I listen mainly to orchestral music which has very complex textures. Solo singers or instruments or small groups sound very decent on most of my records. It’s the very large forces that are difficult to reproduce.
Rediscovering records
I have a large collection of records (about 2000-3000) but culled about 200-300 to play over and over again through the years. I picked the best sounding ones when I had a mediocre analog setup because I thought most of the collection sounded poor. Some time ago I did a major upgrade to my record playing system (about $8000 worth) but still listened to the few hundred exclusively. Just recently I started to listen to the rest of the collection and discovered to my delight that most sounded wonderful. The better equipment changed my listening habits dramatically.
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- 40 posts total
Indeed! I wish there was a shorthand to describe large scale orchestral music. Calling it classical does not work for me, as classical really only defines a brief period. The best I can come up with is short music (for pop, rock, etc) and long music. The cutoff between them is somewhere between 6 and 8 minutes, mostly. The difficulty of reproducing large-scale orchestral music seems behind Bostjan Holc's creation of his air-bearing, tangential tracking, Holbo system. |
You’re quite right. The term “Classical” can be used to describe a short period in music history or, generically, as a term for Western art music in general. It can be confusing.
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@rvpiano I agree, and the distortions in microgrooves pose real problems. That said, I've found that most good vintage pressings do pretty well, if you allow for a certain degree of tolerance. OTOH, I'm sorry to say that a well-done digital remastering from master tapes eliminates many issues. |
- 40 posts total