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Why is it so hard to find top quality classical cd's?

aphex

aphex

Moderator<br>All Things Apple
Moderator
Just referring to the fact that 99% of the classical cd's i've purchased over the past year or so all sound as if they were originally recorded on tape (or some other lossy format) then just dumped onto a cd.

Anyone have any reccomendations for classical cd's that sound amazing?.... There is nothing worse than a crappy classical recording....

FYI, i love Dvorak, Stravinsky, Strauss, Grieg, & Chopin.....

 
Can't you just look at the CD's and see if they have DDD LOGO. Whereby the DDD = Digitially Recorded, Digitally Mastered, Digitially something or other, as opposed to AAD, ADD or DAD where analogue was used somewhere in the mix. Having an A in there is not always a sign of inferiority, but, it's a clue.

Or did they stop doing that (giving away the recording info)?

Or do Amazon and such not tell you that?

 
You need to be careful, the record companies have huge catalogs dating back 50 years, often the budget discs are old analog recordings from the vaults. If the recording isn't listed as DDD, it's likely an old analog performance.

The naxos line is the only budget line of CDs that use all new digital recordings for their entire catalog. They use no-name (but good) orchestras and avoid the high-price "superstar" performers and conductors.

That said, one of my all-time favorites is actuall on the Bis label:
Vivaldi: Complete Works for Italian Lute - Jakob Lindberg

Finally, a subscription to the BBC Music Magazine is a great resource. It's $96 for 12 issues at Amzon, but along with the great review section each issue comes with a music CD that's full performances not sample snippets. Some months it's new performances, sometimes material from record companies (but full concertos and symphonies), and once in a while a historical-interest performance from the BBC vaults. No salesman will call!
 
Deutsch Grammophone has always had a very high standard of quality for their classical recordings.

Of course, as always, the internet is your friend. Like the man said, look for reviews.
 
Originally posted by: Perknose
Deutsch Grammophone has always had a very high standard of quality for their classical recordings.

Of course, as always, the internet is your friend. Like the man said, look for reviews.
Click to expand...

always liked DG also. and telarc. RCA Victor also has pretty good stuff.

DDD isn't a garauntee that it'll sound good. i have some that sound pretty bad, and i have some ADD that sound quite good.
 
You guys rock.... Thanks a million...

Luckily i save quite a bit on classical cd's at my store, however im not sure what labels we carry... I'll have to poke around tomm 😀
 
I should have also said that DDD is not always a sign that it's a good recording either. Was covered above. Anyway bump for morning crowd.
 
Probably because classical music is the oldest form of music (except for the nature sounds of dinosaurs, etc.) that has ever been recorded, many "originals" may in fact be from tape or lp converted to a cd for porting for new technology. No digital remastering or anything like that, so your quality is only as good as the source.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
You need to be careful, the record companies have huge catalogs dating back 50 years, often the budget discs are old analog recordings from the vaults. If the recording isn't listed as DDD, it's likely an old analog performance.

The naxos line is the only budget line of CDs that use all new digital recordings for their entire catalog. They use no-name (but good) orchestras and avoid the high-price "superstar" performers and conductors.

That said, one of my all-time favorites is actuall on the Bis label:
Vivaldi: Complete Works for Italian Lute - Jakob Lindberg

Finally, a subscription to the BBC Music Magazine is a great resource. It's $96 for 12 issues at Amzon, but along with the great review section each issue comes with a music CD that's full performances not sample snippets. Some months it's new performances, sometimes material from record companies (but full concertos and symphonies), and once in a while a historical-interest performance from the BBC vaults. No salesman will call!
Click to expand...
Some digital stuff sounds like absolute sh!t while some analog stuff is great. Sometimes it's not just the quality of the recording, but the quality of the performance.
 
Anyone know of some excellent DVD-Audio discs? I just got my Audigy 2 ZS and after hearing the DVD-A sampler, I'm blown away and would like to pick up a few to have.
 
Originally posted by: aphex
Just referring to the fact that 99% of the classical cd's i've purchased over the past year or so all sound as if they were originally recorded on tape (or some other lossy format) then just dumped onto a cd.

Anyone have any reccomendations for classical cd's that sound amazing?.... There is nothing worse than a crappy classical recording....

FYI, i love Dvorak, Stravinsky, Strauss, Grieg, & Chopin.....
Click to expand...

Probably because the original recodings are hundreds of years old. 😛

I can't help you find what you're looking for, I just wanted to point out that CDs are most definitely a "lossy" format.
 
Originally posted by: Howard
Some digital stuff sounds like absolute sh!t while some analog stuff is great. Sometimes it's not just the quality of the recording, but the quality of the performance.
Click to expand...
Of course, but playing the odds, a naxos DDD Vivaldi "Four Seasons" will almost certainly sound cleaner than a random analog recording from another company's budget-disc line, and both are likely to have very good performances of the piece.

I'm not a digital snob for its own sake, I'd much rather listen to bad analog recordings of Andres Segovia playing Bach than a digital recording of Christopher Parkening. And at least half of my celtic, blues, jazz, and rock/pop CDs are analog.
 
A site to go for a large, rotating selection of classical CDs is Berkshire Records.It's also a dirt cheap site. All professional label stuff, too.

One label to check out is Hyperion -- top quality material and presentation. Olympia Records is good. Chandos is good. BIS is good. CBC is good. ABC always has something nifty. Marco Polo if they have any would be cool
 
Originally posted by: dman
Can't you just look at the CD's and see if they have DDD LOGO. Whereby the DDD = Digitially Recorded, Digitally Mastered, Digitially something or other, as opposed to AAD, ADD or DAD where analogue was used somewhere in the mix. Having an A in there is not always a sign of inferiority, but, it's a clue.

Or did they stop doing that (giving away the recording info)?

Or do Amazon and such not tell you that?
Click to expand...

bingo, DDD = digital recording, digital editing/mastering etc ADD or AAD probably means tape recording. also look on the back for the year it was originally recorded, you'll find those budget classical bs boxsets or value discs to be incredibly old recordings, 1970 etc. also look at where it was recorded.

places like amazon.com are always good for finding some user reviews of a disc too.

and of course if you buy recordings with classical "stars" like yo yo ma.. etc u get top notch recordings.
 
I have noticed that some DDD recordings have a "low" volume, but I have since learned from reading a Sound&Vision magazine Q&A that this is because the recording has a wider dynamic range. Like in some movies you will notice this too, the volume is too "low," theres nothing wrong with the CD or DVD, it just has a wider dynamic range (I may be mixing up a term, but I am pretty sure thats what the answer was).

I have several CDs of classical (Some from CBS records, and Mediaphon, but I like the ones from CBS better [these are fairly old CBS recordings like from 1977) and all sound great, even that ones that were recorded analog but mastered digitally.
 
Originally posted by: TechnoKid
I have noticed that some DDD recordings have a "low" volume, but I have since learned from reading a Sound&Vision magazine Q&A that this is because the recording has a wider dynamic range. Like in some movies you will notice this too, the volume is too "low," theres nothing wrong with the CD or DVD, it just has a wider dynamic range (I may be mixing up a term, but I am pretty sure thats what the answer was).

I have several CDs of classical (Some from CBS records, and Mediaphon, but I like the ones from CBS better [these are fairly old CBS recordings like from 1977) and all sound great, even that ones that were recorded analog but mastered digitally.
Click to expand...

umm....
regardless of what the original 'dynamic range' of the recording was (prolly 192khz) a cd tops out at 44khz (22khz in practice since it requires two tones on a wave for you to hear) so they should have equalized the volume to that when producing the cd.
In other words, it's just an excuse for poorly mastered CDs.
 
Originally posted by: AIWGuru
Originally posted by: TechnoKid
I have noticed that some DDD recordings have a "low" volume, but I have since learned from reading a Sound&Vision magazine Q&A that this is because the recording has a wider dynamic range. Like in some movies you will notice this too, the volume is too "low," theres nothing wrong with the CD or DVD, it just has a wider dynamic range (I may be mixing up a term, but I am pretty sure thats what the answer was).

I have several CDs of classical (Some from CBS records, and Mediaphon, but I like the ones from CBS better [these are fairly old CBS recordings like from 1977) and all sound great, even that ones that were recorded analog but mastered digitally.
Click to expand...

umm....
regardless of what the original 'dynamic range' of the recording was (prolly 192khz) a cd tops out at 44khz (22khz in practice since it requires two tones on a wave for you to hear) so they should have equalized the volume to that when producing the cd.
In other words, it's just an excuse for poorly mastered CDs.
Click to expand...

I think in this case, dynamic range differs from the frequency range/sampling rate of the cd. Maybe I am getting my termonology mixed up.
http://georgegraham.com/compress.html

also: Text
 
not really, since the range of classical music/movies is much wider then say a normal rock/rap/pop song. they can go way quiet to really loud.

ack was replying to the guy above u
 
Originally posted by: TechnoKid
Originally posted by: AIWGuru
Originally posted by: TechnoKid
I have noticed that some DDD recordings have a "low" volume, but I have since learned from reading a Sound&Vision magazine Q&A that this is because the recording has a wider dynamic range. Like in some movies you will notice this too, the volume is too "low," theres nothing wrong with the CD or DVD, it just has a wider dynamic range (I may be mixing up a term, but I am pretty sure thats what the answer was).

I have several CDs of classical (Some from CBS records, and Mediaphon, but I like the ones from CBS better [these are fairly old CBS recordings like from 1977) and all sound great, even that ones that were recorded analog but mastered digitally.
Click to expand...

umm....
regardless of what the original 'dynamic range' of the recording was (prolly 192khz) a cd tops out at 44khz (22khz in practice since it requires two tones on a wave for you to hear) so they should have equalized the volume to that when producing the cd.
In other words, it's just an excuse for poorly mastered CDs.
Click to expand...

I think in this case, dynamic range differs from the frequency range/sampling rate of the cd. Maybe I am getting my termonology mixed up.
http://georgegraham.com/compress.html
Click to expand...

Dynamic range means the lowest to the highest frequency of sound that you can hear. On cds, the highest (which will affect volume) will always be 22khz (44khz) so there's no excuse for it being quiet. Since that's the highest frequency on the CD, 22khz is what the volume should be normalized to since all higher frequencies are removed regardless of how high the original recording went. BTW: that link is talking about something completely different.
 
are you sure?

http://georgegraham.com/compress.html
http://www.proaudiorx.com/dynamicrange.htm


What is dynamic range anyway? Dynamic range is the difference between the softest and loudest sounds we can hear. Or, to put it another way, the difference between the softest and loudest sounds in a recording. Dynamic range is measured in decibels (dB). The typical dynamic range for a cassette recording is around 60 dB, while today's digital recordings can reach a dynamic range of over 90 dB. Compare this to 100 dB or more for live performances.

hah,k just noticed i googled the same thing as him... bah added 2nd link.
 
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