Test

@richardbrand, as this thread is based on Mercury recordings, and classical for that matter, I likely should not have said anything at all, as I totally agree and concur with everything you said. "Multi Track" recordings are what I was referring to, as I listen to and have been involved with multi track recording (studio stuff). Sorry, I should have specified that.....my bad

@rvpiano , I asked about headphones, as you created a thread about having an interest in a great headphone system. I have a few studio headphones, all closed back (Sony, Denon, Audio Technica), as this has been my preference so far, however, I do own a Headroom Max, which has brought me glorious music. Possibly old school by now, but I enjoy it. MrD.

Sorry, two critiques.  First, Janos Starker's cello just doesn't sound right to my ears—it's lean and dull—in Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme (#3) from this collection. If you go back to the original recording this excerpt comes from, the cello sounds much more natural. Second, the left and right channels seem overly separated, with literally nothing or a very thin center image—this is not good mixing.

This Mahler No. 2 recording is one of the best I’ve come across for testing.

@lanx0003 

The criticisms I’ve heard of the Mercury sound in general are that it is ’dry’, it lacks a lot of warmth from the venue!  That probably stems from the relatively close positioning of the microphones in relation to the conductor?

I have heard that a well-known British label is known to increase ambience by playing the original recording in a church, and adding reverberations back in.

Getting back to your recording, Gilbert Kaplan was a successful businessman, and got himself taught to conduct just to play this one symphony of Mahler’s.  He was pretty darned good at it too, toured the world as an amateur and gave over 100 performances.  He then learned the adagio from #5, doubling his repertoire.  

I have CDs of his performance with the London Symphony Orchestra, which definitely does not use a small orchestra!

I remember hearing a stunning performance in the Melbourne Concert Hall.  (Melbourne and Sydney have intense rivalries, including Concert Halls!  Whereas Sydney’s has a world famous exterior but a bare-bones interior, Melbourne’s has no real exterior, being sunk into a huge hole by the Yarra River, but a sumptuous inside).  There was a standing ovation, and the guy next to me turned and said he "wished his stereo sounded like that".  I had just been thinking "this sounds exactly like my system".

Mahler 2 was the main work played after the $100-m refit of the Sydney Concert Hall, mainly done to fix the acoustics.  Much of the refit is sculpted wood paneling to break up reflections!  It worked ....

@mrdecibel 

"Multi Track" recordings are what I was referring to, as I listen to and have been involved with multi track recording (studio stuff)

No worries!  I will point out that 2L in Norway do something similar to Mercury's approach for their stunning multi-track recordings, although they typically move the orchestra into a rough circle around their microphone tree.  They often record in large churches, but that is to keep any wall reflections distant, not for the reverberation.

I would be very interested in any light you can throw on how multi-microphone recordings are mixed, especially with digital techniques.  For example, are PCM signals combined as raw PCM, or is there some intermediate higher resolution format?