Mozart on CD - warning

[Roger Fradenburgh]

I just bought a copy of Mozart Concerti Nos. 5 and 25, performed by
Murray Perahia and the English Chamber Orchestra on a CBS Masterworks
CD... Biiig mistake! The performance itself is just swell, the problem
is the recording. It is, in a word, abysmal. I'm a newcomer to the
Land of CDs, but I already know how incredibly good they can sound: When
I play my copy of Beethoven Cello Sonatas (Yo Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax on
another CBS recording), the piano sounds like it's in my living room
with me. Murray Perahia's piano also sounds like it's in my living
room, only this time someone laid alternating layers of cotton and waxed
paper on the strings and gave Murray a leaking inner tube to use for a
seat cushion: There's a constant, loud tape hiss. This is a digital
recording, but someone did an absolutely rotten mastering job.

So, that's it. Hopefully, ths posting will spare someone the
aggravation and the loss of $12 - $15 dollars I've endured.

Roger Fradenburgh
Cambridge, MA

[drh]

In article <24...@bbnccv.UUCP> rfra...@bbnccv.UUCP (Roger Fradenburgh) writes:
>
>I just bought a copy of Mozart Concerti Nos. 5 and 25, performed by
>Murray Perahia and the English Chamber Orchestra on a CBS Masterworks
>CD... Biiig mistake! The performance itself is just swell, the problem

>is the recording. It is, in a word, abysmal. [....]

> There's a constant, loud tape hiss. This is a digital
>recording, but someone did an absolutely rotten mastering job.

Thanks for the warning! I too have had a bad experience with a
(supposedly) digitally mastered CD. It was a recording of Robert
Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus performing a variety of
baroque choral pieces. (Sorry, I've forgotten the exact name of the
disk and the label.) There was not much hiss on this recording, but
only because all sound above about 5kHz had been filtered out during
the mixing. (I didn't measure cutoff frequency. 5kHz is a guess.)
The music sounded like I was listening to it over a telephone.
It was truly awful. Fortunately, Peaches Records and Tapes let me
exchange this lemon for a different title.

I'd like to hear from others who have heard or purchased poorly mastered
DDD compact disks. Is low quality mastering a prevasive problem with
CDs, or did Roger and I just happen to select two lumps of coal out
of a pile of gems? Is poor mastering ever a problem with LPs? I've
recently purchased my first ever stereo system and would like to know
the answers to these questions before I spend big $$ to build up a
record collection. Thanks!
--

Richard Hipp
AT&T Technologies, Burlington, NC
(919)-228-3832 ...allegra!burl!drh