# Box Collections: Short CD Times



## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I have purchased many of the large box reissues and enjoy them. I had bought two of the large Mercury and Decca boxes, a Phillips Haitink box, big Brendel and Richter boxes, and loved exploring repertoire and recordings that I had passed on through the years, for about $2 a disc. There is always some duplication with what I had previously owned but the newer recordings are frequently remastered
and even the duplicated repertoire gives added pleasure. And the discs are usually generously filled, usually averaging 70 minutes or so in duration.
Lately I have bought two sets that are very chintzy with timings and do not seem to have any special
sonic quality. The first is a Chopin collection of Mauricio Pollini on DG, the second is the Sony/RCA ‘Living Stereo Vol.2’ collection.
I bought the Pollini because I wanted his recordings of the Nocturnes, made about 10 years ago. I could have bought the Nocturnes separately but for another $10 purchased the box set.
I already owned the Preludes and Etudes discsfrom their original CD issues and previously owned the lps.
The Preludes in particular were a poor value then, full priced for a 37 minute CD, and the recordings which were bright on LP were harsh and glaring in the treble on CD. Successive improvements in my DACs over the years made some improvements but they still could zing my fillings. I was very dissapointed to find the exact short timed CDs, sounding unchanged, in this collection.
Now, to be fair, I paid under $30 for box, and Pollini’s accounts of the Nocturnes alone would have justified the expense. And for that small sum I now have his recordings of the Ballades, Polonaises, Scherzos, some of the Mazurkas and Waltzes. This set is going to get a lot of time in the disc player.
The Living Stereo set is the bigger disappointment. It cost around $100 for around 60 discs, so I hate to sound curmudgeonly, but unlike the Living Stereo discs that were reissued earlier as SACDs (3 channel only), these are all short timed discs, most under 40 minutes per disc, exact replicas of the original lps. There doesn’t seem to have been any remasterings, again unlike the SACD reissues. This feels like a rip off, although that disc for dollar ratio is obviously the mitigating factor. Still, the CD reissue boxes that I referenced in the first paragraph are so much more of a quality product in comparison that it makes slapdash jobs like this conspicuous in comparison


----------



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Is it because when they reproduce vinyl albums there is not enough to fill the CD? This is especially true with original jackets sets where they do not want to double up different albums.


----------



## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Fritz Kobus said:


> Is it because when they reproduce vinyl albums there is not enough to fill the CD? This is especially true with original jackets sets where they do not want to double up different albums.


I realize that, but the Mercury and Decca boxes that I referenced do just that. They preserve the original jackets of the main recordings and add "bonus" material that is mentioned in small print on the back of the disc sleeves. Some times the bonus material exceeds the regular in duration


----------



## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Two points: 

1. If you want to improve your sound quality, invest in speakers/headphones, EQs, and/or room treatment. DACs aren't going to do anything for (audible) sound quality. 

2. In the vast majority of cases, classical music doesn't require remastering. Remastering is hype that caught on in pop music because labels started jacking up the volume and squashing dynamics in order to make discs louder on portable players with weak amps. In classical, this isn't needed or wanted. To fix something like "treble glare" would require remixing, not remastering. Some classical can use some digital editing in order to eliminate noise and other recording artifacts, but this is rarely the case for studio recordings for the major labels. 

As for the short CD times, I agree it sucks when this happens on box sets, but all you can do is check on the content beforehand and decide if the amount of music is worth the expense. Thankfully, CDs with short runtimes are rare in classical music.


----------



## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> 2. In the vast majority of cases, classical music doesn't require remastering. Remastering is hype that caught on in pop music because labels started jacking up the volume and squashing dynamics in order to make discs louder on portable players with weak amps. In classical, this isn't needed or wanted. To fix something like "treble glare" would require remixing, not remastering. Some classical can use some digital editing in order to eliminate noise and other recording artifacts, but this is rarely the case for studio recordings for the major labels.


I would qualify that to say that virtually all studio recordings having used analog tape would benefit from remastering.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bruno Walter's Beethoven Symphony cycle on Columbia was considered a fine recording in its day. But it benefited greatly from Sony's remastering many years later. What exactly was done I can't say, but the results were very good indeed.


----------



## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

I think Fritz hits this nail right on the head. The respective companies are surely tapping into some sort of nostalgia market, those who remember their LPs and want exact reproductions of what they had on vinyl. I am too young to remember mercury recordings on LP, but quite a few Decca, DGG etc were in my vinyl collection.

Anyone here have Sgt Peppers on CD with added bonus tracks? Thought not.

I am not a big fan of these sorts of boxes, because there is more in presentation than in other more thoughtful considerations; I think I only have one which would fit the negative billing in the original post, Ivo Pogorelich's DGG solo piano recordings.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

DaveM said:


> I would qualify that to say that virtually all studio recordings having used analog tape would benefit from remastering.


Most analog recordings sound fine as long as the tape has been well-preserved.


----------



## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Two points:
> 
> 1. If you want to improve your sound quality, invest in speakers/headphones, EQs, and/or room treatment. DACs aren't going to do anything for (audible) sound quality.
> 
> ...


After speakers, I have found DACs to be the biggest determinant of sound quality in my system, so much so that I have two of them, with one being dedicated primarily for DSD extraction from SACD.
I could not disagree more with your "classical music doesn't require remastering" comment. I have heard so many examples of recordings that have been improved that I could literally sit here for hours listing them, and the reason that they sound improved.
Regarding short CD timings, yes I could have looked, and now I will if I consider purchasing another box site recycling older recordings. However, this was the first of these type of sets that I had purchased that had short timings. Usually these type of offerings are generously filled. And it will be tedious to scan the timings of a sixty disc set, but at least it's doable.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Triplets said:


> After speakers, I have found DACs to be the biggest determinant of sound quality in my system, so much so that I have two of them, with one being dedicated primarily for DSD extraction from SACD.
> I could not disagree more with your "classical music doesn't require remastering" comment. I have heard so many examples of recordings that have been improved that I could literally sit here for hours listing them, and the reason that they sound improved.


DACs all measure the same through the audible spectrum and any measurable differences are outside the realm of human hearing. This has been repeatedly proven through blind testing. Any differences you've heard has been due to placebo.

Out of all those examples of improved masters, how many did you bother to level match and blind test against the originals? Remastering is 99% marketing hype/money-making scheme done in order to get people to buy the same recordings over again. For SOME older recordings there is noise and other recording artifacts that can be cleaned up digitally, but most of the major labels had technology good enough to prevent this as far back as the 50s (at least in the studios; live recordings are another matter). As long as the analog tapes are in good condition there's nothing remastering can/will do except make them louder and reduce the dynamics. It's the same reason many labels push every new format that comes along, because that's yet another way to repackage old recordings and make money from them. Never mind that the "advantages" of those formats in stereo are also outside human's ability to hear.


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

KenOC said:


> Bruno Walter's Beethoven Symphony cycle on Columbia was considered a fine recording in its day. But it benefited greatly from Sony's remastering many years later. What exactly was done I can't say, but the results were very good indeed.


Same with the New York Bernstein Mahler set. The remastered sound made many recordings that I had not liked into something close to favourites.


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Fritz Kobus said:


> Is it because when they reproduce vinyl albums there is not enough to fill the CD? This is especially true with original jackets sets where they do not want to double up different albums.


I do like original jacket sets!

I know space is at a premium for those with big collections (I can never work out how or where to keep all my CDs), but even then the real question for me is not what the music costs per minute! So I don't mind poorly filled CDs in boxes if the price reflects this.


----------



## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Most analog recordings sound fine as long as the tape has been well-preserved.


That and your statement about remastering are an oversimplification. It is true that some remastering was hype and sometimes ineffective or even counterproductive, but where motives were authentic in the hands of talented engineers, remastering is/was effective for pre-1980s classical analog tapes. There are modern tools available to remove things like tape hiss that may not be heard as easily through speakers, but which is easily heard with headphones. Not to mention that the mere act of using original tapes vs. production tapes can result in dramatic improvement in the end result.


----------



## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> DACs all measure the same through the audible spectrum and any measurable differences are outside the realm of human hearing. This has been repeatedly proven through blind testing. Any differences you've heard has been due to placebo.
> 
> Out of all those examples of improved masters, how many did you bother to level match and blind test against the originals? Remastering is 99% marketing hype/money-making scheme done in order to get people to buy the same recordings over again. For SOME older recordings there is noise and other recording artifacts that can be cleaned up digitally, but most of the major labels had technology good enough to prevent this as far back as the 50s (at least in the studios; live recordings are another matter). As long as the analog tapes are in good condition there's nothing remastering can/will do except make them louder and reduce the dynamics. It's the same reason many labels push every new format that comes along, because that's yet another way to repackage old recordings and make money from them. Never mind that the "advantages" of those formats in stereo are also outside human's ability to hear.


I don't give a flying fig how something measures. I care more about how it sounds. Why don't you and big shot go have a coffee somewhere and let the rest of us enjoy what you consider to be illusions.
Someone on this thread also raised the Bernstein Mahler (presumably NYP) recordings. These were mastered with the thought that people would be listening to them on their car radios. Try to purchase an original lp version and then compare it to a digital remastering-any digital remastering-and if you still don't detect a difference, see an audiologist


----------



## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

DaveM said:


> That and your statement about remastering are an oversimplification. It is true that some remastering was hype and sometimes ineffective or even counterproductive, but where motives were authentic in the hands of talented engineers, remastering is/was effective for pre-1980s classical analog tapes. There are modern tools available to remove things like tape hiss that may not be heard as easily through speakers, but which is easily heard with headphones. Not to mention that the mere act of using original tapes vs. production tapes can result in dramatic improvement in the end result.


Yes, it was an oversimplification because the issue is rather complex. Technically, any transfer from an analog medium to a digital one is a remaster, so in one sense every analog recording has been remastered before it was released to CD. However, the issue is whether or not anything beyond the initial transfer to digital is needed, about whether later re-remasters of recordings that have already been released on CD have any benefit. I did mention that for some recordings editing to remove noise can be beneficial, however it can be harmful as well as denoise-ing leaves artifacts and can kill off some frequencies to the extent that many would find the tape noise less damaging. Of course using the original tapes whenever possible can be a benefit, but who's to know whether the original tapes were used only for the later remasters but not for the original remaster to digital? Unless it's advertised, nobody would know.

I still stick by the point that MOST analog recordings sound find if they were done by major studios on good equipment and were well-preserved. There were certainly engineers at least as far back as the 50s that knew how to record great sound and labels that took care to keep the original sources from deteriorating so that when we got around to making digital remasters all that was needed was a direct transfer. This isn't ALWAYS the case, but classical music has always been on the cutting edge of recording technology because listeners, probably more than listeners of other genres, have always valued sound quality.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Triplets said:


> I don't give a flying fig how something measures. I care more about how it sounds. Why don't you and big shot go have a coffee somewhere and let the rest of us enjoy what you consider to be illusions.
> Someone on this thread also raised the Bernstein Mahler (presumably NYP) recordings. These were mastered with the thought that people would be listening to them on their car radios. Try to purchase an original lp version and then compare it to a digital remastering-any digital remastering-and if you still don't detect a difference, see an audiologist


How something sounds can be measured, and indeed subjective sounds have been consistently correlated with measurements. Bigshot and I are in agreement when it comes to the fact of audio being science rather than magic. Nobody's stopping you from enjoying your delusions, but don't get upset when someone points out that's what they are. It's your money to waste.

If what they say is true about Bernstein's Mahler (I'm not aware of such a thing), then sure a remaster would be useful in that case. However, such cases are extremely rare. Most classical isn't mastered with car listeners in mind. Also, comparing an LP to a CD/digital release wouldn't be fair since vinyl is an objectively inferior medium. What I've been referring to has been remasters of discs already released on CD/digital ("re-remasters" if you will). I figured it would be obvious I didn't have in mind the kind of "remastering" that's required for release on CD at all.


----------



## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

DaveM said:


> That and your statement about remastering are an oversimplification. It is true that some remastering was hype and sometimes ineffective or even counterproductive, but where motives were authentic in the hands of talented engineers, remastering is/was effective for pre-1980s classical analog tapes.


In addition, some of the initial CD offerings of analog material were done incompetently by less-than-talented individuals. EMI's butchery of Dennis Brain's Mozart, and Fruhbeck de Burgos' Carmina Burana are but two of the more heinous examples.


----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Triplets said:


> ... so I hate to sound curmudgeonly, but ... these are all short timed discs, most under 40 minutes per disc....


On the other hand ...
Should you want more _more_ on a disc, _much_ more, get hold of Scribendum (catalog number) SC603, a two SACD set titled _The Art of Mravinsky in Moscow 1965 & 1972_.















These two SACDs have extraordinary running times: disc one at 240'47" and disc two at 255'17".

The track list is extraordinary, too!

Disc 1:
Tchaikovsky: Symphonic Fantasy "Francesca da Rimini" Op.32, and Symphony No.5 in E minor Op.64 
Wagner: Siegfried's Funeral March, The Ride of the Valkyries, Venusberg Music (Bacchanale) from Tannhäuser, Siegfried's Rhine Journey, Lohengrin, Prelude to Act III 
Brahms: Symphony No.3 in F Op.90 
Shostakovich: Symphony No.6 in B minor Op.54 
Beethoven: Symphony No.4 in B flat Op.60, and Symphony No.5 in C minor Op.67
Disc 2:
Glinka: _Ruslan & Ludmila_ Overture
Shostakovich: Symphony No.6 in B minor Op.54 (An alternate recording, different from that on Disc 1)
Glazunov: Raymonda, Entr'acte Act 3
Mussorgsky: Dawn on the Moskva River
Lyadov: Baba Yaga
Mozart: _Le Nozze di Figaro_ (overture), Symphony No.39 in E flat K543
Sibelius: The Swan of Tuonela No.3 Op.22, and Symphony No.7 in C Op.105
Hindemith: Die Harmonie der Welt
Stravinsky: Apollon Musagète (ballet) 
Debussy: Prelude a l'après-midi d'un faun 
Bartok: Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta 
Honegger: Symphony No.3 "Liturgique"

This is the most heavily laden two-disc set in my collection. A _must_ for Mravinsky fans. _And_ perhaps, too, for those who complain about short disc timings!


----------

