Telarc recording quality

To my ears, Telarc recordings often sound very recessed, muddy and not detailed- there is too much bloom but not in a good way (eg Dohnanyi's recordings of Beethoven symphonies). The lack of detail makes the music sound very sterile at times including their jazz recordings. When compared to superb classical cds from Reference Recordings, it is like night and day. Mind you, the dynamics on the Telarcs are quite good and there are some good recordings (Frederick Fennell/Cleveland Winds, Jacques Loussier, Mackerras/Sheherazade,Tieney Sutton etc). However I often find a thickening of textures in the music which is not entirely natural and seems rather blunt as if a thick veil or curtain is covering the speakers. The recordings need to be a little sharper (not too impressed either with the DSD technology).

My 2 cents.

Zenaissance-"not too impressed either with the DSD technology."

Could be there's a problem going from DSD to PCM. Maybe one of the EMM Labs owners could comment on the CD version
verses the SACD of the same Telarc release.

I notice that output levels on some recent Telarc DSD/CD jazz releases are much lower than other jazz labels.

Cpdunn, don't fall into the trap, don't go from enjoying the music to listening for the flaws. I assume your comparing Telarc to the other mass market labels, to which it is definitely superior. Many of the comments on this post are comparing it to other high end labels, and I agree that others do sound better, i.e., audioquest, xrcd, chesky among others. While you should try these others, in the end its about enjoying the music.

In answer to Kana's question, while I don't have an EMM Labs player, my heavily modded Sony is plenty good enough for me to note that the SACD versions of Telarc's recent releases are superior to the redbook versions. A lot of that muddiness I noted is pretty much gone in the SACD layer, inner detail becomes more apparent and the sense of space vastly improves. I also have noted that the CD versions recorded in DSD are a little less "clean" than earlier Telarc recordings, for whatever reason; again, some of the problems in that area go away when the volume level is raised. In the end, Cpdunn, Tonyp54's advice is absolutely correct--enjoy the music!

Rc and Tonyp: yes, it is about the music, and that's sage advice. I hadn't notice the volume thing; namely, that the sound seems to clear up at higher volumes, etc. I'll check that out tonight (with a little single malt... umm.. yeah, mixing threads there).