Post by Perigo December 3, 2008 (11 of 31)
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audioholik said:
Stereophile's anti-SACD politics are funny, I agree, it's good that Harmonia Mundi put Super Audio CD information on the cover :)
It is not a chance that in the same december issue they put a truly apotheosis of black vinyl! The analog lobby strikes again! :-)
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Perigo said:
It is not a chance that in the same december issue they put a truly apotheosis of black vinyl! The analog lobby strikes again! :-)
All you need to do is look at the demographics and you will see that, despite this being the 21st Century, a huge proportion of Stereophile's readership prefers vinyl. Does not really bother me.
Kal
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Kal Rubinson said:
All you need to do is look at the demographics and you will see that, despite this being the 21st Century, a huge proportion of Stereophile's readership prefers vinyl. Does not really bother me.
Kal
At age 68, I must be still very naive - it seems to me that a magazine such as Stereophile has an obligation to inform. Certain information has been glaringly obvious in its absence.
Specifically the fact that, whatever the merits of upgrading one's stereo record playing equipment, anyone who loves classical music, or any acoustically produced music, and particularly the live performance of it, is an absolute fool if she or he spends a cent in upgrading any stereo component without first adding to their stereo gear, those components necessary to play SACDs in surround sound.
The "surround" layer of a well recorded SACD gives the listener an enormous portion of the experience of attending a live concert. I would estimate for a good PentaTone, Telarc, Channel Classics, BIS, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi, (and several other labels) that the surround layer yields 85 to 90% of the experience of a blind person in attending a live concert. In stereo that drops to about 45% perhaps, and on regular CD maybe down to 35% or less. An LP ???? not so much anymore. Those old 60s and even 70s recordings are horribly dated.
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Post by Tonerl December 4, 2008 (14 of 31)
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Kal Rubinson said:
The music review group is quite independent of the equipment review group except when we all participate in the egregiously named "Records to Die for!" Complain to the music editor.
Kal
Is it still Robert Baird? If so, something tells me he won't care.
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Post by Tonerl December 4, 2008 (15 of 31)
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Windsurfer said:
In that article you mention upcoming Blu-Ray attractions ..... I will purchase a Blu-Ray disc player when and only when I can get the likes of Julia Fischer in concert on a Blu-Ray disc... like her upcoming Decca CD of the Bach concertos for example, which though she is my favorite concert artist and I will travel ridiculous distances to hear her in concert, (Albany NY to Cincinnati for Dvorak's violin concerto most recently) I most likely will NOT purchase. I have not purchased an rbcd since 2002.
How was that concert in Cincinnati? I do a lot of work down there and thought about driving down that weekend to hear the concert. I was interested in Ms. Fischer's performance, obviously, but the orchestra's reading of The Planets piqued my curiosity, as well, since they were set to record it for Telarc.
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just look at their latest poll :(
Do you use your system for both two-channel and 5.1 or 7.1?
http://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/displayvote.cgi
they totally ignore SACD's, they're reviewing CD layers of multichannel SACD recordings and then say things like:
"Multi-channel music releases may have slowed to a trickle, but with home theater still going strong, reader Greg Abarr is curious: "How many people use their systems for both two-channel and 5.1 or 7.1?"
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Post by tailspn December 4, 2008 (17 of 31)
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audioholik said:
just look at their latest poll :(
So VOTE!
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Post by tream December 4, 2008 (18 of 31)
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Windsurfer said:
At age 68, I must be still very naive - it seems to me that a magazine such as Stereophile has an obligation to inform. Certain information has been glaringly obvious in its absence.
Specifically the fact that, whatever the merits of upgrading one's stereo record playing equipment, anyone who loves classical music, or any acoustically produced music, and particularly the live performance of it, is an absolute fool if she or he spends a cent in upgrading any stereo component without first adding to their stereo gear, those components necessary to play SACDs in surround sound.
The "surround" layer of a well recorded SACD gives the listener an enormous portion of the experience of attending a live concert. I would estimate for a good PentaTone, Telarc, Channel Classics, BIS, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi, (and several other labels) that the surround layer yields 85 to 90% of the experience of a blind person in attending a live concert. In stereo that drops to about 45% perhaps, and on regular CD maybe down to 35% or less. An LP ???? not so much anymore. Those old 60s and even 70s recordings are horribly dated.
Bruce, I tip my hat to you for your love and music and enthusiasm, but disagree with some of what you say here.
I totally concur, however, that good multichannel sound is a major step forward for concert hall realism; however, I disagree with you on both vinyl and "those old 60s and even 70s recordings".
Some of the absolutely best recordings ever made were recorded on analog tape and pressed on LP, and often using tube electronics. (I don't use tubes in my stereo system, by the way - I think you need gear way more expensive than I can afford to properly capture the hairpin dynamics of orchestral music, so I am using solid state. I am "between" multichannel systems, but strongly believe in multichannel, as you do.). A major decline in recording capability occured with the introduction of PCM, and it has only been the advent of higher resolution PCM (although I still don't like it) and DSD that has brought us back to almost equivalency with analog. I own, I don't know, 30 or 40 Pentatones, and I am still convinced that the best sounding ones are the RQR, originally set down on analog tape. I also think that some of the best sounding two or three channel SACD's were made from analog tapes.
Digital recordings are a LOT easier to make and edit than analog.....they just don't sound as good. It is not always progress.......
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Windsurfer said:
At age 68, I must be still very naive - it seems to me that a magazine such as Stereophile has an obligation to inform. Certain information has been glaringly obvious in its absence.
Specifically the fact that, whatever the merits of upgrading one's stereo record playing equipment, anyone who loves classical music, or any acoustically produced music, and particularly the live performance of it, is an absolute fool if she or he spends a cent in upgrading any stereo component without first adding to their stereo gear, those components necessary to play SACDs in surround sound.
The "surround" layer of a well recorded SACD gives the listener an enormous portion of the experience of attending a live concert. I would estimate for a good PentaTone, Telarc, Channel Classics, BIS, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi, (and several other labels) that the surround layer yields 85 to 90% of the experience of a blind person in attending a live concert. In stereo that drops to about 45% perhaps, and on regular CD maybe down to 35% or less. An LP ???? not so much anymore. Those old 60s and even 70s recordings are horribly dated.
Don't yell at me. I am doing what I can. What readers like you need to do (assuming you are a reader) is speak up to both the Music Editor and the Editor-in-Chief. They are the ones who make policy.
I can tell you that it took me two years to convince management (old management under Primedia) to let me do a regular column on hi-rez, multichannel.
Kal
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Kal Rubinson said:
What readers like you need to do (assuming you are a reader) ....
Kal
First my apologies for seeming to "yell at you"! Any apparent anger was directed toward John Atkinson and others still with their heads buried in the sand.
As to being a reader, I actually receive the magazine in the mail on a monthly basis but lately I either ignore it completely or, more typically pick it up scanning for "Music in the Round" and not finding that most excellent column, read some other thing which almost always has me wanting to tear the thing to shreds, stamp up and down on it, douse it with kerosene and light a match!
So I wonder how much longer I can continue this self-abuse in the name of trying to hold open a line of communication to what should be an inclusive net-work of music loving people, a community. Will I maintain my subscription ???? I guess it depends on how much of a fool I am feeling when it comes up for renewal again.
Keep up the good work, Kal - your column right now is the only rational reason I have for keeping my subscription.... although I am usually ahead of you on recordings having already purchased most of the ones of interest to me by the time your column hits the press. BTW, I just heard
Schnittke: The Piano Concertos - Ewa Kupiec, Frank Strobel
and it is magnificently recorded! It is, I believe from the sound, a high rez PCM recording - not as silky smooth as the very best DSD sound can be - but despite the slight degree of artificial brilliance typical of pcm, it is a very very impressive recording.
Bruce
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