Play Classics final calibration: TRT sound 2.4a …no more R&D

[John Dyson]

I am not a potential customer, so haven't requested a download,  But if the last phase of 'mastering' is indeed totally eliminated, then the result should absolutely be superior.   This would be what I have fought against since 2011, and what had damaged my interest in 'high fidelity' since the post-mastering process was started in approx the middle 1980s.   The creeping crud has been in most consumer recordings for a long time, and I have found very few truly 'undamaged' recordings from the original mix, or from even the normally perceived mastering process.

 

If the recording is indeed 'pure', that is a great thing for audiophiles who enjoy the genre being talked about here...

It is a wonderful day...

 

 

 

[John Dyson]

Just a heads up, and I'll be listening in more detail soon, but wanted to give a status report.

 

Most definitely, no question or equivocation about it:

 

The Mozart - Beethoven Wind Quartets is a clean, pure recording without the common industry stealth post-processing.

 

(I'll do a more complete listen after my SW release -- but this IS good news that there is 'real, good quality stuff' available.)

 

Frankly, the quality sounds better than the best master tape in my possession.  Of course, the master tapes NEEDED NR, but Mario's stuff appears clean.   It will probably take real reviewer with better hearing than myself to make accurate observations in other facets of the recording, but thank goodness that the true recording is available for listening. 

 

Also, read Mario's document on what TRT means.  The TRT document appears to focus on the micing and collection of the sound.  Along with proper micing (which is often a matter of opinion & debate), it is also mentioned that maintaining truthful and accurate reproduction of the mix is also important.    In this forum topic, the well thought out TRT technique is the most relevant aspect of the recording.  But also critical, since his company is distributing a pure recording, then the consumer to realize the full benefits of the TRT technique.

 

http://www.playclassics.com/trtsound

 

Personal comment:  I really want to sit down soon, enjoy and also carefully listen to the truly clean TRT recording.  I seldom encounter actually clean recordings, so there is something to be learned by listening.   Even my so-called 'clean' test sources are 'DolbyA' or something like that, which by definition means that my test recordings had dynamics processing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[John Dyson]

On 10/8/2021 at 11:29 AM, Mario Martinez said:

 

Maybe we should look at this from a different point of view. My statement is that our system's sound is transparent. But it would be impossible for you to evaluate its transparency by just listening to one instrument. Yes, it may sound good to you but how can you really know how "true" to the physical instrument that sound is if you really have not had the chance to listen to the real one?

 

I think a better way to evaluate the transparency of the system would be to listen to a playlist of one track of each album. Then you will be hearing all different kinds of instruments one after the other and also some of the same instruments used in different places of the stage.

 

Now, you know there is no mastering or mixing involved, so all instruments are portrayed just the way the system captured them (we did not make any corrections to any particular instrument or range of an instrument) so, if what you are hearing in the playlist sounds natural to you then my theory is that that can only be the result of a transparent recording system.

 

Here is a playlist I made with one example from each album so you can try this approach: http://www.playclassics.com/streaming?g=2898-2887-2870-2852-2839-176-2820-140-130-115-87-16-2796-27-48-75-7-2910&ps=1&pt=1&p=a-135-136&i=a&c=a&o=s&gf=m

 

 I have little/no ability to judge artistic aspects of material, but I can tell that the performances are really good.   The technical quality  improvement goes far beyond the mere signal processing issues that I normally focus on.  Your results successfully address the often mediocre capture of the audio in the real-world environment.   The capture on your recordings is wonderful.

 

The temporal coherency of these recordings is pretty darned impressive.   The various  signal components appear to arrive at the correct time (milliseconds).  There is NO fuzziness or smear at all in the recordings.  I cannot detect any sort of obnoxious room effects -- I mean, these sound *clean*, moreso than my first, quick technical check.   Normally, I hear temporal distortions without needing to concentrate -- the common distortions on consumer recordings are badly distracting almost like -40dB hiss.   However, even when concentrating on your recordings, there is NO 'ugliness' that is so common elsewhere.   Even on 'high-brow', but non-boutique recordings, the problems are often severe...   There appear to be no such problems on your recordings.   Frankly, I am going to put your recordings aside for another 8Hrs and listen again....  Bordering on disbelief about how good they are.

 

This 'correcteness' in your recordings goes FAR FAR beyond the little phase/electronic temporal problems from any reasonably good analog or digital reproduction system (speakers notwithstanding.)   Your 'collection' (micing/etc) technique addresses the largest problem with accurate reproduction -- often not-so-wonderful elsewhere.

 

Frankly, I think that I am enjoying your demos -- doesn't happen very often any more 🙂.   In the right forum, and with good communications skills, your effort might be a globally  important component of helping re-center the audiophile public back to 'realistic reproduction' instead of  attempted work-arounds of hopelessly damaged recordings and signals.  This project demonstrates that incessant 'tweaking' can only help so much.   Redesign/re-thinking, moving beyond 'tweaking' is sometimes the only way to make very significant improvement.  Obviously here, this shows that there are STILL people who can innovate instead of 'copying & tweaking schematics'. 🙂

 

Again, GOOD STUFF.