The best labels for the best sound in classical music

[Axiom05]

I am going to through my 2-cents into this discussion. First I will nominate Tudor for inclusion with the caveat that I only have one recording from this label but I think the SQ is excellent and that is a 16/44 download (Robin Ticciati, Dvorak's New World Symphony; American Suite). The American Suite is excellent and I can't believe I did not have this piece already. I also think that most of John Eargle's recordings on Delos (1980's - 1990's) have very good sonics.

 

The other comment that I wanted to add was that in comparing the labels that people have added to the list, how different they can sound from each other. Telarc does not sound like Linn which does not sound like Hyperion etc, etc. Each label seems to present a different "view" of what a recording should be. I don't know if this is influenced at all by whether or not multichannel was used, as in the case of Linn.

[Axiom05]

Thanks all, this is very useful and to clarify yes I was talking about recording quality, not performance quality, since presumably there is some consistency across the former on a label while the latter is clearly artist dependant.

 

One particular thing I was interested in was dynamic range too, so its good to see BIS are good in that respect. Who else is known to have great DR, who also, is known to have a lot of compression?

 

Talking of BIS, SO MANY of their performances seem exceptional!

 

In my experience, any well produced classical recording will not be subject to compression. Dynamic range issues are not something I ever worry about when buying classical recordings.

[Axiom05]

2 hours ago, pdvm said:

It is generally not an issue in classical music, but it does happen, even in high profile recordings. Just listen to Currentzis recording of Tchaikovsky 6. It is so compressed in some places, it seems bizarre to me that most reviewers didn’t mention it. Some even laud it as ‘demonstration quality’, LOL. The distortion is SO audible! (If you download the hi-res file, you can actually see the waveform is completely square for most of the third movement). 
Same for his Mahler 6. 

Another example that comes to mind is Rattle’s Nutcracker. Just dynamically crushed, no DR.
 

So beware, there are some classical albums out there that were mastered for car radios…

Absolutely agree. There are some sources that I would not go anywhere near, and the whole Currentzis thing is completely bizarre, awful stuff. 

[Axiom05]

Kal, he was asking about Bolero not Daphnis et Chloe.