A Case for Releasing Analog Recordings in High-resolution Audio

[elcorso]

25 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

Yes, Bert Whyte did make some everest recordings (Bert WAS Everest. Harry Belock of Block Instruments just provided the capital, Bert did all the work) on 35mm film. That the transfers (which, mostly,  I haven't heard) are not very good is the fault of the transfers, not the original recordings which, I can assure you, were mostly audiophile quality on LP. The one that I do have is Eugene Goosens and the London Philharmonic in works by Villa Lobos and Alberto Ginastera. I bought it  on 24/96 from HDTracks and while it would sound OK if it were a decent transfer, it has so much flutter in it that it is unlistenable. (HDTracks offered me 15% off on my next purchase. But believe me, with that kind of customer service attitude, it was a number of years before I bought anything from them again!). 

 

I still own some of the Everest LPs and they are (were) extraordinary, my turntable is out of order and I can't play them anymore.  Then I could guess the analogue tape wasn't properly calibrated for the digital transfer.

 

Roch

[semente]

14 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 

Yes, Bert Whyte did make some everest recordings (Bert WAS Everest. Harry Belock of Block Instruments just provided the capital, Bert did all the work) on 35mm film. That the transfers (which, mostly,  I haven't heard) are not very good is the fault of the transfers, not the original recordings which, I can assure you, were mostly audiophile quality on LP. The one that I do have is Eugene Goosens and the London Philharmonic in works by Villa Lobos and Alberto Ginastera. I bought it  on 24/96 from HDTracks and while it would sound OK if it were a decent transfer, it has so much flutter in it that it is unlistenable. (HDTracks offered me 15% off on my next purchase. But believe me, with that kind of customer service attitude, it was a number of years before I bought anything from them again!). 

 

I have an Everest digital transfer of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto played by Spivakovsky with Goehr and the LSO.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Tchaikovsky-Violin-Concerto-Major-HDAD/dp/B001L1ZL4C

 

It came in a double-disc box in HDAD Plus (24/192kHz DVD-A + CD).

I have only extracted the Redbook version and the sound is quite good in tone, detail and dynamics.

[esldude]

On 7/13/2017 at 8:26 PM, gmgraves said:

 

Yes, Bert Whyte did make some everest recordings (Bert WAS Everest. Harry Belock of Block Instruments just provided the capital, Bert did all the work) on 35mm film. That the transfers (which, mostly,  I haven't heard) are not very good is the fault of the transfers, not the original recordings which, I can assure you, were mostly audiophile quality on LP. The one that I do have is Eugene Goosens and the London Philharmonic in works by Villa Lobos and Alberto Ginastera. I bought it  on 24/96 from HDTracks and while it would sound OK if it were a decent transfer, it has so much flutter in it that it is unlistenable. (HDTracks offered me 15% off on my next purchase. But believe me, with that kind of customer service attitude, it was a number of years before I bought anything from them again!). 

I used to have a number of the Everest LPs done on the 35 mm film.  That was some serious good sound for an LP.  Of course some of the early Mercury recordings that are available digitally were from 35 mm film as well.  I have read that Mercury purchased the 35 mm film gear from Everest when they stopped recording.  Which is how the Mercury recordings were made to 35 mm film stock.

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, esldude said:

I used to have a number of the Everest LPs done on the 35 mm film.  That was some serious good sound for an LP.  Of course some of the early Mercury recordings that are available digitally were from 35 mm film as well.  I have read that Mercury purchased the 35 mm film gear from Everest when they stopped recording.  Which is how the Mercury recordings were made to 35 mm film stock.

Now that, I didn't know!  I did know that Everest, as a company, didn't last very long. Harry Belock, the company's owner, went bankrupt (or almost. I don't really remember the details) and Everest died right there. One thing that I always thought that Everest had over Mercury, was Bert Whyte's microphone technique. He preferred coincident mikes to Mercury's spaced omnis. I agree that coincident gives better stereo, but I don't want to disparage Bob Fine and his accomplishments. The Mercury Living Presence stereo recordings are a real treasure that has been handed down to us.

The Everest library has subsequently been through so many hands, that it's amazing that it has remained intact and playable so that new copies can be transferred to each new technology as it appears.

[esldude]

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Now that, I didn't know!  I did know that Everest, as a company, didn't last very long. Harry Belock, the company's owner, went bankrupt (or almost. I don't really remember the details) and Everest died right there. One thing that I always thought that Everest had over Mercury, was Bert Whyte's microphone technique. He preferred coincident mikes to Mercury's spaced omnis. I agree that coincident gives better stereo, but I don't want to disparage Bob Fine and his accomplishments. The Mercury Living Presence stereo recordings are a real treasure that has been handed down to us.

The Everest library has subsequently been through so many hands, that it's amazing that it has remained intact and playable so that new copies can be transferred to each new technology as it appears.

 

I thought Everest also used 3 omni's.  Only with more spacing, no use of trees.  They used U47s which had capsules available as cardioids or omnis. 

 

Here is a nice PPT about the 35 mm sound recording.  It says Fine actually purchased the Everest Bayside studio which included all the 35 mm gear. 

 

http://aes-media.org/historical/pdf/fine_35mm-fad.pdf

 

Also a number of the Everest recordings are available in some form still.

 

http://evereststereo.com/

 

You can buy them from iTunes or Amazon.  If a prime member you can stream them in mp3 quality.   Just click on a cover in the above link.  I owned a few of those pictured.  One of my favorites was the Petrouchka.  Listening to a stream of it reminded me that Everests were prone to sound a little light in the low end vs other records.  While it has been a long time the Petrouchka sounds brighter and in places glassy in a way I don't remember, though the low end was immediately recognizable. 

[gmgraves]

38 minutes ago, esldude said:

 

I thought Everest also used 3 omni's.  Only with more spacing, no use of trees.  They used U47s which had capsules available as cardioids or omnis. 

 

Here is a nice PPT about the 35 mm sound recording.  It says Fine actually purchased the Everest Bayside studio which included all the 35 mm gear. 

 

http://aes-media.org/historical/pdf/fine_35mm-fad.pdf

 

Also a number of the Everest recordings are available in some form still.

 

http://evereststereo.com/

 

You can buy them from iTunes or Amazon.  If a prime member you can stream them in mp3 quality.   Just click on a cover in the above link.  I owned a few of those pictured.  One of my favorites was the Petrouchka.  Listening to a stream of it reminded me that Everests were prone to sound a little light in the low end vs other records.  While it has been a long time the Petrouchka sounds brighter and in places glassy in a way I don't remember, though the low end was immediately recognizable. 

 

Perhaps I should have said that Bert Whyte's Everest recordings were done with coincident miking. Actually, I wasn't aware that that Everest had more recording teams than just Bert. 

 

Thanks for sending that link on 35mm recording. There is more information there than I would have ever guessed was still available. 

 

I owned a lot of them myself. I had several of the William Stienberg/Pittsburg Symphony titles on Command Records including the Brahms title on the first page. I also had the Command 35mm sampler shown, and the Urbie Green "21 Trombones" Title.

 

I suspect that Thomas Fine, who put this URL together is Bob Fine's son or grandson, as most of the info is on Mercury. But it is fascinating. No mention of Verve, though, which is puzzling.

 

I'd be wary of buying Everest titles at this juncture. I bought the Villa Lobos "Little Train of the Ciapira" tit;e in 24/96 from HDTracks and it has so much flutter as to be unplayable. Everest masters have been through so many hands over the last half-century that it's a wonder that any of them are any good. Who knows how they've been stored. 

[gmgraves]

One CD set that I have is very interesting from several standpoints. 1) It was recorded on 35mm Optical film, 2) It was done for a filmscore soundtrack, 3) it is probably the oldest stereo recording in existence! 

 

In 1947, Classic film score composer Alfred Newman (The Robe, The 20th Century Fox Cinemascope Fanfare, How The West Was Won, Airport, to name several of many scores) was on the Fox scoring stage recording what turned out to be arguably the greatest movie score ever written for the upcoming Captain From Castile. They way I heard it, Newman wanted to be able to highlight certain orchestral sections during certain scenes. So, he had the Fox sound engineers set up two microphones and put one mike on the left of the podium and the other on the right with about 20 ft between the two. The resultant feeds went through two different mike mixers and on to a two track 35mm optical sound recorder. Even though Newman wanted to be able to use one track or another (and combine the two for still other scenes) to highlight certain moods in the score, what he had done was to accidentally create what is probably the first stereo recording of a large work in history. Anyway, the original cans containing the optical stereo tracks were found and a small CD company transferred them to digital and used computer algorithms to clean them up. The result was released on a limited edition CD (500 copies, only), one of which, I own. Actually, it sounds pretty good for what it is. Unlike many soundtrack re-creations done for stereo in the last 50 years, Captain From Castile isn't one of them in spite of being one of the best movie scores ever!