emaidel
06-16-2008, 03:37 AM
This probably should be under "Rave Recordings," but I don't know how to move it over to that category.
Way, way back in the 60's, my boss recommended a Mercury Living Presence album called, "Fiesta in Hi-Fi." He told me the sound would knock my socks off, and that it was a very highly regarded record amongst hi-fi enthusiasts of the day.
I bought the album, and while I liked it, I found the hiss level very high, and quite annoying. It's all contemporary music performed by the Eastman-Rochester orchestra, conducted by Howard Hanson, and some of the cuts had (for the day) bass drum whallops that could have easily destroyed many a speaker system. (I had a pretty cheapo system at the time, and could rarely ever listen to it even at a modest level without one, or both, of the speaker cabinets rattling.)
In the early 90s', I found a CD of the album and purchased it, but wasn't particularly impressed, and actually never listened to the entire disc. Just yesterday, I popped the CD into my player, and realized an all-new, sonic experience. Now that the CD player I'm using is of top-notch quality (I had a rather ordinary Denon player in the early 90's), I'm able to fully appreciate all the effort that went into the CD master, apparently all engineered by the daughter of one of the original recording engineers of the LP.
Just for a comparison, I put the record on my turntable to see how different it sounded from this remastered CD. It actually sounded pretty lousy by comparison: thin, very noisy, and completely lacking in the richness and hugely dynamic sound from the CD.
So, if you've got a really good CD player (and I know many members here do), you might want to check this one out: it still has a very high hiss level, though nowhere near that of the original LP, and is an extroardinarily fine example of how much better sounding a properly remastered record can sound on CD.
Way, way back in the 60's, my boss recommended a Mercury Living Presence album called, "Fiesta in Hi-Fi." He told me the sound would knock my socks off, and that it was a very highly regarded record amongst hi-fi enthusiasts of the day.
I bought the album, and while I liked it, I found the hiss level very high, and quite annoying. It's all contemporary music performed by the Eastman-Rochester orchestra, conducted by Howard Hanson, and some of the cuts had (for the day) bass drum whallops that could have easily destroyed many a speaker system. (I had a pretty cheapo system at the time, and could rarely ever listen to it even at a modest level without one, or both, of the speaker cabinets rattling.)
In the early 90s', I found a CD of the album and purchased it, but wasn't particularly impressed, and actually never listened to the entire disc. Just yesterday, I popped the CD into my player, and realized an all-new, sonic experience. Now that the CD player I'm using is of top-notch quality (I had a rather ordinary Denon player in the early 90's), I'm able to fully appreciate all the effort that went into the CD master, apparently all engineered by the daughter of one of the original recording engineers of the LP.
Just for a comparison, I put the record on my turntable to see how different it sounded from this remastered CD. It actually sounded pretty lousy by comparison: thin, very noisy, and completely lacking in the richness and hugely dynamic sound from the CD.
So, if you've got a really good CD player (and I know many members here do), you might want to check this one out: it still has a very high hiss level, though nowhere near that of the original LP, and is an extroardinarily fine example of how much better sounding a properly remastered record can sound on CD.