# Sound and performance: personal tradeoffs



## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

How well can you separate the quality of a recorded piece from the quality of the audio recording? I find that within a reasonable range, I can accept a second tier recording that's very well-played over one that sounds great but is merely blah. For example, I can easily accept some of the mediocre early Columbia recordings from Szell or Bernstein over many of the more boring Telarc or Delos CDs even when well recorded (not that the latter two labels don't have great performances as well). But for example, i like the best 50s Furtwangler performances, but the farther back one goes, the less tolerant I become of the recording. I often have to listen to them on my car stereo to enjoy them because my car stereo makes everything sound the same. Most recordings from the 1930s -- forget it.

At the same time, I put different weights on various factors in sound. I'm more tolerant than young kids of mild tape hiss and I'm much less tolerant of digital screechiness and overly denoised recordings. I like the natural sounding but vivid sound of the best Decca, Mercury, and RCA recordings of the early stereo days. For modern digital I do find that Telarc has many good recordings as do BIS, Reference Recordings. In the middle range, when you have an A performance of a work with C+ sound and a B+ performance with A sound, I may often find myself coming back to the latter when I want "to spend a night at the symphony." And with the exception of the very best mono from the 50s, I strongly want stereo only recordings.

What are your views and tradeoffs?


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

All my playback equipment these days is lousy, so it doesn't matter as much to me now as it used to.

In general, an A+ performance with C sound beats a B- performance with A+ sound every time.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

No tradeoffs. I want good quality stereo recordings that reveal the full sound of the performance, without hiss, crackling, inferior recording, "digital screechiness", audience noise, etc. There are so many excellent performances available, that I don't need to resort to vintage or inferior recordings to get a good performance just to save a buck or two. I wouldn't reject any of the recordings "of the early stereo days" that you mention, but my ears are open to and aware of the many first tier performances that came after the 1950s, recorded by Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, Decca, EMI and other quality labels. Of course, I do have a few older recordings, but I admit I mostly ended up with them due to happenstance (they were the only thing I could find worth buying at a used CD store) or the difference in price with another great recording was so great that I didn't feel I wanted to spend the extra (although in retrospect, I mostly wish I had).


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I would rather hear a great performance with not-so-great sound than great sound on an average performance. I didn't used to be like that.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Obviously the best thing is a great performance in great sound. However, there is sometimes a price to pay in that the greatest performances may be historical ones in not so great sound. One reason I do not very often listen to my Toscanini Beethoven's symphonies is that the sound is, frankly, pretty poor, even for the day. However, the Naxos transfers of some of Heifetz's early recordings are acceptable because it gives us more of an idea of what the Heifetz tone was actually like than some of the close-miked RCA recordings. Often however there is a trade-off between sound and performance. While not a hi-fi fanatic by any means I do enjoy good sound and generally find historical recordings are not acceptable to me because of the thin sound. This especially applies to orchestral and operatic performances. Performances of solo instruments are more tolerable in limited sound.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I find recordings from the mono era to be more interesting for comparing interpretations (and perhaps interpretations involving the composer if no later are available) than for primary listening, but in general, performance trumps sound. Of course, it has to at least sound passable, even if it was recorded in the 20s, but things like Mengelberg's Concertgebouw recordings are valuable in their own right.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

If the sound is early 30s, the performance has to make up for it. Szigeti managed that frequently.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Ukko said:


> If the sound is early 30s, the performance has to make up for it. Szigeti managed that frequently.


And Schnabel...probably *the* pianistic tightroper, 'til Gulda came along.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Vaneyes said:


> And Schnabel...probably *the* pianistic tightroper, 'til Gulda came along.


Schnabel's recordings have received a lot more attention from remastering engineers than Szigeti's have. Has O-T worked on Szigeti's Prokofiev 1?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I don't look at this as a tradeoff. Great performances overcome poor sound. That's why I have no trouble listening to wonderful historical performances.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Ukko said:


> Schnabel's recordings have received a lot more attention from remastering engineers than Szigeti's have. Has O-T worked on Szigeti's Prokofiev 1?


http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurb...iletype=About+this+Recording&language=English


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## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

Well, the fact that you admit that **great** performances overcome poor sound suggests you do have a tradeoff, just a different one. Otherwise there would be no gradations of overcoming sound: you would listen to an ok performance with equal pleasure/displeasure regardless of how good or bad the sound is.

I also wonder Do you dislike live orchestral performances? The majority of them even in many good cities are not going to come near to having great performances on most nights. Yet for me, the quality of sound as well as the live experience gives a better than average performance in a nice hall a big bump over most nice recorded performances. I am more troubled by traffic getting to the hall than the fact that most of the things I'll hear live must be subpar relatively to carefully curated recordings.



Bulldog said:


> I don't look at this as a tradeoff. Great performances overcome poor sound. That's why I have no trouble listening to wonderful historical performances.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

The performance is everything, a good sound quality is at best an added bonus for me!
I have heard quite a number recordings that are marketed as having superior sound quality, very few of these have performances that excites myself!

/ptr


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

In the past five years, remastering has gotten a lot better, particularly Sony. The new Bernstein box requires no compromise for sound. I'm hoping a Szell box comes along that does the same.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

brotagonist said:


> No tradeoffs. I want good quality stereo recordings that reveal the full sound of the performance, without hiss, crackling, inferior recording, "digital screechiness", audience noise, etc. *There are so many excellent performances available, that I don't need to resort to vintage or inferior recordings to get a good performance *just to save a buck or two. I wouldn't reject any of the recordings "of the early stereo days" that you mention, but my ears are open to and aware of the many first tier performances that came after the 1950s, recorded by Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, Decca, EMI and other quality labels. Of course, I do have a few older recordings, but I admit I mostly ended up with them due to happenstance (they were the only thing I could find worth buying at a used CD store) or the difference in price with another great recording was so great that I didn't feel I wanted to spend the extra (although in retrospect, I mostly wish I had).


I generally feel this way also, with an occasional exception. One recent is Berezovsky/Ural PO/Liss Khachaturian and Tchaikovsky 1 (Warner, rec. 2006). I have not read the particulars of this DDD recording session, so I have no idea how they "achieved" this poor sound. No mention of it in liner notes or reviews, of course.

Not so recent, people like Sofronitsky, Horowitz, Beecham, Reiner, are other exceptions. But they're few and far between.

I attempt to find what I'm looking for (performances/treatments) in ADD or DDD. Anything stereo is okay. If it's after 1991, that's even better. A recent collection Spars analysis told me 68% of my recs are DDD. :tiphat:


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

ptr said:


> The performance is everything, a good sound quality is at best an added bonus for me!
> I have heard quite a number recordings that are marketed as having superior sound quality, very few of these have performances that excites myself!
> 
> /ptr


It's quite amazing how the SACD crowd adores sound before performance. Though they have fewer options. I mean, why in the world would I want to make do with a SFS/MTT Mahler cycle?


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## Vinyl (Jan 22, 2014)

Sound quality has to be over a certain minimum for me as well. If I start thinking about how crappy the sound is, the music can't quite get through to me anyway. 

Exceptions for extreme historical interest, like Geirr Tveitt or Rachmaninov playing themselves. Might sound less than perfect, or even perfectly awful, but the hairs on my back still rise from the realization that this is GEIRR TVEITT HIMSELF AT THE PIANO!


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2014)

I generally only buy recommended versions of CDs and this generally takes account of both performance and sound quality, so the issue of a trade-off is a non issue as far as I'm concerned.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

cournot said:


> Well, the fact that you admit that **great** performances overcome poor sound suggests you do have a tradeoff, just a different one. Otherwise there would be no gradations of overcoming sound: you would listen to an ok performance with equal pleasure/displeasure regardless of how good or bad the sound is.


Not equal at all. Please don't make assumptions about my preferences.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I once visited the home of an audiophile friend whose wife had just left him, so he could set up his six foot tall speakers in the middle of the living room. He went to a shelf full of LPs and CDs and said, "What would you like to hear?" I flipped through and everything was small audiophile labels with mediocre music and performances. I politely said, "Gee I dunno." He said, "This one is good" and pulled out a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album. I asked if he liked Mannheim Steamroller. He said, "Not really". I pulled my iPod out of my pocket and we listened to some nice 50s jazz instead.


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## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

The interesting thing for me is where one draws the line. I guess I came to classical music through sound. Growing up I didn't have much of a musical education and no one in my house played an instrument or listened to classical music much except for turning on the radio every now and then. I never thought much of classical music when listening on those tiny old transistor radios except that some of it was "nice." In college, I had a friend whose folks had season tickets to the LA Phil and he asked me to come along. We had nice center orchestra seats and that night Yehudi Menuhin was playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto and if I'm not mistaken, Simon Rattle was conductor and started off with Berlioz' Corsair Overture.

I was totally blown away. It was the most amazing sonic experience ever. From that point on I did my best to learn about music, buy nice recordings, try to go to the symphony, and I worked a summer job to pay for a modest stereo. I even tried to learn piano but I had no time to practice much and also I was terrible  So for me, the experience of classical music is a joint product of music and sound. To this day, there's something special for me about hearing even a student symphony orchestra doing a good job live that I don't get from any recording. But of course, the opposite is true as well. Some performances are so good, they shine through weak sound. But unlike some of you, there are a large number of recordings where the sound is so bad, I can't focus on the great performance.


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