Re: Baking the Ring
Robert, many thanks for the heads-up on the Gramophone article, which I'll try to track down. I must say though your potted version rather confirms my contention, particularly "supposedly much closer to what Culshaw signed off on". So why not the actual originals from the outset? Why all these silly smoke-and-mirror games? Perhaps the answer is in a 2015 Guardian article ("How the compact disc lost its shine"), where an industry executive is reported as saying in the early days of the CD: "We’re making a huge mistake. We’re putting studio-quality masters into the hands of people." I'd suggest this fear spread quickly across the industry, and it's pretty clear (and in some cases plainly obvious) that the majority of original CD reissues of analogue recordings were from the tapes previously used for LP mastering. It would have been all too simple - they were already tracked, topped and tailed for easy CD conversion. But these tapes would have been 2nd or 3rd generation copies at best, with already significantly degraded sound. What we have seen and heard since, one can only surmise, is a procession back through whatever earlier generations were in the vaults, but never apparently the true ace! The other industry red herring is to dress up new 'remasterings' as some technological advance such as 24/192. The simple fact is that the frequency and dynamic ranges of these analogue stereo recordings were entirely within the capabilities of CD transfer, and if one is to believe the above executive's quote, the industry clearly knew it!
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Message Thread
Baking the Ring - Des Hutchinson March 25, 2023, 6:26 am
- Re: Baking the Ring - Rob McKenzie March 25, 2023, 12:27 pm
- Re: Baking the Ring - robertD April 30, 2023, 4:22 pm
- Re: Baking the Ring - robertD April 30, 2023, 4:59 pm
- Re: Baking the Ring - Des Hutchinson May 1, 2023, 6:40 am
- Re: Baking the Ring - paul corfield godfrey May 5, 2023, 11:44 am
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