Telarc recording quality

Brauser, are you referring to their jazz recordings (which I haven't listened to)? With full scale orchestral recordings the balances are generally quite natural as, other than for soloists, Telarc rarely uses any spot mikes, as I understand it. The one exception is from their earliest recordings, where the bass drums were generally overblown, but their recent recordings have toned that down to where it sounds quite natural.

I'm not a big fan of Telarc recordings, as a matter of fact I avoid them. While they often convey lots of information, to me they sound rather cold and clinical, and sometimes rough around the edges. I much prefer the JVC XRCDs.

Generally I've found the quality of Telarc recordings quite good. They finally quit using that bass drum! The performances were not necessarily as good. However recently I have purchased some of their new classical disc's which came out in both SACD and Redbook and on my CDP the highs were sort of edgy - distorted I think. Unpleasant to listen to. I played them them thru a DAC w/a slightly soft high end - no problem, they sounded just fine. Any one else notice this. I seem to recall Sean talked about this a year or so ago.

Well, this is interesting! Maybe I prefer that "clinical" sound? However, I don't generally think I do. Rcprince: I found the immediacy to be there, not lost.

The consensus, thus far, seems to be that Telarc, like other labels, is a mixed bag. I'm going to listen more closely to some of mine and see if I can pick up what you are all referring to. Thanks!

When thinking back through the Telarc classical catalog, the impressions I got, were one of a mostly natural, yet uninvolving sound. The somewhat heavy bass was at first a joy, after the bass shy DG and Columbia productions of the day, but other than some very fine initial productions (Fennell /Holst; Atlanta/Orff), I felt the musical sound uninvolving and blunted. This was somewhat ameliorated with the use of very fine M/C cartridges, but the effect never really went away even on CD.
When looking back through history at Telarc, Yes they were and are a major player, but not quite as good as they could have been. They should have kept the analog rig they used when they were ADVENT Records in the 70s recording Michael Murry. Now those were fine sonics.
All in all, Rcprince's comments , are mostly accurate.