Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Bubeck
Lovely review, Britt!
Might you report further using some classical music for audition at some point?
Thanks.
Bob
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I did the Stravinsky/Solti
Le Sacre Du Printemps/The Rite of Spring. (Speakers Corner Decca)
It had honestly been so long since I last listened to it that I didn't believe I had anything to say. I can tell you it sounded wonderful. Here are the extent of my previously unpublished notes:
Just superb. Depth of soundstage. Nice and dry yet with ample ambience. Here's a recording where the meter needles aren't just sputtering in a tight band around the -10 db locus.
- that's all I wrote.
I reviewed a lot more albums than what I reported. And even of those impressions, the notes are rather truncated, or there were simply not a lot of notes.
For instance, I listened to the two recent Intervention Records label Stealers Wheel records,
Ferguslie Park and the self-titled
Stealers Wheel album. These are as good as it gets! But as far as my impressions while listening, I feel like I have reported on the improved resolution of the soundstage, etc., so I didn't even include them.
My impressions, to use that term, were that I was simply wondering how these records were mic'd. I previously gave just a sentence to that on the Gerry Rafferty
City to City album. The end result is so good I found myself thinking beyond the transducers and electronics in my home (speakers, stylus, amps, etc.) to thinking about the microphones used in the studio. I wasn't so much thinking about the playback system, my stereo, as I was imagining how they got this sound during the recording.
Another one that I reviewed but did not report was the Miles Davis Quintet,
E.S.P. (Japan 18AP 2066 and the recent MFSL 45 RPM)
This is an odd duck in the Miles Davis catalogue because it was not recorded in the CBS 30th Street studio, aka "the church." And really, I was basically just listening to the overall vibe of the album. Moreover, I was listening to the sound from Tony Williams ride cymbal. It sounds different on this album than the others in the Miles Davis catalogue. I was wondering if it is the same cymbal, aka the "Nefertiti" ride or whether it was a different cymbal altogether. I was wondering if it was captured with a Neumann M49 tube mic or a Neumann KM56 tube mic or what? I didn't think that sort of rumination -- some of which I published on other albums -- was going to be valuable to readers of my impressions, so I left it out altogether.
That Sam Cooke record I mentioned,
Night Beat, you can tell it was done over two sessions. The one with the more rhythm & blues tunes was done with what I would guess is the RCA 77 ribbon microphone on Sam's vocals, while the more melancholy ballads seem to me to have been done with a Neumann/Telefunken U47. That's my guess. But whether these are the sort of ruminations others share, I would not know. I tried to keep that brief. Ha.
One takeaway from this exercise -- my listening and my taking notes -- that I hope one might take home is that the MP1100 is
so good that one is listening much deeper in to the recordings. His inquisitiveness is being sated with the information that the phonograph album is capable of delivering. But what I wanted to avoid was the kind of review that leads the reader along with
my conclusions. My impressions, yes. My conclusions, no. I wanted to just write the kinds of things we might be sharing as if we were listening together.
I did, however, indulge myself to make some general, omnibus observations about how big, bold and detailed the presentation is. The experience of the MP1100 left me wondering more often than not about whether the sound was captured with stage mics, ribbon mics, expensive studio tube mics; were they large or small diaphragm; were they in the omni or the cardiod or super-cardiod position or what? With the MP1100 installed, my system realized a new level of depth, detail and three-dimensionality.