Toscanini's 1946 Mozart Haffner Reconsidered
Old 8H
Dear Friends:
I just obtained a copy of an invaluable Toscanini CD, the
rehearsal of the Mozart Symphony No. 35 performance given
in a broadcast and a commercial recording session in Nov. 1947,
on Relief CR 1831. This is a 1988 issue that I have never
before seen in a store; I assume that Koch Import Service
possibly still may be able to provide it, though it could be out of
print by now. I last heard the "samisdat" tapes of this
rehearsal that were circulating on the east coast many years ago,
when a friend here in California obtained a copy around 1982.
I recall reading comments about this rehearsal a long time ago
in this newsgroup, and the gist was that Toscanini seemed
concerned mostly by expression, and not by ensemble integrity (in
the opinion of one auditor of the recording.) Though only a
few words and phrases here and there are in distinctly audible
and discernible English (most comments are of course in Toscanini's
very gutteral Italian, and I think there are a few words
in French, such as the oft-uttered command "allez!") it would
seem to me that, particularly in the finale, he demands extreme
precision of execution and drills each section of the strings
separately, and then together, repeating the same skittering
phrases over and over again until they are absolutely clean.
He even laughs at one point, probably in reference to an
(inaudible) joke by one of the musicians, and does not indulge
in any outbursts of temper, though of course he does raise his
incredibly loud and penetrating voice many times to sing out
phrases above the ensemble sound so that they can all hear his
intentions clearly. Compared to other rehearsals of the Maestro I
have heard, he seems almost genial: there is no hectoring or
intimidation, and none of the despair and frustration one hears in
Toscanini's rehearsal of the Manfred Symphony or even of the little
'Dance of the Water Nymphs' from Catalani's La Wally.
I cannot imagine that Furtwaengler would insist on such
clarity of execution, though Bruno Walter surely would have.
Of course, Walter's style was more friendly and relaxed, but the
delightful and engaging rehearsal of Mozart's Symphony No. 36
by Walter and the Columbia Symphony from April 26-8, 1955,
reveals a conductor with a rehearsal style not entirely
dissimilar from Toscanini's: there is a continual effort by
the conductor to sing the musical line; an insistence on
great precision -- especially in rhythm, ornaments, sforzandi,
and in other details -- and a no-nonsense constant
momentum that indicates a certain amount of professional
tension underneath the collegiality. In the few audio and
video rehearsal extracts of Furtwaengler and Klemperer that
I have been privileged to witness, there is a more austere
"master-pupil" relationship between the conductor and the
orchestra, and much less sense of good humor or the actual
savoring of the task at hand than in either the Walter or
Toscanini Mozart rehearsals.
If you wish to obtain the Relief CD of the Toscanini rehearsal,
be warned that the original recording engineer did NOT use
a peak limiter to control the dynamics: the orchestra badly
distorts, and is much louder than Toscanini, who can be
heard only with great difficulty at times. Judging from the
picture of a typical studio setup for the Toscanini
broadcasts (in the back of the deluxe booklet issued in
1967 in the 5-LP RCA set of historic Toscanini broadcasts)
the mikes were probably placed on a ceiling-mounted fixture
somewhat behind and far above the podium (in that particular
photo, one can discern, I recall, 3 RCA 44 bidirectional
ribbon microphones, one pointed toward center stage,
flanked by two opposite each other pointed at stage left and
right. I assume that a mix was obtained of the three
close-proximity pickups.) Toscanini would have had his back
to these mikes, so it is a wonder that he is heard at all
with any clarity or distinction!
I assume that Toscanini has memorized the letters of the score,
for he was nearly blind at a distance of more than a few
inches away from his eyes, and surely could not have read
the score even on the music stand in front of him without
bending over and peering intently at it. He constantly calls
for "Letter C" or some other specific section; perhaps he
was simply picking up the score and holding it right under
his nose, as he is seen to be doing in several Robert Hupka
photographs.
There is considerable "hall tone" in the recording, which
actually has more liveness than the muddy quality of the Bruno
Walter rehearsal tapes. However, the original transcription
disks are badly worn, and continually scratch away throughout
the 53 minute duration of the rehearsal extracts. One soon
adjusts to this and ignores the noise: had any attempt been
made to filter it out, then Toscanini's comments would have been
utterly inaudible. Occasionally the engineer manages to get the
sound levels turned down for the orchestral passages, so a
few tantalizing brief moments are perfectly clear and clean.
Now, we have always been told that the commercial NBC recording
of Mozart's Symphony no. 35 was accomplished in Studio 3A, not
the regular venue of Toscanini's radio broadcasts, Studio 8H.
Is this really true?
I found an amusing thread that appeared a few weeks ago in
this newsgroup, which I have condensed and copy below:
"Where is 8-Haggis?"
>>I think 8-H is opting for a lower profile.
>>
>>Perhaps 3-A.
>>
>>: A great in-joke which only truly dedicated Toscanini mavens will
>>: get!
>>
>>Does this mean that Toscanini didn't pick the 3-A room which has
>>better aucustic [sic] or something else?
>>
>>Takashi M. Kikuchi
>Not quite, but you're onto it. Many of Toscanini's NBS Symphony
>recordings were made in Studio 8-H, notorious for its clinical and
>echoless sound. At one point, 8-H got remodeled, and a few recordings
>were made in Studio 3-A, which sounded even worse.
- - -
>Toscanini was forced to make some recordings in NBC's Studio 3A in
>1946-47. He told B. H. Haggin he hated working in that studio, which I
>also take to mean that he didn't mind working in Studio 8H, which was
>remodeled by Stokowski in 1942.
>Don Drewecki
>dre...@rpi.edu
The notes of the Relief CD state, in the words of annotator
Peter Aistleitner, "...on 4th November, 1946, the Maestro made
another recording of the Haffner Symphony at Radio City,
New York, not, however, in studio 8-H, as usual, but in Studio
3-A, which was of inferior sound quality ('on the insistence
of an NBC executive that some use of the studio appear on
the NBC books'). The result was -- again in the words of
B. H. Haggin's excellent book (Conversations with Toscanini,
New York, 1959 and 1979) -- one of the 'most atrocious- sounding
Toscanini recordings ever issued' (Victor 11-9901/3, the LP
is available on German RCA, Nr. VL4509005. The day before,
on 3rd November 1946, the same symphony was part of an all
Mozart programme NBC broadcast 'live' from studio 8-H...the
rehearsal to be heard on this record took place in studio 8-H
the day before the concert. The Maestro was then eighty years
old."
Judging from the rehearsal examples on the CD, which -- save for only
a few moments -- seem quite continuous in each of the four movements,
the basic conception would seem to be already fully achieved, with
Toscanini concentrating on specific details. There may indeed be more
of the rehearsals for this work than we are provided with in the
Relief release.
Now, I would like to re-examine two assertions about this
recording: (1) that it is one of the worst sounding Toscanini
disks; and (2) that it was indeed made in Studio 3A. Are
both really true?
There seems to be a tendency in reporting on the so-called
"quality" of recordings in the press, in scholarly books or
reviews, and in amateur exchanges such as in this newsgroup,
to reiterate the 'consensus', based on a traditionally- held
notion that can almost always be traced, should one be able
to do it, to the utterance of an "authority", such as an
early critical comment when the recording was first issued.
This view of the recording is then reasserted and elaborated upon
year after year. Even after the performance, such as this 1946
Mozart reading, has been issued in 3 or 4 different electronic
recording media, and re- engineered over and over again,
we still fall back on the original "authority", in this case
probably B. H. Haggin.
In the early 1980s, I obtained an absolutely pristine and probably
previously unplayed copy of a late-40s pressing of the 78
set of this Haffer recording. I can tell you that the "raw"
disks seemed somewhat tinny and cramped in sound; since there
was the usual continual shellac hiss and grind (even in a
mint copy) the softer details, room tone resonance, and inner
voices were somewhat swallowed up in mechanical noise. One
clearly heard the 'bursts' of sound at the climaxes but much
less of the softer passages. There was very little bass (a
characteristic of many Toscanini 78s after about 1941) and
if an attempt was made to equalise it by boosting the low end,
this just increased the noise level at the bottom.
So the sound was rather poor, and in some ways -- particularly
in the dry, wooden nature of the climaxes -- actually less
rich and realistic than the 1929 Victor PSNY recording of the
same work by Toscanini (which, of course, had less highs, but
did benefit from the resonance of Carnegie Hall.) So in
this case, B. H. Haggin was no doubt right: this is a disappointing
technical recording -- AS HEARD FROM THE ORIGINAL 78 SET -- of the
Haffner, and is not equal to the best achieved in the late
1940s by the NBC Symphony in Carnegie Hall.
But, today in 1998, judging from the BMG CD issue, is it now
correct to critize the sound with the same broad brush?
The conventional view (and I have heard at least 4 different
stories over the years as to why Toscanini's Haffner and
Haydn 101 were done in 3A and not 8H) is that 3A was a smaller,
drier broadcast studio, and -- indeed -- it probably was so.
However, do we really have aural assurance, to be unmistakably
confirmed by our unprejudiced ears, that this recording was
NOT made in Studio 8H? Could it not be possible that for years
we have been misinformed, and that in truth, this Haffner is
actually an 8H product?
According to books I have consulted about concert hall acoustics,
many of the great halls have a complex reverberation resonance
that can be defined as being in the overall time value range of
0.7 to 1.2 seconds; a few are slightly longer (as evidenced by
some of the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic
recordings.) I have not used any electronic equipment, such as
an accurate professional spectrum analyzer, to examine NBC
Symphony Toscanini recordings, but I would judge by ear that
the hall had, typically, about 250 to 350 milliseconds
reverberation decay; on a few NBC broadcasts, such as the
1940 Manfred Symphony and Petruchka (the latter a very
transparent recording, even in the old Clyde Key/ATS LP
issue) one can hear an even longer reverberation tail that
sounds quite natural; similarly, some of the Stokowski
NBC broadcasts sound remarkably spacious and well- balanced,
due to that conductor's attention to the reconstruction of
the stage baffles and to critical microphone placement.
In auditing the Relief CD of the Studio 8H rehearsal on
headphones, one can clearly detect and identify this
unmistakable Studio 8H hall tone and reverberation. If one
quickly switches to the BMG commercial CD issue, attempting at
best to equalise the sound levels with the overloaded rehearsal
CD transfer, a VERY close correlation can be achieved. The
BMG copy does not simply reproduce the tinny old 78 rpm
sound, but represents modern and sophisticated re- engineering of
the old 1946 master, done by Seth Winner, using purist techniques
with no fake stereo or echo; I would even guess that alternate
33.3 transcription disks and NOT the original 78 masters
were used for at least some of the sides.
The "Studio 3A" reverberance is virtually identical to the hall
tone of 8H in the rehearsal; the exact sonic balances of strings
and winds, and the soundstage "picture" of the ensemble is
almost identical to the "Studio 8H" rehearsal recording; only
the distortion components and exact content of high frequencies
differ. I compared all four movements of the symphony and
found that -- for example -- in the finale, the very clean,
airy, and bright commercial recording sounds extremely similar
in overall sonic balances to the rehearsal, save only for the
added noise and distortion of the rehearsal acetates. The third
movement of the commercial CD sounds less clear, and has more
background hiss than the finale, where the similarities between
the rehearsal and commercial recording are greatest; yet
the perspective and ambience are still the same.
Then I immediately audited the BMG CD release of the March 8, 1938
NBC Symphony recording of the Haydn Symphony No. 88. Aside
from a loss of brilliance in the spectral region above 6 or
7 kHz, the sonic balances, low frequency leanness, hall tone,
and reverberant tails are almost identical. The percentage of
hall sound to direct instrumental pickup is almost identical:
indeed, it sounds like the mike(s) were in EXACTLY the same
position as in the 1946 rehearsal and commercial recordings of
the Haffner. We do know for sure that this Haydn was done in
8H; now that I perceive that the Mozart Sym. 35 recording sounds
so similar in perspective and orchestral balance, I suspect
that IT, too, was done in 8H and not 3A!
I suggest that it is JUST POSSIBLE that we have been misinformed
about this for the last 50 years, and that RCA's documentation
might be wrong! We certainly know, in comparing Haggin's,
Marsh's, and Sachs's accounts of certain details of Toscanini's
career, that one finds that the last scholarly author often
corrects many old myths or misconceptions that have been
promulgated by earlier publications about the Maestro.
Furthermore, the Haffer recording of 1946 has excellent
verisimilitude to Toscanini's intentions, as judged from the
rehearsal recording where he takes such exquisite pains
to achieve clarity. One can hear every detail of complex
passages, and can resolve each instrumental line of the various
sections of the orchestra.
Is this a BAD recording? I would call a "bad recording" one
which had some dreadful technical defect: a severe wow or flutter,
a loss of detail, or a debilitating distortion that prevented
one from properly auditing and evaluating the original musical
performance. In this 1946 commercial recording of the Mozart,
one can study critically how Toscanini interprets the finest
microscopic aspects of the score; there is no harmonic or
intermodulation distortion greater than the average amount for
the technology of the time; there is no wow or flutter; the
noise level (while not absolutely consistent) is nonetheless
quite low; and the overall results are very satisfactory as a
musical and historical document.
Furthermore, if one wants a somewhat richer sound than is
presented by the CD, the bass can be stepped up as desired
by the listener: the noise level is so low, and the transfer
so clean, that the bass can now be boosted. This extra
low-end richness can help offset the short hall reverberation
time. The end result is that, by means of both the rehearsal
recording and the finished commercial disk, one can very
clearly perceive Toscanini's considered view of the Haffner
in November of 1946, and hear his very consistent approach
to the orchestral dynamics, pacing, and expression, which
are virtually identical in nature in the November 2 rehearsal
and the November 4 recording: it is a "tight" performance,
not far in spirit from today's modern unsentimental, lean, brisk
period instrument interpretations, though Toscanini uses far more
'espressivo' (but not nearly as much as his colleague Walter did.)
However, in auditing the live broadcast -- done during the day
separating the rehearsal and the recording -- one hears a quite
different concept, with more agogics and inflection of phrasing, very
slightly slower pacing, and a relaxation of intensity that places it
closer in spirit to Bruno Walter's romantic geniality (I have not
heard this broadcast since about 1985, but I seem to recall
that it also had at least one or two repeats that are not included
in the commercial recording.)
So, in my view, Haggin was not exactly wrong in condemning
the original 78 set, but we should definitely move forward
in forming new opinions about the Toscanini recordings, and
base our evaluations on fresh hearings of the best modern
source material (and by this, I mean Winner's great work,
or authentic monaural undoctored radio airchecks, not blowsy,
fake stereo imported CD bootleg disks.)
The damage done by Haggin, Marsh, or any of the other old
authors who decry the "bad Toscanini recordings" is that modern
readers, who have not had the benefit of hearing the body of
Toscanini's work, and have not put it in perspective with a
wide variety of other contemporary recordings from the period,
might be tempted just to dismiss the Toscanini legacy out of
hand, being wrongly assured that the "authorities" have spoken
and have determined the eternal truth! With each fresh new
revelation we have of the past, we find that this is often
not the case.
Yours,
Old 8H
Rtsina
>Dear Friends:
>
>I just obtained a copy of an invaluable Toscanini CD, the
>rehearsal of the Mozart Symphony No. 35 performance given
>in a broadcast and a commercial recording session in Nov. 1947,
>on Relief CR 1831.
We're all happy for you Steve, er., 8H, er, Haggis, er....
S. Chotzinoff
Don Drewecki
The "Johnston pickup" referred to by "8H" was actually a SINGLE RCA 44
bidirectional (figure-8 pattern) mike, used up through the fall of 1947.
What you see in the photos are identical mikes to the left and the right
of the center mike (all separated by a few inches), all mounted on a
bar which was hung with ropes.
Those mikes were spares, or a pickup feed for South American relays by
shortwave. Only in late 1947 did George Mathes devise different
pickups, tilting the mikes differently, using three at once, et cetera.
This was explained to me by Robert Hupka years ago. The best results,
as even Don Gillis admitted in 1963, were of just that single mike,
about three feet above and a few feet behind Maestro. The problem is
that such a pickup pattern slights the edges of the stage, and I was
told that, in 1945-47, Johnston occasionally used a spot mike on the
basses, who were always off to the left.
I should also point out here that I have tried configuring the Calrec
Soundfield mike into a mono mike, figure-8 pattern. The difference
between that and stereo crossed cardioids is dramatic. We will never
know how the NBC Symphony truly sounded, even on the best recordings,
based on the experiments I did at Troy Music Hall. Too much is lost in
directionality and spaciousness.
--
Don Drewecki
<dre...@rpi.edu>
Don Drewecki
The truth is that Toscanini did indeed record the Mozart Haffner and
Haydn Clock in NBC's Studio 3A. I've talked with people who knew, and I
think the RCA log books are correct. Studio 3A was for many years the
location of NBC's "Today" show, by the way.
My point is that empty Studio 8H, as heard from the best rehearsal
recordings, was not that bad. Still, it would have been better if RCA
used no limiters in its recording sessions, and that NBC stuck to the
Johnston pickup, which was and still is a very reliable way of recording
an orchestra, only that you use a stereo mike today, not a mono figure-8.
--
Don Drewecki
<dre...@rpi.edu>
Old 8H
On 26 May 1998 12:44:32 -0400, dre...@rpi.edu (Don Drewecki) wrote:
>
>The "Johnston pickup" referred to by "8H" was actually a SINGLE RCA 44
>bidirectional (figure-8 pattern) mike, used up through the fall of 1947.
>What you see in the photos are identical mikes to the left and the right
>of the center mike (all separated by a few inches), all mounted on a
>bar which was hung with ropes.
>
>Those mikes were spares, or a pickup feed for South American relays by
>shortwave.
As Don correctly explains from his obviously authoritative information
direct from original sources, the mikes were used for separate feeds.
As a matter of fact, the ATS journal once mentioned that a complete
stereo recording was once recovered of the 1942 broadcast of El Salon
Mexico, by synchronizing the short-wave linecheck and the domestic
linecheck acetates.
After reading that many years ago, I did some experiments along the
same lines, which I reported in this newsgroup last year. I had the
RCA Victrola LP copy of the live 1939 version of Beethoven's Leonore
Ov. No. 3, plus a copy of the ATS/Everest LP dub. They sounded quite
different to my ears, so I copied each to a separate tape on my Revox
A77s (which had adjustable speed controls.) I then did my best to
equalise the pitch, and corrected the phase of the recordings so that
in summed mono they "added" rather than subtracted. By carefully
cueing the tapes, adjusting the separate EQ for approximately the same
balance of highs and lows, and equalising the levels, I produced a
third tape containing the Victrola on one channel, and the ATS/Everest
on the other (I forget which was left and right, and I don't have the
tape anymore; nor do I have the Revoxes.) I had to tweak the speed
control of one of the machines (as I recall, the ATS/Everest did not
stay absolutely on pitch, though the Victrola dub did.) I could keep
the "soundstage" stable for about 10 or 20 seconds at a time before
the phase differences drifted into an audible time-delay. The final
recording wobbled "in and out" of stereo, but for periods of time, one
could hear the NBC Symphony spread out with some realism: the
off-stage trumpet was very interesting, and came way off to one side
(I don't recall which) with dramatic effect! I did not consider the
result to be more than an oddity, and surely not worthy of any issue,
since one did not have a constant stereo quality, or even a completely
continual synchronisation throughout the overture. But I did play the
tape at a meeting of engineers, and they were quite amused (one of
them was so struck by it that he insisted on coming to my home strudio
at a later time to hear it again.) The sound quality, though
distorted and fuzzy, was somewhat similar to the ultra-close stereo of
the 1954 Toscanini Carnegie Hall Wagner program.
It is good to know from Don that RCA is absolutely correct about the
venue 3A for the Haffner, and that it has been confirmed by other
respondents beside Haggin (who had so many axes to grind that I read
him with great skepticism.) At any rate, I am happy that my Swiftian
"modest proposal" that the 3A Haffner is not all that bad, and in many
ways resembles a typical 8H recording, did not apparently cause any
cases of apoplexy, or the firebombing of the newsgroup server!
I write as a lowly listener to the records from my distant vantage
point on the west coast...not as an insider in the coterie of
Toscanini collectors around New York.
The effect of reprocessing the recordings, in terms of changing their
tonal balances and altering some characteristics of the emotional
impact the performance has on the listener, is well documented. If,
for example, a transfer is very harsh and bright, and has been doubly
compressed, both in the original recording session and again in the LP
cutting process, the performance can have an aggressive, "forward"
quality, and an over-presence that may cause the listener to recoil
from the harshness of the overall sound quality: this lends a certain
sonic tenseness to the reading that may lead a critic to conclude that
it is a tight, pushy, and intense performance.
Now, if you remaster the original source disks so that the balance is
smoother and better adjusted across the spectrum of the instrumental
sounds, and take great pains to eliminate any extra distortion
components or further audio compression, the recording may reveal a
performance that is not as blatant and forceful, but seems more
natural.
Recall that Robert C. Marsh asserted that there were 2 commercial
Toscanini recordings of the "Meistersinger" Overture, the first being
tense and forced, and the second being more spacious and relaxed. He
apparently was so confused by the completely different sound quality
of the later LP dubs of the ONE 1946 78-rpm master of the reading
taken down on March 11, 1946 that he thought there were two completely
different performances: to his credit, he recanted in a later edition
of his Toscanini book, after his error had been pointed out.
That is the effect I heard in recalling the sound of the awful 78 rpm
set of the Haffner, and the illluminating
Winner/Cosentini/Fierro/Lacey/Caro transfer on BMG CD #09026-60286-2.
When one listens to this, then the acoustical differences between 8H
and 3A are not as obvious as they are on the 78, where the (minimal)
hall ambience is swallowed up in shellac noise, and the body of sound
is eviscerated by the bass-shy balance. Now that the sound is not
truly awful and painful to the ear, one can listen more closely to the
interpretation, and appreciate the details.
For example, I never liked the 1945 Toscanini "Jupiter" which I had on
the Victor LP issued in the mid-50s. It seemed very harsh and
compressed, and I fully agreed with Marsh's assertion that the
performance was tense and overdriven. Later I copied the original 78s
from a clean set, and found to my surprise that the performance seemed
more spacious and relaxed. Then in the late 78s or early 80s, I found
a Japanese Victor LP transfer for about $5 in a cut-out bin at Tower
Records. It sounded even better than my 78 transfer (and though I do
not have it anymore, it was -- as I recall -- very similar sounding to
the BMG CD transfer currently available.) In all cases, the actual
original source recording is precisely the same; and therefore, the
tempi, phrasing, and interpretation are identical. Yet each recording
transfer produced a slightly different emotional impact on the
listener. In the old Red Seal LP, the finale was simply "over the
top"; on the CD it is within the bounds of tolerance, according to my
personal taste, after having heard hundreds of different versions of
the Jupiter.
I wonder what Marsh would think of the performance NOW, judging from
the CD and not the old Red Seal LP version.
Finally, I should mention that adding audio compression to a recording
can be demonstrated as perhaps the easiest way to change a listener's
evaluation of the "tenseness" of the performance.
I used to have an elaborate recording studio, with 4 - 6 foot tall
relays racks full of patchbays and processing equipment, 2 PCM
recorders, 4 Revox A77s, an RCA BA-6 limiter, an Orban stereo
synthesizer, diverse equalisers, Dolby units, a Yamaha digital
processer, noise reduction units, and dbx companders and compressors.
I got rid of almost all of this equipment in the early '90s, but I
kept four units: the Burwen TNE 7000, a Parasound equaliser, and the
dbx 117 and 119 compressor/expanders. These are very useful if I want
to make a cassette tape to playback in my car or on a Walkman.
I have modified the release time of the dbx 119 so that it "decays" in
about 2 -3 seconds, not the few hundred milliseconds of its original
time constants: I can use it to compress the audio levels in, say, a
3-to-1 ratio, if I want to make a "constant volume" audio tape for
casual playback. A few decibels of that compression of peak levels is
pretty innocuous.
A few weeks ago, I demonstrated the effects of adding compression to a
friend, the Toscanini collector who happens to be a classical buyer
for a local Tower store. He has been listening to records for nearly
40 years, but has absolutely no professional experience with audio
equipment or technology beyond the total neophyte level. He had no
idea what "compression" meant, and he asked me what it was.
I took a BMG Toscanini CD and played it for him right off the disk;
then I cranked up the same recording, with about a 3 db boost around 3
to 5 kHz, through my daisy-chained dbx 117 (set for a low-level
compression of about 2 to 1) and my dbx 119 (adjusted to 4 to 1 for
the loud passages.) The sound was harsh, intimidating, and
aggressive, and the performance -- we both agreed -- now sounded much
more intense and frantic. Dynamic subtleties and shadings were now
totally missing, and each passage had the same colorless blatancy.
If I can do this at home in about 15 seconds by tweaking the knobs of
the gadgets connected to my cassette player, then I can assure you
that the recording studio engineers and radio stations can accomplish
the same, and much worse, with their racks full of processing gear!
The concern I have is that all too many audio transfer engineers seem
to believe that if they have the capacity to modify the sound in this
way, they MUST do it! But, in "high fidelity", LESS IS MORE!
So, unless the sound absolutely must be tailored to a specific
playback condition (such as car audio reproduction, or competitive
"wall-to-wall sound" rock radio station presentation) the mark of good
engineering is to do the minimum of damage, and to respect the
technology and taste employed by the original recording engineer.
Yours,
Old 8H
Matthew B. Tepper
Don Drewecki wrote:
>
> My point is that empty Studio 8H, as heard from the best rehearsal
> recordings, was not that bad.
Too bad the quality of the music performed there most of the time for
the past several years has been utter dreck and rubbish. :--)
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://www.deltanet.com/~ducky/index.htm
My main music page --- http://www.deltanet.com/~ducky/berlioz.htm
And my science fiction club's home page --- http://www.lasfs.org/
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
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mike gray
Don Drewecki wrote:
>
> The truth is that Toscanini did indeed record the Mozart Haffner and
> Haydn Clock in NBC's Studio 3A. I've talked with people who knew, and I
> think the RCA log books are correct. Studio 3A was for many years the
> location of NBC's "Today" show, by the way.
>
> used no limiters in its recording sessions, and that NBC stuck to the
> Johnston pickup, which was and still is a very reliable way of recording
> an orchestra, only that you use a stereo mike today, not a mono figure-8.
> --
> Don Drewecki
> <dre...@rpi.edu>
Don is correct - recording pages 12313 (9th October 1946) and 12342 (4th
November) show "NBC #3A NY" as the locations for those sessions.
Mike Gray
Fi Magazine