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The Quality Of Tape: The new transfers of Decca’s Ring recordings

Albiepalbie

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The suspects involved in the suppression (or, if you prefer, the forgetfulness) of the first stereo Ring was not as simple as I remembered it. But I'm a simple thinker, and an allowance must be made for that. Yet what I wrote was not far off from the truth--at least the truth as reported by those involved, when they were alive. Perhaps the best synopsis is Mike Ashman's notes from the Testament release, and ought to be reviewed by anyone interested. After combing through them we discover:

Culshaw was not interested in pushing the first Decca stereo recording. In fact, he actively lobbied against it. Why? He told producer Kenneth Wilkinson that he just didn't like Bayreuth, and found live recordings 'messy'. Wilkinson recounts how they recorded the cycle using what we'd call 'minimalist' miking technique--with overall very good sound quality. Co-engineer Roy Wallace reminisced how he fully expected the cycle to be released, as he had essentially finished the edits, but Culshaw (who had returned from the States after a stint with Capitol) was frankly uninterested. Culshaw, as a 'modernist' (Wallace's words) wanted to produce his own studio recording in stereo, and that was that.

But there were also legal reasons against the release. Corporate shenanigans between Teldec/Decca and Columbia/EMI over claimed exclusive Bayreuth recording rights, along with dealing with the personalities of Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner. Walter Legge (Columbia's chief producer) wanted complete control over the venue's live recordings, and held close exclusive contracts with principal singers--a situation that complicated matters greatly.

Could all of this have been worked out if Culshaw had given a thumbs up, and if Legge had been on board? One can, of course, wonder about sub rosa motives, or just take it at face value. Or mix and match.

However it was, it's out there for anyone who cares.
The great thing is we now have both cycles !
 

Multicore

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I grew up mids 60s to early 80s with a dad that was big on Wagner, hi-fi, and BBC Radio 3 and I got dragged to the opera a few times too. This inoculated me to the music.

But this thread and the SOS article got me interested and I put on the 2022 remaster Das Rheingold in Amazon Music. I'm listening at my desk with the Genelec 1029A and, FWIW, it sounds great! It's very dramatic in the stereo presentation. And the special effects are fun. The orchestra sounds old-fashioned but that's fun too.

I still think the whole Wagner Ring thing is silly and objectionable but that's another matter and I don't think there's anything I can add to that old debate. But I gotta say I'm enjoying this with a kind of i9ronic smile on my face. And I want to watch The Golden Ring film mentioned here and read Culshaw's Ring Resounding.

So what's wrong with that? At least as far as I am concerned, this yet another Solti Ring remaster and the long advertisement (sponsored content) in SOS got me to finally listen to it properly as an adult. New audiences will accumulate over time. If making some marketing hoo haa about a new transfer gets them in then is it really so bad?
 

JaccoW

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Sadly, with the evolution of my system I no longer have the ability to play SACD or vinyl. The FLAC copies I made from the RBCD layer of the Esoteric remaster continue to sound different to the FLAC copy I made from the 1997 Decca RBCD remaster, so I would have to call the 2009 Esoteric remaster to be the best of all the versions I own or have heard (I have not heard any other remasters of this work). The Esoteric SACD is almost impossible to find these days, it cost USD$1200 about 10 years ago and it has long disappeared from the market. These days, copies of this disc sell for USD$3000 on eBay. I would be curious to find out if the new remaster is comparable in quality.
You can always try ripping them as ISOs using a $30 Blu-Ray player and convert them to .DSF to play the DSD files. It's what I do with all my SACDs so I can enjoy them on the move as well.
 

Albiepalbie

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I grew up mids 60s to early 80s with a dad that was big on Wagner, hi-fi, and BBC Radio 3 and I got dragged to the opera a few times too. This inoculated me to the music.

But this thread and the SOS article got me interested and I put on the 2022 remaster Das Rheingold in Amazon Music. I'm listening at my desk with the Genelec 1029A and, FWIW, it sounds great! It's very dramatic in the stereo presentation. And the special effects are fun. The orchestra sounds old-fashioned but that's fun too.

I still think the whole Wagner Ring thing is silly and objectionable but that's another matter and I don't think there's anything I can add to that old debate. But I gotta say I'm enjoying this with a kind of i9ronic smile on my face. And I want to watch The Golden Ring film mentioned here and read Culshaw's Ring Resounding.

So what's wrong with that? At least as far as I am concerned, this yet another Solti Ring remaster and the long advertisement (sponsored content) in SOS got me to finally listen to it properly as an adult. New audiences will accumulate over time. If making some marketing hoo haa about a new transfer gets them in then is it really so bad?
 

Albiepalbie

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Fantastic
You were very likely hearing that exact recording in the 60s
No Wagner opera sounds like the other - even the Ring evolves in style over the 25 years he wrote it
Listen to Tristan and Isolde
Blow your Mind !
(Not with Solti - Kleiber Bohm or Furtwengler ( the best ) )
 

Multicore

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Fantastic
You were very likely hearing that exact recording in the 60s
No Wagner opera sounds like the other - even the Ring evolves in style over the 25 years he wrote it
Listen to Tristan and Isolde
Blow your Mind !
(Not with Solti - Kleiber Bohm or Furtwengler ( the best ) )

Found this one in Amazon Music (its search is dismal).

1673446143841.png


I actually did a podcast episode on the Tony Palmer/Richard Burton film Wagner 18 months ago. My Pod partner Gav is an orchestral musician and big fan of the great 19c romantic music. The whole thing was on youtube. It did a good job of cementing my revulsion at the whole high-culture world of that time and the stifling worship of it in ours. My pleasure at listing to Rheingold yesterday was how it kept making me think of the Bugs Bunny version.

Maybe that's what's needed. Bring some comedy to it. Easier on the stage than in a recording, of course. I had the same thought while watching a recent TV production of Bleak House. It was well made but terribly earnest, in exactly the way such TV productions were when I was a kid. I felt it could have been better as a black comedy. So many of the characters and situations are hilarious.
 

Albiepalbie

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Found this one in Amazon Music (its search is dismal).

View attachment 256442

I actually did a podcast episode on the Tony Palmer/Richard Burton film Wagner 18 months ago. My Pod partner Gav is an orchestral musician and big fan of the great 19c romantic music. The whole thing was on youtube. It did a good job of cementing my revulsion at the whole high-culture world of that time and the stifling worship of it in ours. My pleasure at listing to Rheingold yesterday was how it kept making me think of the Bugs Bunny version.

Maybe that's what's needed. Bring some comedy to it. Easier on the stage than in a recording, of course. I had the same thought while watching a recent TV production of Bleak House. It was well made but terribly earnest, in exactly the way such TV productions were when I was a kid. I felt it could have been better as a black comedy. So many of the characters and situations are hilarious.
That’s the Furtwengler version
Love to see a Bugs Bunny version of this
Bonking Bunnies
 

Albiepalbie

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That’s the Furtwengler version
Love to see a Bugs Bunny version of this
Bonking Bunnies
High culture is still for the rich
The greatest musical revolution in the 20th Century was not Schoenberg - it was the advent of mass recorded music and the explosion of creativity from the supposedly ignorant working classes around the world especially in Black America and the UK
The Rich got involved when they saw how lucrative it was
 

Duetta

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Interesting thread. I spent my early years as a classical music enthusiast and recording industry employee lionizing Culshaw - until I began to listen to his actual recordings on a relatively high resolution audio rig. My opinion then changed. I still have my mostly vintage late 1980-early 1990s audio rig today and my preference will always be for a minimally-miked live recording, since the gimmicks employed on many studio recordings become painfully apparent when heard through loudspeakers capable of reproducing a coherent soundstage. The problem is less obvious, at least in my experience, when listening through headphones - which cannot generally reproduce the spread of an orchestra in space in the same way. I worked for PolyGram Classics back in the day, the US marketing wing for DG, Philips, and London/Decca, and I could never get over how bad so many of our late-analog, early-digital era orchestral recordings sounded. My ex-wife and I (who also worked in the business) took every opportunity we could to let the A&R people in Europe know how bad these recordings really sounded - and would sound for posterity given the horribly gimmicky microphone setups.
 

DSJR

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I'd just quickly add, my Decca mastering engineer pal told me that most if not all Decca vinyls cut in the 60's (in the Belsize Road facility) were apparently done at half speed and many/most were often heavily equalised. In 1970, they got Neumann lathes, started cutting 'flatter' so more as the producer signed off on at the time and of course all the 'domestic audiophile experts' disliked the sound of these re-cuts! The digital era fior them in the 90's was apparently a race against time with many 60's onwards tapes starting to shed, yet 1950's reels (this is mid 90's here) were fine still in terms of condition.

No idea how this translates to the Ring transfers I'm afraid, but hopefully the people involved were very careful and didn't mess *too much* with the original sounds off tape.
 

anmpr1

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I worked for PolyGram Classics back in the day, the US marketing wing for DG, Philips, and London/Decca, and I could never get over how bad so many of our late-analog, early-digital era orchestral recordings sounded. My ex-wife and I (who also worked in the business) took every opportunity we could to let the A&R people in Europe know how bad these recordings really sounded - and would sound for posterity given the horribly gimmicky microphone setups.

Our mid tier town featured a large record outlet, called (I believe) Wide World of Music. I think it was owned by ABC, but I'm not sure. A large classical selection, with many imports. DGG, Phillips, and some others sold for one dollar more than domestics. The plastic was supposed to be higher quality, less pops and clicks. Sometimes that was true.

As far as sonic goodness? CBS, RCA and other domestics were as bad as the imports, if not worse. The recordings themselves were mostly all about the same. Unlistenable, critically. What you could buy turned on the big label's marketing. It was whatever weirdo prima donna was being pushed by the big companies. Jumping around, sweating on the podium like a lunatic. Steve Ballmer could have been a conductor in NYC.

It got to the point that I was buying performances from the '50s and '60s, budget releases; generally less offensive, costing a dollar or two less. I said, "Screw it." I'm listening to old mono recordings with one speaker turned off.

I still have most of those old imports. You just have to 'listen around' the poor quality of the recordings. With small combo stuff, it was usually better. CBS could usually release something by Miles that was interesting to listen to. Verve... sometimes Norm Granz got it right, but sometimes even he left a lot to desire.

Aczel was right. People who worry about amps and cables and DACs have totally missed the boat. What a waste of time. The only thing that really makes a difference is the recoding. And your loudspeakers. It's easier IMO to adapt to a loudspeaker than a recording.
 

Duetta

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Our mid tier town featured a large record outlet, called (I believe) Wide World of Music. I think it was owned by ABC, but I'm not sure. A large classical selection, with many imports. DGG, Phillips, and some others sold for one dollar more than domestics. The plastic was supposed to be higher quality, less pops and clicks. Sometimes that was true.

As far as sonic goodness? CBS, RCA and other domestics were as bad as the imports, if not worse. The recordings themselves were mostly all about the same. Unlistenable, critically. What you could buy turned on the big label's marketing. It was whatever weirdo prima donna was being pushed by the big companies. Jumping around, sweating on the podium like a lunatic. Steve Ballmer could have been a conductor in NYC.

It got to the point that I was buying performances from the '50s and '60s, budget releases; generally less offensive, costing a dollar or two less. I said, "Screw it." I'm listening to old mono recordings with one speaker turned off.

I still have most of those old imports. You just have to 'listen around' the poor quality of the recordings. With small combo stuff, it was usually better. CBS could usually release something by Miles that was interesting to listen to. Verve... sometimes Norm Granz got it right, but sometimes even he left a lot to desire.

Aczel was right. People who worry about amps and cables and DACs have totally missed the boat. What a waste of time. The only thing that really makes a difference is the recoding. And your loudspeakers. It's easier IMO to adapt to a loudspeaker than a recording.
Indeed. Garbage in, garbage out.

For me, to this day, the fewer microphones feeds as possible, the better.
 

DSJR

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Aczel was right. People who worry about amps and cables and DACs have totally missed the boat. What a waste of time. The only thing that really makes a difference is the recoding. And your loudspeakers. It's easier IMO to adapt to a loudspeaker than a recording.
You're talking about the love of music first compared to the love of the gear itself... I suspect for most of us, it's a nice blend of both - a deep love of music with an appreciation of hearing it through a nicely balanced sound systrem which doesn't have to be expensive, but I've known people with more extreme music only (through little more than a portable) or gear only preferences (who follow the wanky wires, accessories, fuses and all) and so on as I'm sure most of you have :)
 

DSJR

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Indeed. Garbage in, garbage out.

For me, to this day, the fewer microphones feeds as possible, the better.
In a perfect world, a simple crossed pair of mics may be fine, but I was told a sound crew needs to get to a possible unknown or 'difficult' venue and set up for the worst scenario as time is money, especially if it's a known international orchestra and expensive conductor... This is where I was told the 'Decca Tree' system could give consistent results if perhaps a bit 'smeared' sometimes in HiFi terms?. EMI used to do some fine recordings and also vinyl cuts at the time I felt, but the CBS recordings of the 70's I heard were always balanced and mixed from the conductor's point of view - very close up and 'HiFi' and not always a comfortable listen at home.
 

Duetta

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It's interesting how recording quality can vary from engineering team to engineering team. When I and my ex-wife both work for PolyGram Classics, we had unlimited access to new recordings and reissues. And so I became quite familiar with the work of the various Decca engineering teams. Some of these teams, in my opinion, simply did a better job capturing the sound of complex symphonic music for posterity. It's been a while since I last did this kind of an analysis - but I remember enjoying Decca's Jimmy Brown's engineering to the Kenneth Wilkerson stuff. Or John Dunkerley and Michael Haas later recordings to Jimmy Lock's (although some of the Lock stuff in Montreal, with Dutoit, could be quite impressive), etc. So even within Decca, there was significant differences in how orchestras were recorded.
 

KEM

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Which in the case of Wagner is always just around the corner. :)
I'm not one for nit picking, but.......
Wagner died many years before Hitler was born.

His son's wife, Winifred befriended and promoted Hitler's cause. Only and because of this, Richard Wagner's music became associated with Nazism.

In his youth, Wagner was a left-wing revolutionary, so persecuted that he had to leave Germany to avoid imprisonment.
His operas are about love and compassion at odds with greed and lust for power. In these operas, love and compassion always win.
Always.
He had antisemitic tendencies, but so did almost every other non-Jewish person in Europe in the day. Antisemitism is not featured in any of his operas, not even mentioned.

Wagner's music as well as others, was hijacked and exploited by Nazi leaders (the H guy also, although he preferred Weber) to promote their nationalistic, authoritarian schemes.
I've read that most Nazi top brass never went to Bayreuth.
 

Rednaxela

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@KEM

All good. Shouldn’t have made the little joke in the first place. I cannot turn it back so I hope my apologies, also to the mods, will suffice.

Let’s continue our conversation about the music and their recordings.
 
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