Opera, Ballet and Classical Music discs - Page 33

I listened to Adriana Lecouvreur from Arthaus yesterday.
http://www.amazon.com/Cilea-Adriana-...sr=1-1-catcorr

While the picture is good, the sound is not.
The DTS-MA 7.1 track has a soundstage not much wider than stereo, voices come mainly from the center, surround is used little. Although the singers wear mics., 3 of the 6 principal voices (Carosi, Alvarez and Cornetti) distort at louder passages.
The voices are also a bit too loud relative to the orchestra.
There are 2 audio engineers given for the recording and 2 for the mix.
My guess is that one of the two responsible for recording got it wrong and recorded his half too hot.
I'll return this one.

Watched Anna Bolena last night.
http://www.amazon.com/Donizetti-Anna...7596969&sr=8-1
Picture is fine.
Sound format is DTS 5.0 MA, so the bass is a touch light. Soundstage is about 2-3 feet beyond corner speaker, orchestra quite detailed with the piccolo flute a touch too loud. The woodwinds are to the left, brass to the right, violins, celli and basses in the middle.
Principals carry mics. and the voices are fine, but all through the center speaker. Good balance between voices and orchestra. Overall well recorded, although I wished the voices were spread out a bit more.
I also listened to parts of the Met's performance through DirecTV. Its a 5.1 DD and the principals don't wear mics. There is a much louder noise level and the voices fluctuate, so overall that performance is a distant second in my view. (The BR might have better sound, but I seriously doubt it). Stick with the Vienna version.

Here is something out of the ordinary:
http://www.amazon.com/Handel-Admeto-...7622356&sr=1-1
A clip from youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMWvoG_Xo2w

Picture is fine.

Now I am not much of a Haendel fan. After some time it sounds too monotonous to me, so I didn't watch it to the end.
But if you don't mind the modern production and like Haendel, the music is very well recorded.
Soundstage 2 feet beyond the corner speakers, orchestra very detailed and clear.
Singers wear (very visible) mics. and sound is very clear. Voices move across the stage.
As far as recording is concerned, a 9 out of 10.

Thanks. I'd probably bow out early, too, although the Youtube excerpt reminded me of Handel opera arias shown on Ovation TV(?) some years ago, then released as a DVD ("A [My] Night with Handel"), reviewed here , and worth it if only for the final "As Steals the Morn" set on a London bridge. -- John

Got the Tosca yesterday.
Unfortunately, the samples have only a stereo track, which was disappointing. I would have preferred less samples, but a surround track. Without it, it's not much use to me.

The production details are here:
http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Giovann...8314974&sr=1-2

Here is an excerpt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwFM2ZzK85s

As it plays in a forest, picture is somewhat dark and suffers a bit from the lack of lighting, but still better than DVD.
Soundstage extents about 2 feet beyond the corner speaker, orchestra not quite as detailed as some other recordings, but acceptable. Singers wear mics. and the voices are also o.k, may be a little in the background. Voices come through the center only.
I liked the male voices and Roeschmann a bit better than the other female voices, but overall it is still a very well acted/sung and o.k. sounding recording. Somewhere between a 7.5 and 8 out of 10.
There are a few turns in the modernisation that go against the libretto with Donna Anna being more a seducer than a victim and Don Giovanni being shot at the beginning. If you prefer a traditional setting, then this might not be for you.

Hi,

I also detected this error on the Rheingold Blu-ray. Did you hear from them, is there any replacement program?

I saw the new Wim Wenders film on Pina Bausch (Pina) recently in a 3D theater. I think it's really the first good use of 3D I've seen for anything (Hollywood films like Avatar and the Pixar stuff included), and for a non-dance guy, Wenders is amazingly sensitive to the choreography. If you can see it 3D, definitely do --- it's the future for dance filming ... if you have a good director.

The film itself is quite wonderful, and showcases the company and its special qualities very well. We saw it on the Dolby 3D system.

Herr Bender of C-Major simply told me that he had no idea when they would do another production run. In other words, he blew me off. Judging from the response to their Beethoven cycle, etc., they don't care if they left a few dissatisfied customers behind. I know I won't buy any of their products in the future. They should take a lesson from Opus Arte about customer service and taking pride in the product they ship out.

Sorry you also got a bad disc set.

Edited to add: I just sent one last email attempt to Herr Bender in an effort to let them make things right. I will post the outcome here.

Lee

I have also just sent a message to C major

And speaking of the Ring, Götterdämmerung will be shown in HD Live in theaters on Saturday. The production quality of the Met's new Ring Cycle looks terrific. You can see some clips here. There is an interesting story about the young Texan who will be singing Siegfried for the first time. He's been preparing for this role for four years.

Received the 3 BR set of Beethoven's 9 symphonies with the Vienna Phil. under Thielemann yesterday. Was selling at around $80 on Classical Music Superstore and they have a good return policy. At most, I'm out the shipping, if C-Major disappoints.
Listened to the 3rd for starters.
Picture of course fine, but my eyes are mostly closed anyway.
I had a little problem finding the right loudness, as the surround effect got better as I turned up the dial. For reference, I listen to Mahler's 9th at -15 db, the Barber at -16 on my receiver. This one needed -11db. At that "loudness" (it's not really loud), the soundstage widened to about half the distance between the corner speaker and the surround speaker. Orchestra is quite detailed and at that level it sounded fine. It is a 5.0 track, so the double basses are a little weak. But other than that, no fault.
As for the performance, Thielemann plays it a little slow. Track length is given with 19:52 for the first movement, 18:11 for the second. My CD with the SWF does the same movements in 14:55/15:10. So he plays it very deliberate and in detail, but for me, it takes a bit the energy out of it. If I needed a Funeral March, this would not be the one I chose.
The bonus material is a stereo repeat of the performance with inserts of playing by Karajan, Furtwaengler and Bernstein and periodic inserts of a discussion with Thielemann and Joachim Kaiser, a leading music critic, talking about the section of music just being played. It's in German, but there are subtitles. Here Thielemann explains why he plays it slower etc.
So far, so good.

The C-major Beethoven set has had great reviews and comments. I sincerely hope that you find nothing but enjoyment in them.

Unless I hear back from them, I won't be purchasing any more of their products.

Lee

Lee, I understand your sentiment and thanks for your wishes. But like R Johnson, I am also too old to wait for the perfect recording. If the recording is o.k., I keep it, if not, I return it and they don't get my money. I pass the post office every other day and it is 10 minutes of my time. And I can inform other people about the recording, good or bad.
As you said, it had good reviews, but we both know to take those with a grain of salt. The price seemed very reasonable and I don't mind paying $6 for postage once in a while in exchange of having listened to a recording myself and it turns out to be inferior.
Lets see how this one turns out, and I hope we will hear from you or hanser that a new version of the Ring is out.
Best regards

Listened to the 5th yesterday at -10db. At that level, I get about 85 db at the peak.

The soundstage is about 2 feet beyond the corner speaker. Not as wide as in the 3rd, but better than stereo. At louder passages, it expands a bit further towards the surround speakers, but overall, it seems to have the surround speakers less incorporated than the 3rd.
Orchestra quite detailed as in the 3rd.
I checked the credits, and there are 2 different people responsible for "Audio" and "Audio Technician", "Audio Editor" and "Audio Producer" are the same as in the 3rd.

As far as the performance is concerned, it is still on the slow side, if you are used to Karajan.
But you get every nuance of Beethoven's score.

For what its worth, this morning I did a quick check of the credits. All 9 symphonies have the same Audio Editor and Audio Producer. Sym. 1-4 have Gregor Hornacek responsible for "Audio", sym. 5-9 have Alfred Zavrel responsible.
A brief listening into 1st and 2nd seems to indicate that they sound similar to the 3rd.

The orchestra in the 9th is pretty much the same sound wise as in the 5th.

The chorus and the 4 principal voices sound as I would expect them to sound to people in the actual performance. There are microphones over them hanging from the ceiling just as for the rest of the orchestra. They seem a bit too far away from the singers, particularly from the alto, as she is the shortest. So when they sing with the chorus, they are not as prominent as I would like them. But if you sat in the audience, you would probably not hear much of them either. This is one of the cases where the audio engineer could actually make it better than live, but he didn't. When they sing alone, they are o.k. and the voices are fine, no distortion.
Was I wowed? No, but there is nothing wrong with it that would lead me to returning it, either.

For me, the closing scene in Götterdämmerung - with its interwoven motifs - stands as one of the great orchestral triumphs in all of opera. Following Hagen's death, the Rhine Maidens emerge with the ring, now cleansed of its curse, and their theme (not played since the opening moments of Das Rheingold) is heard on the woodwinds. From there, the alternating themes of Valhalla and Siegfried are heard, giving way to the soaring violins of Brünnhilde's glorification (which was heard only once before in a critical scene in Die Walküre). But in the second sequence of themes, there is a moment, actually an orchestral pause following Siegfried's theme played by the heavy brass, where Brünnhilde's theme emerges from pure silence. It's sort of a technical thing in the score and some conductors gloss over it, but Levine has always given the silence full measure. I'm wondering, Ron, how was it played on Saturday, do you recall?

Listened to the 6th yesterday.
Louder is better, it improves the width of the soundstage (-8 db).
But it fluctuates a bit. At softer passages, the soundstage extents about 2 feet beyond the corner speaker, but at the loudest and brightest passages, it extents to halfway to the surround speakers. It sounds as if the last 2 rows of violins on the left play only at the loudest passages.
You could argue that at the soft passages the instruments further away will be hardly heard, thus the shrinking, but I think the audio engineer should balance that out.
You notice it a few times when the music starts from soft and gets increasingly louder.
It still sounds much better than stereo, but I prefer it stable.

As far as the performance is concerned, it is still slow, but this lends it better to slow and it is certainly very detailed.

Do you only get this volume-related "widening" effect from this recording? How do your surround speakers differ (manufacturer, etc.) from your main speakers? This sounds almost like a speaker efficiency issue, where the surrounds don't come up in output as the mains do, with equal input signal.

Lee

I have it only from this recording and a bit from No. 5. I don't recall any other recording like this, that's why I mention it. I do have a different pair of surround speakers than the 3 fronts, but they are calibrated to the same loudness. I thought of this, too, but I rejected that hypothesis without measuring (again) based on it not happening with other recordings.
Mahler's 9th (Youth Orchestra) has plenty of dynamic and the 160 degree soundstage is solid as a rock, piano or forte. So is La Gazzetta, the Barber, etc. I play my CD's with Neo surround and it doesn't fluctuate at all.
I thought along the lines of R Johnson, but I sit in the front (here in Kingsport for $25, in Knoxville for $92) with a much wider soundstage than center balcony and I don't recall ever experiencing it like that.
I think it's the mix.
But, to make sure, I just measured the speakers this morning with pink noise over increasing sound levels and made a table. As the Radio Shack sound pressure meter range goes only down to 60 db, I measured at 56/65/73/80/86 db. I measure between my wife and my chair, i.e the center of the sound field. Over the whole range, the speakers are even and go up in lockstep.
The only adjustment I have made (but even over the range) is: I lowered the left surround by 1 db as I sit closest to that and I increased the right surround by 1 db as I am furthest away from that. (So I have given my chair a slight emphasis over my wife's, but I hope you wont hold that against me. I listen to music a lot more than she does and she is fine with it.)
So again, I think it's the mix.

Don't forget that recording technique is a huge (probably the largest) influence on the sound you hear at home. Which is to say, even if something is surround, it has to be recorded in a particular way to sound a certain way at home. It's the same as it was with 2-channel recordings: there are many really awful recordings, and a few transcendent ones.

Also, a couple of people mentioned 5.0 not giving fuller bass because of the missing .1 LFE channel. That doesn't have to be true. The 5 main channels of a discrete surround track (DD, DTS, all the lossless formats) are full-range: 20-20k Hz. The LFE's only purpose to lend bass headroom for really, really loud bass sounds (think explosions, not musical instruments) --- the same content should be carried in the other channels. For music, LFE should never be used.

Of course, this doesn't preclude mixing engineers from treating it like a subwoofer redirection channel. They sometimes do, but they should get spanked for that.

To R Johnson

If at about 2:55 into the Rheingold on the DTS track the french horns are on the left, it's a new mix. In the first release, they were on the right. They were (and hopefully still are) on the left in the stereo track.