Telarc recording quality

When thinking back through the Telarc classical catalog, the impressions I got, were one of a mostly natural, yet uninvolving sound. The somewhat heavy bass was at first a joy, after the bass shy DG and Columbia productions of the day, but other than some very fine initial productions (Fennell /Holst; Atlanta/Orff), I felt the musical sound uninvolving and blunted. This was somewhat ameliorated with the use of very fine M/C cartridges, but the effect never really went away even on CD.
When looking back through history at Telarc, Yes they were and are a major player, but not quite as good as they could have been. They should have kept the analog rig they used when they were ADVENT Records in the 70s recording Michael Murry. Now those were fine sonics.
All in all, Rcprince's comments , are mostly accurate.

To my ears, Telarc recordings often sound very recessed, muddy and not detailed- there is too much bloom but not in a good way (eg Dohnanyi's recordings of Beethoven symphonies). The lack of detail makes the music sound very sterile at times including their jazz recordings. When compared to superb classical cds from Reference Recordings, it is like night and day. Mind you, the dynamics on the Telarcs are quite good and there are some good recordings (Frederick Fennell/Cleveland Winds, Jacques Loussier, Mackerras/Sheherazade,Tieney Sutton etc). However I often find a thickening of textures in the music which is not entirely natural and seems rather blunt as if a thick veil or curtain is covering the speakers. The recordings need to be a little sharper (not too impressed either with the DSD technology).

My 2 cents.

Zenaissance-"not too impressed either with the DSD technology."

Could be there's a problem going from DSD to PCM. Maybe one of the EMM Labs owners could comment on the CD version
verses the SACD of the same Telarc release.

I notice that output levels on some recent Telarc DSD/CD jazz releases are much lower than other jazz labels.

Cpdunn, don't fall into the trap, don't go from enjoying the music to listening for the flaws. I assume your comparing Telarc to the other mass market labels, to which it is definitely superior. Many of the comments on this post are comparing it to other high end labels, and I agree that others do sound better, i.e., audioquest, xrcd, chesky among others. While you should try these others, in the end its about enjoying the music.

In answer to Kana's question, while I don't have an EMM Labs player, my heavily modded Sony is plenty good enough for me to note that the SACD versions of Telarc's recent releases are superior to the redbook versions. A lot of that muddiness I noted is pretty much gone in the SACD layer, inner detail becomes more apparent and the sense of space vastly improves. I also have noted that the CD versions recorded in DSD are a little less "clean" than earlier Telarc recordings, for whatever reason; again, some of the problems in that area go away when the volume level is raised. In the end, Cpdunn, Tonyp54's advice is absolutely correct--enjoy the music!