When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Hi Detlof, if you really were bent to source terrible newer digital recordings, there are still a few around. . . for the fan of slow dentist drills grounding one's front upper teeth, that is! Try the Supraphone box set of the Panocha Quartet playing all string quartets by Antonin Dvorak'.. . . truly an enlightening experience. . . haven't had a roach in the house since I unwrapped the box and played the darn thing for the first time.

Yet, the opposite is also true. I have a most wonderful live recording on CD of the Israel Phil playing Dvorak's New World Symphony under Leonard Bernstein (DGG). In spite of this having been recorded c.ca 1983, you can hear plenty of ambient clues, including a sweet sense of the hall, objects being dropped from the music stands, Lenny stomping on the podium to press the 'tempo'. . . . then again Lenny muttering encouragements to the orchestra.

. . . all of this musical Heaven and Hell takes place through my TEAC X-01 Limited.

Hi Guido, do you think the Panocha disk would also work with ferrets? We have some frolicking in the attic. Yes, and I must try the Lenny CD. It might get the ferrets out of my head...Seriously now, I also know quite a number of redbook CDs full of ambient cues. But that is not quite what I meant.As you probably know, there are cues much more subtle than the ones you refer to. You can hear them in those silences, which simply are not "black" in reality, but also in the way a tone will spread into space, creating an aura around the instrument. Here to put in bluntly, both analog and digital fall terribly short. I always get a shock, when I settle down in orchestra hall and hear the first notes spread in the hall. And, there is just no way around this, the analog facsimile of this, though still far off the real thing, does come closer. The soul of music, to come back to the essence of this thread, can be found anywhere, even on a table radio. If the music moves you, the gear rendering it, is of no importance. However, if you wish to come as close as possible to the real thing in your home, for classical music, as far as i am concerned, the "soul" still has its lonely place in analog in spite of the fact that sometimes digital comes close and can enthrall you. If however the music becomes more complex, where the tiniest of modes of intonation and tempi play a role ( I am thinking of the Alban Berg Quartet right now and their ensemble playing)and you begin to compare the same take both in digital and on LP, you will be amazed, what digital will gloss over and thus in a very subtle way change the piece. Of course I don't know if it is my gear or the medium itslef, which falls short.
Anyway, basically I don't worry about these things, don't even think about it, when I sit down to listen to music. I am glad we have all these media and can pick and choose for our enjoyment. We are truly privileged and i am very grateful for that.

Detlof: your description of the sonic differences between analog and digital is superb!

Detlof, I now understand what you meant. . . in spades. . . but only a few months ago I was slightly less aware of the pervasiveness of the issue of black-inter-track background vs in-track musical silence. Since I have replaced my trusty Maggies IIIAs with the Vienna Mahlers, I have become increasingly upset by the cavalier attitude of those recording engineers who cut off a recorded track before all harmonics have decayed, all ambient echos have subsided, and the recording venue has returned to a state of baseline quiescence. Similarly, I get even more annoyed when a track starts at the very millisecond of the attack transient, or even worse, a couple of milliseconds into the attack without letting me hear the 'new' acoustic--which on a revealing system is positively gross sounding: The transition from black opacity of absolute lack of sound to acoustics 'in medias res' and viceversa is disconcerting, and most unmusical. With my current system, on a reasonable track which has not been recorded by implanting a microphone surgically into the uvula of the vocalist, those very faint ambient cues a--musical and not musical--are present and obvious. The true 'black' background exists only between tracks, and is. . . shapeless. A good acoustic track, recorded live or in a studio, brings to me the sound of the silence of the venue. Related to this is the problem of sudden engineering splices in the recording created out of acoustic context: the new fragment may have been inserted correctly into the final recording, but its low level ambient signature may sound disconcertingly different from what was heard in the previous millisecond. My source is the TEAC X-01 Limited CDp.

gentlemen:

what does sound have to do with soul ? have you ever heard a musician play in a poor acoustical environment where the sound was poor ? yet, one might say "he plays with soul".

i am afraid one may be looking for sould in the wrong places. if there are complaints about sound quality of recordings, that has nothing to do with soul.

sound quality and soul are two different issues,. at best soul inheres in a performance by a human being. sound quality has nothing to do with it. in fact a great sounding cd may not have much going for it as to performance. one could possibly say that such a performance lacks sould, while it sounds great.

this discussion belongs in the music section. it has nothing to do with digital or analog. the medium is not the issue.