agree entirely that surround isn't necessary. But I'm not sure about DVD-V, even 24/96. B
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Post by crac July 25, 2006 (19 of 42)
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tream said:
Crac:
I think you might find that the incremental sales volume that you will get by putting these on SACD would be well worth the effort. We SACD aficianados are a dedicated lot, and given that there is lots of music out there worth exploring, are way more likely to explore on SACD than we would on CD. Let me put it another way - I would buy these if they come out on SACD. I am unlikely to buy CD-R's.
tream,
I don't doubt your dedication. The problem is an economic one. If we release this material on CD-R, or even on DVD-whatever, we have the equipment and expertise to do all the master preparation and authoring in-house. For SA-CD we have to pay someone else to do this, and the information I've found so far suggests that this would be likely to cost between £ 750 and £ 1000 per title. This may not seem like a lot, but the catalogue is likely to run to a couple of hundred titles, which turns it into a large outlay. We also can't manufacture SACDs in-house, so we would find ourselves subject to the same minimum press run requirements that ultimately forced us to develop our own manufacturing for Nimbus Records in order to make it viable. We are not keen to go down that route again.
Even if we assume that demand for the Lyrita catalogue would be enough to support SACD manufacturing minimum press run size, each disc would cost us about four times as much to make as a burnt CD-R and about twice as much as a burnt DVD-R. Dedicated as it may be, I don't believe the SACD community will account for enough disc sales to make up this difference. And, of course, we'd have to make the CD version as well anyway, as many of our customers would not be prepared to pay the premium for an SACD hybrid disc containing information for which the probably don't have a player.
Please understand, I'm not getting at SACD as a format, just pointing out that with authoring and manufacturing at current prices I don't believe the format is financially viable for a small, classical label with a large catalogue to maintain.
I will continue to investigate the options, but at the moment I think the high res format that offers the best manufacturing costs for us and the largest base of installed players would be 24/96 PCM DVD-V.
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Post by crac July 25, 2006 (20 of 42)
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Original artwork - not sure as yet. The 37 titles already made available as CDs will have the same design. Material previously released only on LP is a different matter - sometimes LP designs transfer well to CDs, but often they don't. I would imagine we would try to do something the is in keeping with how they have previously been released.
Sir Adrain Boult's recording of the Moeran Symphony - the digital transfers for this have already been done, so it should be one of the earlier releases, but I don't have dates yet.
Eric Coates - this disc is I think already a CD master and ready to go - should also be one of the earlier ones.
Ireland - plenty of this in the catalogue ...
There will be no surround processing of any of these recordings - they are stereo (or in a few cases mono) and will be issued that way.
I hope that covers most of the questions raised ...
Cheers,
Crac
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