Columbia SAX 2322 Columbia Does Dvorak, Take Two of Four
Dvorak "New World" Symphony, "Carnaval" Overture
Philharmonia Orchestra
Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor
Pressing: ED1
Stampers: YAX 87-10, YAX 88-11
Performance: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Price range: $32-255, mean $65 on popsike
Performance: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Price range: $32-255, mean $65 on popsike
Comments: As I mentioned in my previous blog on SAX 2275, EMI/Columbia released Dvorak's New World Symphony four times on the SAX series, and this was the second release. Whereas on Karajan's recording, the symphony is paired with Smetana's Moldau, here we get a lively version of the Carnaval Overture. Sawallisch and the Philharmonia give a strong performance of both the New World and the Carnaval Overture, playing with no less intensity than Karajan and the BPO, and in fact I felt that the Philharmonia played with just a little more fire at times. One thing I really liked about Sawallisch's interpretation is his transparent textures, which allowed me to hear and better appreciate the melodic lines of the winds. Whereas on some recordings, the opening measures of the third movement are slow and sloppy, here they are tight, quick, and disciplined. The timpani rolls are clearer and more visceral on this recording than on the Karajan. Sound overall is very good -- warm, dynamic, and clear. Worth a try if you are a fan of this symphony, and I think you should be able to land a clean copy for less than $50 if you look hard enough. If you're on the fence, check out the digital remaster, available both as an EMI budget line CD or more recently from Beulah (see below). Or stay tuned for upcoming comments on the third of the four New World recordings, this time conducted by Giulini with the Philharmonia.
I am showing $90 for NM recently. Classics for Pleasure CFP 104 might be a nice option and is the only other pressing available.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I like the latter Silvestri 9 on this, but it was only put out on American Angel. Kertesz Blue Back is looking more and more interesting, but quite pricey.
Aagh. Missed the Regal! SREG1054. A budget option for those who want a tube sound.
DeleteYou are becoming my go-to guy for information regarding reissues. Thank you very much for commenting and adding those details. Very helpful to potential buyers!
ReplyDeleteThe Silvestri 9 was released on French Columbia (SAXF) and is quite valuable. I've never heard it before but would love to find a copy. I'd be interested to know if it sounds even better than the CD. That performance was incredible. I bet Kertesz is also excellent. How about the Decca? Speaker's Corner also reissued the Kertesz.
I've got my spreadsheets, so I just add in what I've got already. My ASD one is up to ASD 477, over half way done.
ReplyDeleteI have a super analogue and a stereo treasury of the Kertesz VPO performance. I think I paid $72 for the Super Analogue. There is no London it looks like, just the Decca. Super Analogue goes for about $50. The speakers corner shows for $100! The STS isn't bad and I get a sense that I have kind of dead record (I've got three STS/SDD of Campoli Bruch Scottish Fantasy, one I love, the other two are not good.)
That SAXF Silvestri maybe isn't that pricey as I see no evidence of it on Popsike. There is a Japan early W&G stereo that shows up and perhaps that is what you are remembering. Might be time to upgrade the digital or pray for HD digital of this piece.
I did find one French pressings, "Constantin Silvestri with the RTF National Orchestra performing Dvorak New World Symphony on French La Voix De Son Maitre Stereo Recording Cat N° CVPM 130058". So maybe there is an SAXF. Perhaps this CVPM pressing might be good? I've not bothered to listen to the French and German EMI that I have as I don't like the sound. I think I've got SAXW of Schumann Rhenish symphony.
My apologies. The Silvestri 9 is a French ASDF. ASDF 151, Le Voix de Son Maitre. Sold for $391 in 2007.
ReplyDeleteAre the French ASDF sonically that good? I see quite a few titles getting some money. Silvestri Fantastique in there too.
DeleteI have never heard a French EMI pressing, but either this record is just plain rare or it is rare and sounds good. I wish I knew someone who had a pressing!
DeleteA tad late here, but re: the Kertesz / VPO: I have a London Blueback copy, so clearly they must exist. Probably a somewhat better buy than the equivalent Decca pressing. The Kertesz / LSO version is also excellent, and may be purchased by mere mortals (WBG, ed. 2 Decca).
ReplyDeletedavidphillip
I have the super analog of kertesz/vpo and it Is a favorite. I have not got my hands on the blue back and here it is good. On the latter Kertesz with LSO, I do believe early pressing for london blue back exists but I have never liked this one despite TAS recommending. For a bargain New World the Karajan reissue on emi ASD is quite fine.
DeleteMore info on the 1969 Stereo Treasury release of the Kertesz... Since the STS is from 1969 its probably a Neumann lathe cut disc, a smaller looking label that appears to extend under the deadwax/leadout. These are very well liked by some and the Ansermet Pulcinella(Stravinsky) is a very fine vintage recording with great, great results on the later pressing. The earliest pressing of this 1955 recording was done by Decca in 1966 on SXL 6230 so is likely a 1/2 speed mastered discrete transistor mastering setup which is no slouch. The Pulcinella is actually an even later Neumann pressing.
ReplyDelete"Neumann SX68 cutterhead was conceived at the end of ‘60es and now, after 30years and over, is now again a really precious audio transductor with superb performances in disc cutting. It has two separate magnetic systems for the two power drivers, made by two little coils, helium cooled. Its frequency range is flat from 40 to 16000 Hz +/- 1Db and can cut very high levels. The SX74 was born some years after the SX68 and has the same construction, but with some internal improvements: the magnets was 28% stronger, so less power for the same recorded level, more internal rigidity, more light and strong material was used, so the frequency response was widened up (7 to 25000 Hz or 20 to 20000 Hz +/- 2 Db). "
http://www.cutterheadrepair.com/someneumanncutterheadspec.htm
So the Pulcinella is the very extended sounding SX74 cutter head and their might be later pressings of the New World with the opaque innner sleeves that were done on the SX74. The 1969 would have been the very fine sounding helium cooled SX68 cutter head. All very different sounds and of course the original blueback was 1/2 speed mastered tube cutting.
You're confusing SXL 6230 with the Pulcinella/Rossignol SXL 2188 (the 1966 SDD 136 contains 2E stampers).
ReplyDeletePulcinella SDD 245 (1970) contains 2G/1G stampers.
Now I am confused lol, so I'm going to check Charm databass....Oh and its absolutely wonderful to hear from you!....
Delete>S164
Pr: Victor Olof Eng: Gil Went (m), James Brown (s)
(1-9) May 1956 Victoria Hall, Geneva
Suisse Romande Orchestra, Ernest Ansermet
STRAVINSKY Pulcinella : suite
The Song of the Nightingale
(Feb57) LXT5233 = (Mar60) SXL2188;
(Dec56) LL1494 = (Feb60) CS6138, (Nov01) 467 818.2DC8.
Yep I have STS 15218 from 1975 which I love and that is SXL 6230. Charm does not have it, but Discogs does. Here is the charm listing:
>S260
Pr: John Mordler Eng: James Lock
2-4 Nov 1965 Victoria Hall, Geneva
Marilyn Tyler (soprano), Carlo Franzini (tenor), Boris Carmeli (bass),
Suisse Romande Orchestra, Ernest Ansermet
STRAVINSKY Pulcinella
(Jly66) LXT6230 = SXL6230; (May67) 5978 = OS25978,
(Nov01) 467 818.2DC8.
So that was recorded in 1966 wow. Interestingly the US pressing done in 1975 for Stereo Treasury is the only one remastered at that time? Discogs does not have stamper numbers, but I can dig that LP up if you want to know.
You are totally right that I had that confused as I always thought I was listening to incredible late pressing of the 1957 recording. To add insult to injury looking at CS-6138 I'm pretty darn sure I have that and I don't recall liking it all that much.
Too lazy to dig them out right now, but I need to put those in the listening pile.
Well caught maestro!
TinEar let me know if you want help hosting on Mega for Music Parlour and Pristine Classics. I've not signed up, but would for you especially if that gave you space to keeping doing your excellent 24/96 uploads (prefer those even to the 24/48). Let me know. Pretty busy all of a sudden, but this would be a priority. Just been listening to a lot of your work of late. Do you still have comments area? I recall one in the past, but failed to find it when last on site.
DeleteHiya Meles!
ReplyDeleteAnsermet/Stravinsky's got SDD issued '68-70: early pressings of the Magaloff disc use the CS-only 1958 stampers. Presumably the '66-on STS's missed-out on those early SDD which contained SXL matrices: quickly replaced with G/W's with sales improving.
I've always limited dubs due to the fact most LP's (99.99%) never been/needing wet-cleaning (even those <70yo). When I disposed overseas of the (now) $$$$ EMI/Decca, I considered they would just get ruined - so don't want to do that (unnecessarily) to mine as early discs are difficult to wash (my method).
Nice offer about Mega. I've had some 'referral's' in recent times - which can get used if I paid for an upgrade - but have additional accounts.
Only, initially, made a small number of 96kHz dubs - really down to computer storage space: essentially those Decca monos [EMI BTR2 tape deck] that - irrespective of tech-claims - neared 30kHz on Foobar.
'Comments' - Oh.. their availability comes-and-goes as get The Hump!
Obviously you can hear a difference ('spatial freedom'?) over 48k: I thought that when downgrading a few from 96>48 (and 24bit compared to 16: all 3 types for Vaughan Williams 4 - Pristine blog): but am anyway still unconvinced about FLAC - probably incorrectly (used to upload WAV + FLAC: zipping WAV saved <20%).
Hope either of you consider continuing: though it's rather rarified due to the 'value' being a prime consideration.. I had thought you might have considered uploading samples (no tedious 'CD-quiet editing' needed) to illustrate the points??
** try to download that Mariinsky - they don't stay forever - really is Fab!
Yeah I'm not digitzing LPs yet. I'd probably go low tech if my goal were just getting BEQ settings for live playback. But its possible I might "go digital" and then well we have things to talk about!
DeleteI remember years ago around here I was the only LP only audiophile (just did not care to waste money on digital anything.) Now its like your some kind of loser if you play digital lol. Anyway I've been dabbling with HD audio as for classical it keeps me a bit in the current game. Oh and that youtube video link I'll take those two channels and try blasting them out upmixed to Atmos (technically dolby surruond upmixer using height channels) and that will be with new subterranean friend the 155lb SVS PB4000 which goes down to -3db of 13 Hz in room lol.
I'm quite interested in your phobia of wet cleaning because its always scared me too as highs usually hurt. My latest move is to now use a $3 from China horse hair brush and vacuum with Hepa vacuum, but that is in early stages. I've had some quite noisey records cleaned on one of those $4000 ultrasonic jobbies and well it didn't really tame the noise, but was not disgusted by the result.
ReplyDeleteMy inner chemist suspect that wet cleaning puts a bunch of dirty water on your LP and when some of the solution evaporates before its sucked away well it redeposits some dirt really deep in the grooves which dulls the highs. The fancy ultrasonics run the record through a lot more solution so your dirty water is much cleaner, but then they basically blow the water off so you still get some redeposition and of course people wig out about purity of water and chemicals used in a solution. My thought is if you keep wet cleaning over and over again that the problem eventually goes away. Of course my horse hair vacuum gets as much dirt off the LP before wet cleaning so the water is less dirty.
So I've got my little Record Doctor back in action for the more odious LPs and not sure if horse hair vacuum might somehow cause damage as it brushes the dirt around a bit in the soft bristles before eventually sucking it away. My LPs which I love still will never see a wet cleaning because I prize that HF detail. Still in theory by not having clean LPs your are damaging the vinyl and stylus more quickly.
So now you know my supersticious ways with my LPs. Plus when you have a ton of them wet cleaning just takes a lot of time. That $4000 ultrasonic thing is a dream because you can just put in another room and shut the door after you insert LP. Then you can listen to the current LP while that one is readied for your next play.
I blow out my sleeves and liners so I don't have to clean LPs a lot.
On formats I like Flac, but new software I'm playing around with I hear likes wav for music. Its BEQdesigner:
https://beqdesigner.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
https://github.com/3ll3d00d/beqdesigner
This software is designed to analyze movies and restore bass that the engineers roll off by using a minidsp HD's 10 PEQ on its input and they already have settings for over 2000 movies:
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/bass-eq-for-filtered-movies.2995212/
continued in next comment
The biggest thing I hear with BEQ'd Atmos movies is a much more natural sound and when you have your bass response well tuned, YOU GET MUCH BETTER HIGH FREQUENCIES. Now of course there is not difference in measurement, but its kind of know thing that bass reproduction has this impact on our perception of high frequencies. My guess is this perception is very much kind of related to a loudness effect and if you're rolling off your bass well you kind of create an anti-loudness effect.
DeleteAnyway if you play with the software just realize its literally custom made stuff for their authoring and posting to the website, plus they keep the settings for each movie in XML files that they just load for each movie.
What you won't see discussed much is it can be used for music files and one guy I deal with their Trthought (TR stands for tactile response) loves to mess around with modern digital music and tune the lowest bass to go down to 1 or 2 Hz even. And what he does is alters his music files.
I've just started playing with it and suddenly super busy so won't have much to report, but my test files will be your material! hehe
So with digital recording of LP (and my end goal is live playback of LP where I digitize the lower bass, but the rest stays pure analog) like yours you load it in and analyze the spectrum. Right now I've been focusing on crushing LFs below 20 Hz that clearly are not the music. They have a median function and when that converges with average and peak well you know you just have something below audibility just droning on and sucking power from your system. Once you clean that up (now with the live playback if your sub doesn't go well below 20 Hz minidsp as a 48db per octave rolloff you can set at 10 Hz to wipe out super low bass, but for digital with BEQdesigner it won't do it), then you can address any rolloff done to an LP.
continued in next comment again
Now I'm not sure of the cause of LP rolloff, but I've had a fruitful discussion with vintage electronics guru. He's been chatting with analog heavy/supragenius who designed Greatful Dead tube equipment (gold trace even lol). He says that the typical inductive tape head hurts low bass performance. So their is one factor that could be addressed by BEQ (bass equalization). Amazingly my friend is also restoring a McIntosh tube cutting amp which is 150 watt dual triode power with over 1000 volt DC power supply. He's also got the Westrex cutter head I believe or something else. Anyhow he said it had 6 EQ equalizer with something like bands at 63, 150, 300, 600 and then top end EQ was 6000. So very simple EQ since done with vacuum tubes and something easily reversed. RCA here in US was known with their early LPs to control the bass because the changer/cartridges of the day would pop out of the groove on some of the more dynamic LPs generating a lot of returns from irate customers. Anyhow the whole project he's helping this guy with is pretty amazing since its very much like Electric Recording Company's efforts:
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/may/25/pete-hutchison-interview-new-vinyl-recording
So this guy may try to reproduce the original sound and maybe make that available even to new artists. Anyway maybe without Covid this project might not be going on, but with it I'm kind of hamstrung to go over there as my friend's father lives with him and has not been let out of house since March hehe. And well no guests allowed right now. it would be nice to measure what all those EQ settings did. So anyway the EQ was primitive and maybe they even might have resorted to smaller coupling caps doing a first order rolloff in the audible range. And of course the whole electronic chain could have coupling cap losses quite naturally as bigger caps don't sound good so you don't try to overkill and go for 2 Hz bass lol.
So bass rolloff causes are:
1. tape head losses
2. band equalizer
3. deliberate first order rolloff by shrinking coupling cap
4. Cumulative low frequency rolloff due to caps only being rated to 3db down at 10 Hz which means they're 1 db down at 20 Hz.
I'm sure for high frequencies we run into some patterns too like this, but I'm not as up on the cause of treble rolloff above 20,000 Hz or near it. (But I can ask a tube expert who is knee deep with some recording experts and does a lot of work on vintage recording equipment.)
continued once again lol
DeleteAnyway I just thing for you that improved bass may give you those highs you lust for hehe.
I've not even gotten far enough to pull the trigger on my first flac/wav file with an attempt to correct the bass response. If I get some reasonable sonic results with digital files of LPS then I may try to resurrect the bass (via dsp which means digitzing it) while playing a vintage LP. My current speakers keep eating unobtanium dynaudio woofers so I'm likely going to buy two HSU VTF-2 Mk5 subwoofers ($1178 delivered in US) and then couple that with probably the balanced minidsp which has higher input impedance and delay around 1 ms which is about one foot. I'll probably due that super steep 48 db rolloff at 10 Hz which will protect me from any LP playback issue and allow EQ elsewhere. So about a $1400 system. You can run stereo subs and try to EQ them flat or merely tailor minidsp to augement your current speakers and likely just do mono bass for the lowest frequencies. The dual subs would allow one to achieve a flat in room response, but really with the right placement, skill, and the right room well you could do it with just one sub. I favorly heavy the Hsu because they utilize all analog circuitry and have a great price (plus two port, single port, and sealed option to run them.) Of course for those with lots of money REL is the king of two channel analog subs. The great thing about this approach is the flat in room response eliminates a lot of annoying bass peaks that can irritate those around you. So even though you're going flat to 20 Hz with some isolation feet especiaally you can actually play louder than you would otherwise (and the smooth bass is easier on the ears for the loudest listeners like myself.)
Anyway I think you'll find BEQdesigner a very interesting play toy. I'm actually doing some grunt work of late for the heavies in the group as AVSforum upgraded their Xenforo and broke all their links. Prodding them to build a better mousetrap. The programmer is busy, but somewhat accessible.) At the very least this approach holds great hope for those with digital recordings of LPs, etc., etc.
Ruined most of my <600) early collection by 'cleaning'.
ReplyDeleteBut need a near-perfect surface to start manual editing - which mostly excludes using 'raw' vinyl: so 24bit LP transfers elsewhere (not those 24/96 downloads sold from cloned-CD..) the processing used will likely ruin inherent LP resolution.
IE: my last transfer (washed #2 copy; a 'dirty' 1954 BBC recording) thought I'd edit then use minimal Izotope declick (1.3 out of 1-10 levels):- but the 'corrections' amounted to >>35,000<< - so the low-level tape 'grunge'/info must've been zapped (no treble over 7kHz (PO landline) - hence just did an additional edit from the mono fold-down + 1.5 treble (Decca PU).
My wash-method works perfectly on 'modern' pure vinyl (ie Dutch Philips) where the original release pattern is retained - with no drying deposits left to damage the HF 'sheen'- but old Decca/EMI seem 'oily' and water is left behind/streaks: that's why you won't find many early Decca stereos unless they got 'contaminated'!
I do retain most older WAV files - it's just with stereo/then 24bit I began to run out of storage..
I guess my files could get bass boosted + drastic infrasonic cut - as don't roll-off bass (or treble) frequencies - though got a complaint re: the extremes from an 'ex-engineer' - who'd likely equalized for CD-only playback - so sub-20Hz LP components were saturating his 'tubes/transformers' (?): you can see his comments here:-
http://themusicparlour.blogspot.com/2018/01/mozart-violin-concerto-5-oscar-shumsky_63.html
(he enjoyed chucking his expertise @ 'amateur LP bloggers'!!)
nb: pre 1955 Decca mono sound good with their extra bass EQ already applied + treble boosted: though 'Geon' vinyl is difficult to wash..