Comparison recordings:
Munch, Zamkochian, Boston Symphony Orchestra
[ADD] RCA Victor 5750-2-RC
Martinon, Gavoty, ORTF Orchestra [ADD]
EMI CZS 7 62643 2
This work is a luxurious
tone poem with the orchestra representing
expectant and later exultant mankind,
and the pipe organ cast appropriately
in the role of Almighty God. While Munch
and Martinon are both equally sacrosanct
as high priests of French music, the
fact is that in this case Munch’s God
is bigger than Martinon’s. This work
was premiered just months before the
death of Liszt, so he probably never
heard it, but he would have loved it
as the vindication of everything he
tried to accomplish.
This recording is a
technically improved release of a recording
which has been available for nearly
40 years, one of the earliest stereo
recordings of the work and one of the
best recordings of anything ever done.
Until I heard this version I never cared
for the work, and in general I have
not encountered a recording by anyone
else that I ever wanted to listen to
a second time.
Behind and beyond the
hype (and premium price), this is still
a regular CD, playable in any CD player,
in what is now known as 44/16 (or 16/44
if you prefer) sound. JVC’s XRCD technique
is similar in operation to Sony’s Super
Bit Map or Mobile Fidelity’s UHR in
that it is a clever way of maximising
the resulting CD sound by improving
various steps in the mastering process,
beginning in this case with a 20bit
remastering of the original tapes using
the restored original recorders. The
marketing people count on the public
making the assumption that this will
result in the best reproduction, however
there is no good reason to think so.
It is true for most amateur recorders
that the tapes sound best played back
on the original machine, but with professional
equipment my assumption is that the
tape would sound better on completely
new state-of-the-art equipment. Otherwise
the deficiencies of the original 45-year-old
machines are simply multiplied by two
instead of being compensated as would
be possible with new equipment. Also,
all this care in remastering was lavished
on a duplicate master tape, hence
my rating of "AAD" for this
release (the packaging contains no SPARS
code). Perhaps RCA would simply not
allow their precious master out of their
vault to cross the ocean to Japan, even
to a related company.
Be that as it may,
the remaining steps in the mastering
process are carried out utilising improved
procedures, the final downsampling from
20 bit to 16 bit being done as cleverly
as possible with what are called "noise
shaping" routines, and which also
include carefully calculated amounts
of "dither." If these quantities
are adjusted to fit the frequency content
of the music, a cleaner disk could be,
and is, produced, which is still playable
on an ordinary player. The HDCD system
uses a more complicated and more far-reaching
approach which requires a special circuit
in the player to obtain the full advantage.
My first test of this
disk was with my "D" system
which features a 15-year-old Sanyo amplifier
of indifferent quality with a 5-channel
equaliser, and Teac 5" (13cm) speakers
in plain wood/hardboard boxes. This
is the system I use for listening to
music quietly in bed, and I played the
original issue immediately beforehand
and afterwards without changing any
settings. On this system I noticed no
particular improvement in sound, indeed
almost no difference in sound at all,
between the two disks other than the
original RCA issue seemed to have a
slightly greater [sic!] dynamic range
while the newer JVC issue had a slightly
lower background noise level. When auditioned
on my "A" system, I could
hear a slight, but only a slight, improvement
in distortion level, but now no difference
in the noise level. Also I noticed there
is more information in the rear channels
when played through a surround sound
decoder in the JVC version suggesting
greater phase accuracy and less inter-channel
cross-talk than in the original RCA,
this being perhaps the real advantage
of utilising the original tape machine
for mastering.
Numerical analysis
and visual comparison of the waveform
on an oscilloscope confirmed that the
dynamic range is greater on the earlier
release, as my ears had told me. However
in the earlier release the waveform
showed evidence of a limiter in use
whereas the new release showed no such
distortion of the wave form. What this
means is that on repeated comparison
listening at high volume levels on the
very finest audio equipment, one would
become aware of lower distortion, less
fatigue, and greater orchestral detail
in the louder passages on the XRCD mastering.
It also suggests that a future release
of this master on a real 20Bit DVD-Audio
would offer a substantial improvement
in sound quality. I’m first in line
to buy a copy!
Also it must be pointed
out that this disk is packaged in a
cardboard/plastic sleeve which is 3/8"
(1cm) taller than a standard jewelcase,
so it won’t fit on my CD shelves and
maybe not on yours. (It is presumptuous
of the producers to expect us to shelve
it with our DVD-audios in their tall
cases.) And on the original RCA issue
the Poulenc Concerto and Franck’s
Chausseur Maudit were included
on the same disk at a lower price; if
you have that disk you have not merely
a better bargain, but possibly superior
sound as well, at least as far as you
can hear it on modestly priced audio
equipment.
Paul Shoemaker
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Charles Munch 