So who are these several musicians and conductors? The majority of classical aficionados much prefer digital reproduction as it more realistically reproduces the sound of musical instruments.
As there’s been another post, I can respond to this fully. There are some musicians and conductors I’ve known personally who prefer analogue. I worked with Dave Gilmour who famously prefers analogue, which is somewhat understandable given that his instrument almost entirely depends on analogue distortion for its sound quality. Of all musicians, it’s electric guitarists who tend to be the most susceptible to audiophile myths and although it’s still a minority of guitarists, unfortunately Dave is one of them.
Regarding conductors; back in the mid 1990’s I was in Primrose Hill, London at the home of Sir Georg Solti, a friend of my wife. For those who don’t know, he was one of the greatest conductors of his generation, the principle conductor of the Chicago Symphony and was a legendary recording artist, he held the record for the most Grammy wins (31). He originally gained a reputation in the 1950’s as a forward thinker, with edgy, dramatic performances, which is why I was surprised to see an old but very expensive and well maintained turntable and tube amp setup in his sitting room, which was extremely unusual at the time. I don’t recall any other of the numerous musicians and conductors I knew and visited at that time who didn’t use a CD player in preference to a turntable. We had quite a conversation about it, he played it for me and it certainly was the best turntable setup I’d heard. He wasn’t really clear about why he preferred the sound and I’m not sure he knew himself but I got the impression that a large part of it was simply nostalgia. What initially launched Solti as a legendary recording artist was a milestone recording with John Culshaw. John was a pioneer and arguably the most important/influential classical producer in the history of classical music recordings, indeed, many regard him as the “father” of modern classical music production. Given the opportunity with Decca in the late 1950’s he hired the Vienna Phil, with the forward thinking Solti as conductor, to create one of the greatest classical recording masterpieces of all time (of Wagner’s Ring Cycle). What set John apart was his (at that time) pioneering philosophy of what a good recording should be:
“
In these productions Culshaw put into practice his belief that a properly-made sound recording should create what he called "a theatre of the mind". He disliked live recordings such as those attempted at Bayreuth; to him they were technically flawed and, crucially, were merely sound recordings of a theatrical performance. He sought to make recordings that compensated for the lack of the visual element by subtle production techniques, impossible in live recordings, that conjured up the action in the listener's head.” -
Wikipedia.
There’s three important points about this philosophy:
1. Consumers would typically have no idea of “a producer’s philosophy”, not many would even know what a producer does, let alone their philosophy but that’s not true in this case. Culshaw’s philosophy was not only given a name (“Sonic Stage”) but actively marketed by Decca on the LPs.
2. This recording received massive critical acclaim, not only from the specialist aficionado press but across the board from everyone, even the mainstream (such as the BBC, et al.). This alone would influence other engineers/producers to see what the fuss was about and maybe incorporate some aspects of it but what really sealed the deal is what has always driven the entire music recording industry, sales.
3. “
To the astonishment and envy of Decca's rivals the set outsold popular music releases such as those of Elvis Presley and Pat Boone.” -
Wikipedia. So now, it wasn’t just a case of other engineers/producers thinking that sounds good and got a lot of plaudits I might incorporate some of that, it’s a case of the record label execs telling the producers/engineers, “do it like that!”. An approach was not only born but established as an absolute requirement!
To achieve the goal, John and his pioneering engineer, invented the “Decca tree” with outrigger arrangement of mics and then, the addition of spot mics, so that certain parts could have those “
subtle production techniques” applied, to make the recording more dynamic/exciting than the relatively boring “
merely sound recordings of a theatrical performance”. Of course, over the decades, other engineers and producers have tried countless different methods and approaches and Culshaw’s mic technique has evolved to what we have currently but the basic philosophy of a classical recording NOT just documenting the sound that existed at a particular location but of enhancing it to something more exciting/dynamic still holds, because nothing else works (or sells!) as well.
These historical (and current) facts of classical music recordings demonstrate the falsehood of
@johncarm claims. No one is trying to capture or match a live performance with the recording, we’re trying to do better than that. The exception he mentions is Sheffield Labs, who came up with the marketing idea of using the by then completely defunct pre-Culshaw approach of just a stereo mic in a particular location and no “
subtle production techniques, impossible in live recordings” because audiophiles were gullible enough to swallow some marketing BS about supposed “purity”. However, Sheffield Labs eventually switched to the “less pure” multi-micing that everyone else had been using for decades when even they, the foremost/only protagonists, realised it just wasn’t as optimal. Hardly surprising that employing a defunct approach, based on nothing but marketing would end up with a defunct company. It’s an entertainment industry, so it shouldn’t be hard to work out that relatively few are going to favour some abstract marketing notion of purity over better entertainment.
Yeah totally agree
Accuracy with live music is super subjective
As detailed above “
accuracy with live music is super” POINTLESS/IRRELEVANT because pretty much no one, since Sheffield Labs stopped making LPs over 30 years ago, even tries to make a recording be accurate with live music/a live event and even then, it was one tiny label out of numerous labels! It’s just an old and persistent audiophile marketing myth, the only subjectivity involved is whether someone is ignorant enough of the historical facts and gullible enough to swallow the marketing.
Measurements help but they don’t tell the whole story
Measurements do tell the whole story but only of what they’re actually measuring. I don’t get why this most obvious and basic of facts apparently can’t be understood by so many audiophiles. The 0-100kph measurement of a car tells us the whole story of the minimum amount of time it takes that car to accelerate from 0-100kph (under standardised conditions). It doesn’t tell us what my grandmother would feel when experiencing that 0-100kph acceleration, it doesn’t tell us if you think the car is more visually appealing and it doesn’t tell us how comfortable we might subjectively decide the car to be. We’re not measuring the perception of a driver or passengers we’re measuring the 0-100kph performance of the car itself, nothing more. Does this mean the 0-100kph measurement is flawed or useless? Is the solution to abandon or ignore this (and other) objective measurements and instead get my grandmother (or an audiophile) to subjectively guess how fast a car accelerates?
Why don’t you try posting that suggestion to a car discussion forum and see what response you get? My guess is that you wouldn’t want to, because you already know what response you’d get but apparently you would post the equivalent here, in a sound science discussion forum, why is that?
G
