Recommendations for sound engineers


Anyone have a "list" of great sound engineers to aid in finding great recordings?
Knowing this information, does it really help finding the better recording?
champtree
Don't foget Charles Gerhardt who often teamed with Wilkie and was very prolific on, of all labels, Reader's Digest. Julliard trained pianist, turned sound engineer, great conductor too. Much of his work is currently reissued on Chesky.
Keep'em coming! This is great! I wonder if any of these sound engineers are audiofiles? Thanks for the great info!
In the classical field, the early great stereo recording teams were the Mohr/Layton team for RCA, the Cozart/Fine team for Mercury, and Kenneth Wilkinson for London/Decca. Early EMIs were also quite good, though multi-miked, but the names of their teams escapes me. Current classical engineers that I have found to make consistently fine recordings include John Eargle of Delos, the Renner/Woods/Bishop teams at Telarc, Peter McGrath and Tony Faulkner for Harmonia Mundi and now LSO Live, Craig Dory of now defunct Dorian Records, Keith Johnson of Reference Recordings, Kavi Alexander of Water Lily, and whoever the Decca engineers are who made the series of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra recordings and the San Francisco Symphony's recording engineers. Don't overlook the producers of those recordings at those labels, either, they are as much responsible for the final product as the engineers (and for pop or most jazz albums, they are the ones to look for, not the recording engineers). Any Robina Young-produced recording for Harmonia Mundi, for example, will have great technical and musical merit, in my opinion.

Generally, since sound engineers are associated with their labels, you're pretty well-off picking recordings by that label. Quite frankly, though, most current orchestral recordings, even from labels I used to hate (DG), are quite good. The people I mentioned stand out to me a little above the rest; each has his or her own particular style, and some people will prefer one style over another, but all of them serve the music well.
Wilkenson-Decca
Van Gelder-Verve
Porter-Rca
Layton-Rca
Aubort =Vox
Nickerenz
Parker-Emi
Cozart-Mercury
And I am sure many Audiogoners will add to this list.