Having kept my big mouth shut for over six months while abroad and away from my SACDs,being back home again and listening to SACD on a daily basis, I feel it is time for me to add my two cents to some recent threads here.
There have been some comments about noise on two recordings from BIS and Channel Classics, Tchaikovsky´s first and Rachmaninov´s second.
Some listeners here seem to hear the high frequency noise and some don´t.
Unfortunately I belong in the camp that does hear it and I am sometimes annoyed at such noise from these two and quite a few other recordings.
At the venerable age of 58 I still think crickets can be loud on a summer evening and through my quite revealing headphone system I clearly hear the 9khz or wherever these high frequency noises generally hover on far too many modern recordings.
In the Channel Classics thread Jared Sacks seems to admit that it is related to the number of mikes used during the recording sessions.
A comment which brings me to one of my points and yet another plea to record companies that actually seem to bother to record and release in high rez sound on Sacd .
Keep it as simple as possible please, please!!!!
Regarding the BIS recording I was present at one of the sessions for the Tchaikovsky series and I must say that although I generally like the ones I ´ve heard and reviewed so far, one of the things that surprised me was the number of mikes employed by Bergek.
I raised my concern with him and his response was that although he always strived for a naturally ambient sound ,he had felt it neccessary to use more mikes since he had started recording in MCH format.
I have yet to hear the finished product of those sessions ,but I still suspect that the pickup from his two Neumann main stereo pair would come quite close to what I heard live in the hall.
I have reviewed both the first and the sixth here and still like the less close miked sound of the sixth and the fillers better than the still good, but more obviously close and spotmiked first!
Quite often I find it easier to live with the faults of tape hiss, limited dynamic range and other limitations obvious on Living Stereos,than I do with overly spotmiked, noisy modern recordings lacking a sense of real acoustic venue.
I´m not saying that either BIS or Channel Classics for that matter fall into that category.
They both produce some of the best and most realistic recordings available.
But I wish there would be more modern recordings that sound like BIS´s Tchaikovsky 6th or Channel Classics Mahler 2nd.
Let me finish this post by adding my view of the most recent Channels Classics recording Josefs Legende,
a recording which seems to have divided posters here a bit.
Some like it some don´t
I have listened to it via 4 different systems and have come to different conclusions.
I first listened to it via my budget MCH Philips 963SA player and found it a bit shrill, harsh and not that good like some negative posters here .
Via the Marantz Sa7001 KI signature two channel player it still sounded not quite top class with less resolution than expected.
"Both these players have been rated as top ten SACD players in Germany"
I sometimes wonder why?
My modded Xindak SCD2 tubed two channel player revealed a very good simply miked recording with a coherent and believable acoustic.
Finally the quite expensive MCH capable Arcam DV 139 played with even more resolution and inner detail than my Xindak, maybe a tad bit overdoing the treble
Conclusion, a fine recording that needs equipment of a certain resolving power to reveal its secrets.
Isn´t that what SACD and high rez is all about?
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