Modern Recorded Sound

[Petrushka]

I have just listened to the new recording of Shostakovich 11 from Valery Gergiev on the Maryiinsky label and find it a deeply frustrating experience. Once again the problem lies with the recorded sound which for long, long stretches is practically inaudible. Even with my volume control at an absurdly high level the viola melody of the 3rd movement was hard to discern while the opening 5 minutes or so are simply not there at all. Even the very loud passages lack impact with backwardly placed percussion. It is only in the final bars when the perspective seems to suddenly shift and all comes into focus.

Go to recordings made over 40 years ago by Kondrashin (in vintage 1960's Soviet Melodiya sonics) or Mravinsky on a 1967 Czech Radio broadcast and hear the difference! More recent accounts from Berglund, Haitink and Barshai are in a different league while Rozhdestvensky's in-your-face disc has tremendous punch. The LSO Live disc from Rostropovich suffers from much the same faults as this new Gergiev.

This is not the first time, by some margin, that I have felt seriously disappointed and baffled by modern recorded sound. I should add that I listened to the normal stereo CD not the SACD.

Has anyone else heard this disc? Are any recording engineers (TonyF, DugganAudio) on this forum as they were on the BBC boards who may wish to comment? Something is clearly amiss with modern recorded sound and I'd be interested in hearing other people's views on this or other discs as part of a general debate on the issue.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This is not a problem that can be attributed solely to recent recordings. In the 1960s the Decca/Kertesz/VPO Schubert 8th begins ridiculously quietly, but is OK on the exposition repeat.

Similarly, Beethoven's 10th IMP recording, it disappears almost completely before the recapitulation.

[Ferretfancy]

Petrushka

I'm with you all the way on this one, but it isn't just absurdly wide dynamics that are the problem. Just as an example,take Petrenko's recording of Shostakovich 8 with the RLPO. This had very wide dynamics, but many of the more subtle moments in the score are either obscured or virtually inaudible. There is some wonderful writing for lower strings towards the end of the symphony, and on the Haitink recording every strand can be heard. On the Petrenko it's just generalised, and the balance as a whole has that mixed down effect which blights so many recordings of large scale music.
Earlier engineers managed to achieve transparency combined with a sense of the acoustic in Kingsway Hall, the Sofiensaal or wherever,it's this lack of a recognisable space in the sound which is so often missing today. I think that good results are often achieved in chamber music or works for smaller ensembles, but on large scale orchestral music give me the likes of James Lock or Wilkie any day.
This is not a new topic here, it would be interesting to hear from a balance engineer for further comment. I suspect that one problem is that the sheer cost of sessions pushes crews into a mic it close and mix it afterwards approach rather than taking time to get the sound right before pressing the record button.

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

I have just listened to the new recording of Shostakovich 11 from Valery Gergiev on the Maryiinsky label and find it a deeply frustrating experience...

Has anyone else heard this disc?

Yes, Petrushka. I listened to it for the first time on Tuesday. I don't think that the dynamic range of the recording is necessarily that wide. It is recorded at a low level, which requires the volume to be cranked up, but the ff passages don't then crush the listener, even in the finale. I was listening on an SACD player with surround sound facilities, so my experience wasn't the same as yours.

My problem with the engineering is that the sound is a little bass heavy and restricted; interesting, given that Gergiev uses the same team which generally works wonders with the limitations of the Barbican for LSO Live, yet in the new, supposedly superior acoustic of the Mariinsky concert hall, the sound is more 'boxed in'.

[Mahlerei]

I had one of the earlier releases in Gergiev's DSCH cycle and sold it after one listen. As an SACD it was indeed very disappointing, but the readings were even more so.

Poor sound isn't a new phenomenon. Remember the mess EMI made of Giulini's Verdi Requiem? And what about the ludicrous balances in EMI's Otello (Karajan)? And those grim, multi-miked efforts from DG in the 1970s? Or those bright, shallow recordings from CBS in the 1960s?

No, good sound is still a hit and miss affair, although I do agree that some of the Ansermet Decca reissues (Eloquence and HDTT downloads) are spectacularly good, with wide dynamics and natural perspectives. Ditto the high-res downloads of Farberman's Ives, originally released nearly 50 years ago.

SACD, for all its sonic virtues, is just as prone to poor engineering. The Wigglesworth DSCH cycle for BIS is excellent and the Finnish label Fuga has come up with some of the best organ sound ever recorded. Other specialist labels have achieved good results as well, but even they don't get it right every time. And I suspect it will always be that way.

[salymap]

As a sufferer from tinnitus it's comforting to read all the above posts. I have noticed the wider dynamic range of some new recordings and am turning my little CD player/radio up and down a lot more than I used to.
It may not be my 'fault' altogether then?

[Chris Newman]

No, good sound is still a hit and miss affair.... The Wigglesworth DSCH cycle for BIS is excellent and the Finnish label Fuga has come up with some of the best organ sound ever recorded. Other specialist labels have achieved good results as well, but even they don't get it right every time. And I suspect it will always be that way.

I too liked the BIS sound for Wigglesworth but when they record Vanska in Sibelius the quiet moments disappear. If I turn the volume up it becomes painfully loud a few seconds later. Still: I suppose I need the exercise

[Jasmine Bassett]

It's not so much thw wide dynamic range I object to - I live in a quiet location and have no immediate neighbours to worry about - it's the lack of clarity and depth in the image. I've stopped buying new release from one of the majors because I can't get on with the sound they currently produce - some of their discs have recently won awards so somone must like what they're doing.

I find CD Review the ideal way of getting some idea of recording quality, more often than not what I hear puts me off buying the disc unless it's an exceptional perfomance.

I know it's not always easy given current budgets but it is a combination of venue equipment and skill and I suspect there are too many new recordings being made in less than ideal venues, particularly when so many are "live".

[Ferretfancy]

There seems to be a good deal of agreement here, especially regarding the ideal sense of transparency and depth in recordings. It's true that some of the best recording venues are no longer available, but I'm not convinced that the problem lies there. I think that the proliferation of microphones and tracks has a lot more to do with it. We get most of our stereo information from subtle changes in phase relationships, the differences in time of arrival of sounds at our ears. The more microphones in the mix, the more muddled the sound. After more than 50 years Decca's Rheingold still sounds pretty good, Gordon Parry and his team used a maximum of nine channels, that's all they could muster at the time.
I remember James Lock saying at a BBC lecture that they monitored at high level, but checked balances at what he called "Granny's level" on modest speakers in order to see what the domestic result might sound like.My mixer colleagues and I tried to observe the same principles when working on documentaries, it would seem an obvious thing to do, but I'm not sure how often the idea is observed in practice.

[gradus]

May I add a word of praise for R3 HD sound, not perhaps quite the same thing as commercially released CDs but on my home system regularly producing very good quality indeed with excellent transparency, depth and spaciousness and very revealing of the kind of balance/recording balance issues raised above. To take an example from a few days ago, I wonder if others heard the Lakti orchestra in Sibelius 5? This was an extremely good recording but a frustrating performance (to me) because of the balance achieved by the conductor in the closing pages of the finale. I assume that the conductor (Saraste) was responsible for the balance but was it the recording engineer? I have no idea how much 'production' the engineers used to get the sound but on the evidence of the remainder of the performance I'd say there was very little knob-twiddling/slider-pushing so am inclined to lay my dissappointment at the door of the conductor. So, is it aLWAYS

[gradus]

Oh dear, posted the last message before editing/finishing, but I hope the gist is clear enough.

[Jasmine Bassett]

I haven't been directly involved in a mainstream recording session for some thirty years so my comments on current practice are necessarily hearsay. I believe that the recent trend for live recordings in less than ideal acoustics has meant a multi microphone, fix it electonically later, approach can't be avoided, and the aural results aren't always convincing.

Given a good group of performers, a good acoustic, the best modern technology and experienced people producing the recording, the results can be amazing - and a few companies do regularly, but not always, achieve this - but too often one of those elements is missing.

High quality downloads have the potential for bringing the best possible sound into the home but as with so many processes - garbage in, garbage out.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I wish there were more recording producers with the knowledge and flair of John Culshaw and Walter Legge.

[Ferretfancy]

Culshaw and Legge were great producers, but they had the good fortune to find great engineers, notably Gordon Parry, James Lock, Kenneth Wilkinson, Christopher Parker, Douglas Larter and others. I doubt if the dynamic Decca approach to opera recording would have got under way successfully without their pioneering ingenuity. On the other hand Legge disapproved of stereo at first, and Christopher Parker tells some nice anecdotes about recording the Karajan Rosenkavalier in stereo while Legge supervised in a separate mono control room.
James Lock once described how they solved a problem recording the pilgrims in the Solti Tannhauser (produced by Christopher Braeburn ) The male voices were supposed to process across the stage, but found it difficult to keep together while on the move. They therefore to keep the chorus in one place, in front of a group of microphones which slowly rotated on a turntable, thus producing a constantly shifting balance which could be panned across the stage.
It would be great if an insider from that era could give us a definitive history of the early stereo era in addition to Culshaw's excellent books.

[Flosshilde]

I recently bought Abaddo's Mahler 3 (Berlin Phil) & long stretches are in effect silent - I've listened to it on two different systems & on my MP3 player. I find Karajan's Aida difficult - the start of the overture is so quiet that if I turn up the volume so that I can hear it I'm deafened by the rest.