Mercury Living Presence SACD's

Listened to the Respighi and Suppe discs last night. They are better than the CD versions from before, which themselves were among the best CDs I've heard, in terms of capturing the ambience of the hall and the decay of the instruments. Very open and spacious sounding--make the CDs sound closed-in in comparison. They also appear to be smoother in their reproduction of instruments (flute and brass lose a little metalic ring or edginess, for example, which might have been a digital distortion artifact), although I'm not sure about this as I am using my Sonogy amps full range right now instead of the tubed Lamms on the highs, as one's in for minor repairs. I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of them this week.

The Tchaikovsky Symphony 6, "Pathetique", Pierre Monteax conducting the BSO (when the BSO was great) is of course a superb and classic performance. Various aspects of the recording technique are also also exceptional, but, as with the Chopin Ballades, Rubinstein, there are some defects. (With the Chopin I found LF rumble (studio air conditioning) to be anoying at times. With the Tchaikovsky some tape and/or tube hiss can be heard during very quiet or silent moments.

All in all these Living Stereo reissues are well worth owning, but noone should get the idea that they are perfect recordings. Five decades have passed since they were made, and it does show.

El, you're mixing up RCA and Mercury! Your point is well-taken, though. The Mercs, for example, all have the prevalent tape hiss, though I find it easy to listen through that. As for that low frequency rumble on the Chopin, it's not limited to old recordings. I find a number of Telarc recordings of the Atlanta Symphony have a prevalent rumble (low enough in frequency to make my stomach queazy!) that I can only guess is the air conditioning system.

Rcprince...You're right. I am talking about "Living Stereo" not "Living Presence". (Actually they are all dead). I think that some of the confusion (which is not limited to me) comes about because both series involve some 3-channel recordings, newly available through SACD.

AC rumble is a well known problem. Although not noticed in the live hall, it becomes evident when a recording is made and played back through a system with good LF response. The only real solution is to turn it off while recording, although filtering can be effective when the musical program does not have extreme LF to be lost.

Another success from Mercury Living Presence in the release of Respighi's Ancient Dances and Airs. The performance itself is classic. The sound is quite beautiful though a tiny bit closer (forward) in perspective as compared to the Stravinsky release.