Re: This Woman's Work

["Ronald W. Garrison" <rwgarr@intrex.net>]

heisjohn@juno.com wrote:
> 
> HoL is crisper, cleaner and LOUDER than the UK box set disc, with *NO*
> noticeable tape hiss, but I find the final product to be a little too
> digital sounding for my tastes.  Lord knows I'm no expert in these
> matters (in fact, I'm darn near deaf from listening to too much
> Ritchie
> Blackmore), but the sound is reminiscent of those "full digital"
> recordings that were introduced for a brief time in the late '80s.
> 
> Remember the discs where the separation was *SO PERFECT* it sounded
> completely artificial?  (Michael Jackson's "Bad" and Tracy Chapman's
> first disc come to mind.)  Well that's what I hear through headphones
> on
> some of the quieter passages on T9W.  Not a bad sound, mind you, but I
> prefer a more natural analog sound that releases all the harmonics
> that
> seem to get lost in digital-land.

...What you say points the way to a dilemma for people making records.
First, you have to acknowledge that *Hounds of Love* is, however much
you *and I* love it, most certainly not "natural" music. It owes its
very existence to some pretty high-tech qizardry, starting with the
Fairlght of course and including much other trickery.

So what is the "best" recording, from the standpoint of accurate
reproduction, may not sound as "natural" as you would like it to. With
such a highly produced work, you may find that you like a rendition of
it that obscures some of the sharper manifestations of all that
technology.

But that's all very abstract reasoning, I realize. In general, I expect
that even high-tech music sounds better if it's *not* muddied by errors
in reproduction.

But that's about as far into as I really want to get. Much more and I'd
come across as a hard-core audiophile--a member of what must be one of
the silliest subcultures on earth.

--Ron

-- 
http://www.intrex.net/rwgarr/