Classical Audiophiles Rejoice!

Madisonears absolutely has a swear word in his posting. The word was DIGITAL. If he thinks this is enlightenment, perhaps he also prefers fluorescent light to daylight. The modern fluorescent was advertised to be perfect light with long life (sound like the promise of CD?) However, there are many of us that are actually bothered by the flickering at 60 times per second. You say that the human eye cannot see the flickering at 60 times per second? Well, sit under a room full for 8 hours, and tell me which is better the Sun, or fluro's? The comparison is not that far apart. Digital is an approximation, that means it is trying to be analog. And, it does switch on and off to try to trace the signal that true analog can do. Perhaps today's digital will beat the analog of 10 or 20 years ago, but guess what? All things change, and some of today's analog is absolutely astounding.

Anyway, Audiogon has threatened to revoke my membership for doing what the so-called "ears" guy did, so all of you should be warned against it.

If you listen solely or mostly to classical on CD, you'll find a lot of variation in production values. I love Naxos for their extensive (and very rapidly growing) catalog of 20th century works. Their problem is that the production value is not very consistent. Fortunately, it's not much of a gamble for me to buy a disk for $6 to find out whether it was recorded as well as the Vaughn Williams disk or as poorly as the Creston symphonies that I recently purchased (although these are a couple of great pieces, and I do think that the purchase was worth it). Some of the new HP line of disks sound wonderful. I found the Bartok/Kodaly at a Border's outlet for 4.99, because it was missing the jacket booklet. I've already got 3 or 4 recordings of both pieces, so I can't imagine that there's much in that book that I haven't already read, or that I didn't learn in 3 years of Music History class in college. Anyway, the recording is fabulous. At the quiet beginning of the Concerto for Orchestra, there is an incredible palpability to the winds. Hey, for anyone who's interested in Classical(I'll probably regret letting the cat out of the bag), I've found that I have very little reason to buy disks at full price. Check out www.berkshirerecoutlet.com. Since most classical works have been recorded many many times, you're bound to find multiple recordings of almost anything. Happy listening!

I wish you could hear Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra on 45 rpm vinyl...

As do I. I wish that you could've heard Cleveland play it at Severance Hall three or four years ago. Truly a fine performance! I'm not particularly interested in debating the finer points of vinyl vs. cd, since I don't have the time, money, inkling or need to purchase anything on vinyl. Unfortunately for me, the music is actually more important than the hi-fi. Although I have spent what, for me (and for my wife), is a tremendous amount of money on my system, I really enjoy the music too much to worry about investing in vinyl. I've listened to the most recently released pieces of music by one of my favorite living composers, Mark-Anthony Turnage, as they are released. I doubt that it would be easy to find such recordings on vinyl. Even harder for me to listen to them, since the only turntable I own is an old Pioneer from the mid-'70s, and it's in storage. I appreciate your love of vinyl, but I am very satisfied with the ability to easily find any recording that I wish immediately on CD. The Meridian player that I own has given me a great amount of satisfaction with CDs. The enjoyment of music is why I don't particularly mind buying a Naxos CD that sounds like it was recorded from under a dozen wet towels. As long as the music is good, who cares?! I admit that I love the excitement of high-end audio and the experience of a great recording (try any of the recordings on the RR label), but that isn't what ultimately does it for me (This isn't to say, of course, that I am willing to go back to the pathetic Jensen speakers that I owned in college.).