Decca recordings ... History

[Dave2002]

Not sure if I've seen this before, or if this has been posted here, but this article about Decca recordings looks very interesting - http://www.polymathperspective.com/index.php?p=3219

Maybe there are comparisons with EMI around the same period of time.

[cloughie]

Not sure if I've seen this before, or if this has been posted here, but this article about Decca recordings looks very interesting - http://www.polymathperspective.com/index.php?p=3219

Maybe there are comparisons with EMI around the same period of time.

Interesting, Dave, I could subtitle it ‘Decca Recordings - It’s place in my love affair with recorded music.’ It lives on through ‘Eloquence’.

[gradus]

Buying records in the 60s and 70s I always looked forward to hearing a new Decca SXL for the usually vivid stereo sound. Imv and with some notable exceptions EMI, DGG, Philips etc recordings did not scale the technical heights that Decca once managed.

[Lordgeous]

Fascinating stuff. I'm lucky in my studio to have aquired some Decca built equipment from their studios and cutting rooms after they were closed: mainly compressors and passive EQs, the latter especially were 'no expense spared' designs - a look inside them confirms that!

[Dave2002]

Buying records in the 60s and 70s I always looked forward to hearing a new Decca SXL for the usually vivid stereo sound. Imv and with some notable exceptions EMI, DGG, Philips etc recordings did not scale the technical heights that Decca once managed.

I wasn't always so enamoured of Decca LPs, but I think it did depend a bit on the equipment used to play the records back. I once heard some Decca LPs played back using a Decca pickup, and those sounded amazingly good. I think some EMI recordings were also good - though I'm not sure what equipment would have been better to play those. I also heard some CBS recordings which sounded terrific on good equipment, though some - but probably not all - may actually have been produced by Decca engineers. In those days few of us had really good kit to bring out the best of the recordings.

[Lordgeous]

I was lucky at my grammar school to have had a music teacher who was also a hifi bod. He built a wonderful system on the school stage where we had our music classes: fabulous Decca pickup, Garrard deck, Quad valve amps and hand built, sand-filled corner reflex speakers (Wharfdale design I think). Obviously audio memory is subjective but I'm not sure I've ever heard anything better, especially hearing the Decca Solti Rheingold for the first time! Decca, EMI, Philips etc all seemed to have their own distinctive sound in those days, with Decca ruling the roost imho, and RCA recordings for some reason always sounding edgy and disstorted.

[Lordgeous]

Another interesting link for anyone interested in Decca - Complete Decca Classical Discography, 1929-2009

https://archive.org/details/DeccaComplete

[Keraulophone]

I was lucky at my grammar school to have had a music teacher who was also a hifi bod. He built a wonderful system on the school stage where we had our music classes: fabulous Decca pickup, Garrard deck, Quad valve amps and hand built, sand-filled corner reflex speakers (Wharfdale design I think). Obviously audio memory is subjective but I'm not sure I've ever heard anything better

Reminds me of the main music room in my school (early 1970s) where I was allowed to help myself to the extensive library of LPs on Wednesday afternoons and play them on a similar system: Thorens TD124/SME/Shure V15, Quad II valve amps and very large corner reflex loudspeakers (must have been fashionable then, but can’t remember the make). The stereo image, eg of a string quartet, was so precise that it seemed as though the musicians were sitting in the room between the speakers. From then on, one of my main aims in life was to build a record collection larger than that one... for better or worse something achieved within about ten years.

[gradus]

The first decent stereo cartridge I bought was the Decca ffss mk3 and it was a corker albeit not as good a tracker as a Shure V15. EMI too made an integrated high quality pickup and arm and I seem to recall that it was well received but I never heard it nor have I ever seen one for sale s/h.

[Dave2002]

The first decent stereo cartridge I bought was the Decca ffss mk3 and it was a corker albeit not as good a tracker as a Shure V15. EMI too made an integrated high quality pickup and arm and I seem to recall that it was well received but I never heard it nor have I ever seen one for sale s/h.

I think I had one of those EMI arms - a unipivot design, but I never used it. It was a weird thing, which was given to me with a Garrard 301 I bought second hand. Sadly I sold the 301 years later for £15 - I should have kept it, and bought a 401 which is arguably not as good. The EMI arm was simply dumped, IIRC.