Support Head-Fi.org by
starting all of your
Amazon.com shopping by
clicking here.
____________________________________________________________________
Today's Featured Head-Fi Blog: A Japanese headfier's monologue (Sasaki)
____________________________________________________________________
Please help
support Head-Fi by becoming a Contributing Member
CLICK
HERE -- Contributing Members, thank you
for your generous support! --
However, just as Caruso or Melchior had great voices others will come along who also have voices that are the equal or even surpass any of the past and we will have far more accurate recordings of exactly what they sound like. It is just as big an error to blindly memorialize the past as it is to discard it.
I am not disagreeing there. I would add that I believe that no one even tries to sing like Caruso and Melchior anymore because, as bigshot said, their style does not match modern operagoers taste (but I am sure Caruso could still get a Met contract if he worked a bit on his vocal acting )
That said, I will again ask how often anyone actually takes out and listens to recordings made before the era of high fidelity (monophonic), especially orchestral music
not very often in my case: I tend to prefer modern recordings of baroque, classical and XX-century music; and '50s recording of XIX-century opera.
I have a few prewar recordings I keep getting back to: Django Reinhardt, Bessie Smith, "Smithsonian" blues, some Toscanini and some Stokowski, Schnabel, Casal, Bartok & Szigeti, probably less than twenty discs in total, and only a handful are orchestral...
Since this is, after all, a headphone forum, I will add that I put together my "office rig" (see my signature) precisely with the goal of listening to older recordings. Nothing can make the hideous sound of Salzburg Toscanini Falstaff or La Scala Furtwangler Ring pretty, but a warm, forgiving rig does help listening to these great recordings.
__________________ Home Rig: Toshiba HD XA1 -> Corda Opera -> AKG K701 Office Rig:Onix XCD-88 -> Woo Audio 3 -> AKG K340 Portable Gear: [Nex II E, Sony D-11, Laptop] -> Total Bithead -> [Senn PX200, Senn HD25-1, v-moda Remix, Shure E500-PTH]
However, just as Caruso or Melchior had great voices others will come along who also have voices that are the equal or even surpass any of the past and we will have far more accurate recordings of exactly what they sound like.
Well, I hope you're patient, because it's been about 75 years and their likes haven't been seen yet. (No, Pavarotti as good as he was doesn't come close to matching Caruso.)
Originally Posted by Bunnyears
That said, I will again ask how often anyone actually takes out and listens to recordings made before the era of high fidelity (monophonic), especially orchestral music (with the exception of Bigshot who probably rarely if ever listens to a modern recording)?
I listen to all ages of music pretty much equally. For classical, however, I find the most recent recordings to be underrehearsed and overpriced. I'd prefer to find a great recording and performance from the 70s at bargain price. Some forms of music, like country & western and big band for all intents and purposes no longer exist, so there isn't a choice.
Yes. The transfer has a little surface noise, but it has all of the music. Too often, older recordings are "restored" by just rolling off all of the upper mids. You can tune out sustained surface noise, but you can't bring back frequencies that have been chopped off. This set, along with the excellent Mills Bros and Louis Armstrong in the same series, are the best sounding transfers you can find.
Headphoneus Supremus Prolificus: Head-Fi's most prolific poster.
Originally Posted by bigshot
Yes. The transfer has a little surface noise, but it has all of the music. Too often, older recordings are "restored" by just rolling off all of the upper mids. You can tune out sustained surface noise, but you can't bring back frequencies that have been chopped off. This set, along with the excellent Mills Bros and Louis Armstrong in the same series, are the best sounding transfers you can find.
See ya
Steve
Yep that boxset is great, Django on "Appel Direct" - it's almost voodoo-evil in the way it seems intent on musically possessing you in a gibbetous way!
Well, I hope you're patient, because it's been about 75 years and their likes haven't been seen yet. (No, Pavarotti as good as he was doesn't come close to matching Caruso.)
See ya
Steve
You really cannot make that judgment because you only know Caruso from antique recordings and they have their own inherent distortion. Sometimes I wonder if you would even like the voices of the singers on your old records if you heard them live because they would sound so differently in person from the way they sound on your rig.
You really cannot make that judgment because you only know Caruso from antique recordings and they have their own inherent distortion. Sometimes I wonder if you would even like the voices of the singers on your old records if you heard them live because they would sound so differently in person from the way they sound on your rig.
A good tenor is a good tenor. A good bass is a good bass. James King was a match for Melchior along the line, and was captured in good sound throughout his career. John Tomlinson blasts Friedrich Schorr out of the water, both as Wotan and as Hagen. To make some sort of cultural-relativism argument is to say that middle-C in 1876 meant something different than middle-C in 1992 (assuming the conductor has a historical understanding of concert pitch through the ages). Either a singer hits the notes or they don't. Either they convey the character or they don't. It's as simple as that.
__________________
New signature forthcoming (or not).
You really cannot make that judgment because you only know Caruso from antique recordings and they have their own inherent distortion. Sometimes I wonder if you would even like the voices of the singers on your old records if you heard them live because they would sound so differently in person from the way they sound on your rig.
I used to go to a local Starbucks that had a garden patio with my suitcase Victrola. I'd sip coffee, let my chihuahua romp about and play records. One day, I was playing a Caruso record, and a lady came around the corner, saw my phonograph and gasped. She stood there listening until the record ended and came up to me and said, "I was walking to my car, and I heard a man singing. I came back here to see him. I had no idea it was a record player."
Another time near Christmas, a lady walked by with arms full of packages. She saw my phonograph and told me that her grandmother had one and prized her collection of red seals. I offered to play a record for her, and she asked if I had any Caruso records. I played M'appiri for her. By the time the record was over, she had tears streaming down her face.
The acoustic recording process was not well suited to reproducing pianos. Orchestral music was problematic too, because the recording horn had a sharp dropoff in clarity if the instrument was more than 15 feet away. But for the voice, particularly the male voice, it was perfectly suited. Caruso's voice took full advantage of the format, and was beautifully served by it. If you hear a Caruso record on an acoustic phonograph and close your eyes, you will hear a dimensional aural image of the singer projected about five feet in front of the horn. It's an uncanny presence that will raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and an electrical recording, even a modern one, can never produce the same effect.
Either a singer hits the notes or they don't. Either they convey the character or they don't.
There's a LOT more to singing than hitting the notes. And conveying the character is a lot more complex and individual than a "either they do or they don't" sort of determination.
There's a LOT more to singing than hitting the notes. And conveying the character is a lot more complex and individual than a "either they do or they don't" sort of determination.
See ya
Steve
Indeed. And I think all of us classical nerds on here already know this. Otherwise there'd be no point in spending the obscene sums of money that we do on different recordings. I'm surprised that you of all people would make such an oversimplified statement, PSmith.
-Jay
__________________
If you have more invested on equipment than music, you're missing the point.
)
Linear Mode
