Post by Claude December 20, 2011 (11 of 27)
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pacwin said:
The 1998 transfer is a very good one and that version holds up well for its era. However to my ears the latest version delivered on SACD does give some gains, especially during the forte passages especially with Wunderlich singing. The inevitable redbook compression/congestion at dynamic extremes is gone and the "shrieking/shouting" is much better modulated during those loud passages with the greater headroom of the SACD i.e around the seven minute mark on Das Trinklied. Like many others I find redbook fatiguing/tiring but now eliminated with this SACD transfer.
There is more weight and slam in the bass and percussion, although it is already plausible on the redbook. Also the instrumental solos and highlights are more delicate and filigreed on the SACD version, for example the triangle percusssion is more crystalline. I would say that the SACD gives you the typical gain of an analogue recording deivered on SACD: microdynamics, better attack/decay, more spatial cues, reduced time smearing.
I just compared the 1998 CD with the new SACD and I fully agree with your analysis.
The SACD sounds smoother and less "nervous", with the voices less forward and better integrated into the soundstage. The CD also has slightly boosted treble, with further adds harshness.
At a reasonable price for a japanese SACD import (if ordered directly from CD Japan), this is highly recommended.
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The EMI SACD has a lot more clarity, definition, and detail compared to any of the previous versions, including the previous-best remaster from Japan (a 2006 24/96 release by Toshiba Japan), which means superior localization, much more naturalistic and precise spatial impression, and improved instrumental color and texture. This is also my impression from all the listening I've done so far with other new EMIs (several of the Klemperers, Richters, Oistrakhs, and Schwartzkopfs). The great new clarity, the improved tonal qualities, and the far better rendering of acoustics and spatial qualities that these offer at times give you a rather startling sense of "being there," of a very bewitching feeling of live music making taking place in front of you, something that's never been a forte of these old stereo recordings to date (they've always sounded just that: ageing recordings). In this respect these EMIs (especially the ones recorded between ca. 1960 and 1964) even top many contemporary efforts on hand, although sometimes of course the musicians themselves are to credit for this, too (like Klemperer and his uncanny ability for clarity and making all sorts of detail audible). But in any case my impression of even the high string sounds (always perhaps the biggest weakness in older recordings) in many of these recordings is extremely positive and I'm rather surprised about how much more enjoyable the results are in comparison. In the voices, too, you can hear this sort of improvements quite clearly, too: they are now more "three-dimensional" and more closely resemble those coming out of the mouths of real human beings.
Means I'm impatiently looking forward to more coming in!
As for any comparisons between these EMIs and the corresponding Esoterics (I've now heard Das Lied and the Schumann 4 from both), I think it's more of a matter of taste than any objective ranking. The Esoteric sound is fatter and more "charged" somehow, while the EMIs have greater clarity and boast better spatial, textural, and tonal definition. In Das Lied, I enjoy the Esoteric's somewhat beefier bass response and LF grunts (they fit my image of this work perhaps better); for the Schumann, I prefer the impression of greater precision and accuracy and the cleaner "soundstage" that the somewhat "leaner and meaner" EMI conveys.
In any case there is no doubt that EMI have done a very good job with these new releases. I'm sceptical of any talk about "filtering out high frequencies" here; more than anything else it sounds like a gentle hand was applied to judiciously remove some imperfections and correct damage on a spot-by-spot basis using technology that for sure doesn't leave the results sounding like the frustrating old GROCs, for instance. And that's probably precisely what we have this sense of new clarity and delicate detail to thank for.
PT
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Post by canonical December 28, 2011 (13 of 27)
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Polarius T said:
....... yada yada yada ....this sense of new clarity and delicate detail to thank for.
PT
Eh? You can't even tell the difference between a CD and a hi-rez recording? And now you have found "clarity and delicate detail" in a 96/24 conversion??? I find your position very confusing.
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canonical said:
...now you have found "clarity and delicate detail" in a 96/24 conversion??? I find your position very confusing.
Not in the 96/24 conversion but in the remastering and what went into the process. I find your reading comprehension very suspect.
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Post by Claude December 28, 2011 (15 of 27)
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It would be interesting to know how EMI mastered the SACD from the 24/96 PCM copy.
According to their engineer, Esoteric does not do a direct PCM-DSD conversion in the digital domain, but plays the PCM master through their Esoteric D/A converter and than digitizes the analogue sognal again through their DSD converter.
This is very unusual, so I thought Esoteric were alone in doing this, but in their Youtube video, Abbey Road mastering engineer Simon Gibson says that they did the same with their Furtwängler projects. First they transfered the analogue tapes flat to 24/96 PCM, then removed noise with the Cedar software, played back the result through the D/A converter, through a vintage EMI analogue equalizer and into a DSD A/D converter. They prefer an analogue equalizer rather than a digital one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfA61_noOQQ (21:30 into the video)
I wonder if the same procedure was used for the less vintage EMI recordings now released in this series.
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Post by seth December 28, 2011 (16 of 27)
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Claude said:
I just compared the 1998 CD with the new SACD and I fully agree with your analysis.
The SACD sounds smoother and less "nervous", with the voices less forward and better integrated into the soundstage. The CD also has slightly boosted treble, with further adds harshness.
At a reasonable price for a japanese SACD import (if ordered directly from CD Japan), this is highly recommended.
How can an inanimate object sound less "nervous" than another inanimate object?
The descriptions of these SACDs have been steeped in oblique metaphors.
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Post by Claude December 28, 2011 (17 of 27)
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I put "nervous" between quotation marks because I couldn't find a better word.
The 1998 CD sounds more aggressive, which is partly due to the boosted treble, that makes details sound more forward. With the CD, I always had the impression that the voices and some instruments were miked too closely, but on the SACD the presentation is better balanced, more close to how an orchestra sounds from the audience, although nothing has been remixed. Maybe they had used some remastering tools for the CD that produced this effect, like Deutsche Grammophon with their "Original-Image Bit-Processing" remasters in the mid-90s.
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Claude said:
...on the SACD the presentation is better balanced, more close to how an orchestra sounds from the audience...
Very much what I am hearing as well.
It's hard to find an accurate language for addressing sonic phenomena like these (subjective listener perceptions) without resorting to vacuous cliches propagaged in some corners of the audiophile universe. Especially if one is to just quickly outline one's first impressions.
PT
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Post by seth December 28, 2011 (19 of 27)
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Claude said:
I put "nervous" between quotation marks because I couldn't find a better word.
The 1998 CD sounds more aggressive, which is partly due to the boosted treble, that makes details sound more forward. With the CD, I always had the impression that the voices and some instruments were miked too closely, but on the SACD the presentation is better balanced, more close to how an orchestra sounds from the audience, although nothing has been remixed. Maybe they had used some remastering tools for the CD that produced this effect, like Deutsche Grammophon with their "Original-Image Bit-Processing" remasters in the mid-90s.
Why not just say that :)
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Post by rousslan December 30, 2011 (20 of 27)
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Polarius T said:
...As for any comparisons between these EMIs and the corresponding Esoterics (I've now heard Das Lied and the Schumann 4 from both), I think it's more of a matter of taste than any objective ranking. The Esoteric sound is fatter and more "charged" somehow, while the EMIs have greater clarity and boast better spatial, textural, and tonal definition. In Das Lied, I enjoy the Esoteric's somewhat beefier bass response and LF grunts (they fit my image of this work perhaps better); for the Schumann, I prefer the impression of greater precision and accuracy and the cleaner "soundstage" that the somewhat "leaner and meaner" EMI conveys.
In any case there is no doubt that EMI have done a very good job with these new releases. I'm sceptical of any talk about "filtering out high frequencies" here; more than anything else it sounds like a gentle hand was applied to judiciously remove some imperfections and correct damage on a spot-by-spot basis using technology that for sure doesn't leave the results sounding like the frustrating old GROCs, for instance. And that's probably precisely what we have this sense of new clarity and delicate detail to thank for.
PT
I absolutely agree with Polarius T. I own both sacd Esoteric and Toshiba of Klemperer's Das Lied von der Erde and I prefer the EMI sacd. But, if you already own the Esoteric sacd, it is not necessary to buy the Toshiba sacd.
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