Quote Originally Posted by skeptic
. How about Pavarotti? He sings loud. There's a lot of reverb in his voice. And a lot of resonance. How does he do it? Lungpower and a lifetime of perfecting his tone and filling up La Scala with his voice.
Doesn't anybody care about old recording enough to make fine products of reissues today on cds? Yes. Topmost on my list is Deutche Grammaphone. Their wonderful recordings of Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics are as good or better than the vinyl ever was. Chesky takes great pains too. Some of the CBS re-releases such as the Bernstein recordings in the blue Prince Charles series are excellent too. It can be done. If somebody actually cares and the raw material is still in reasonable shape. However, your old pop and rock favorites don't seem to get the care and attention you'd like. I wonder why.
Pavarotti sings loud, no question. If I ever want to peel the paint from my walls, I'll play some of his music. Godawful! Perhaps he's more listenable on vinyl?

I have to share your high opinion of DG, however. When I scavenge the used LP bins, the DG label is high on my list to look out for. I buy whatever I find and I know two people to sell the duplicates to. I prefer the vinyl to the CD - no surprise there. I've bought some of their CD's if the music warrants it and I don't already own it on vinyl. When and if I find the vinyl, the CD goes into storage.

As for the pop/rock stuff not getting the same care and attention, I'd have to speculate as to why. A lot of very important music is being overlooked, IMHO. I mentioned Bob Dylan -an EXTREMELY important artist- and Columbia botched most of his vinyl. The remastered CD's are very close in sound quality, which is to say not good. I'd guess that rock fans as a rule put sound quality a distant second behind the performance. I'd call that having one's priorities in place! Except for the record reviews I've read in audio mags, I've yet to hear the average rock fan wax on about soundstaging or macro-detail. Mostly, I'd take my cue from your post and say that not enough of the record companies care about their product and not enough listeners care about sound quality. No shame there, unless sound quality is one's primary concern.