226 Symphonies in One Box – All the works of Bach, Mozart and now Beethoven have been offered in massive boxed CD sets by various labels. So it doesn’t seem so surprising that budget label Brilliant Classics has launched a collection of all the major symphonies (226 of them) by the major composers on 100 CDs. And not just symphonies, but also important symphonic works by Clementi, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schuman, Dvorak, Liszt, Saint-Saens, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. The performing ensembles include the London Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and the Hanover Band. SRP: $170.
Net-based Outlets Filling In for Closed Classical CD Shops – The online classical music outlet www.ArkivMusic.com is one of several such operations making up for the shuttering of retail classical disc stores around the U.S. In addition to standard current commercial CDs, they have 3000 deleted or otherwise difficult-to-locate recordings that ArkivMusic makes available to customers as production-on-demand CD-Rs. Users search the available titles and place their orders for the discs which run from about $15 to $17 per disc. Sound quality is comparable to the original CDs, and they are provided in standard jewel boxes with the original cover art. Arkiv recently reissued 55 out-of-print Chicago Symphony Orchestra titles.
Why Can’t You Hear the Difference? – The September journal of the AES (Audio Engineering Society) has published as one of their technical papers the results of an ABX-box test conducted by E. Brad Meyer and David R. Moran of the Boston Audio Society, titled “Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Audio Playback.” To translate the AES-ese, they’re saying that no one could hear any difference between a standard 44.1K CD and the SACD or DVD-A version of the same music! Their summary states that “The test results show that the CD-quality A/D/A loop was undetectable at normal-to-loud listening levels by any of the subjects, on any of the playback systems.” I would ask who in tarnation were these test subjects, what were the test recordings, and what in the world did the playback systems (and room) consist of? Of course there have been sizeable recent enhancements in standard CD mastering as well as in some cost-no-object players, and a few can even provide a similar sonic realism to the average SACD – though without the more complete sonic picture provided by multichannel. All one needs to instantly refute this absurd test is to A/B the stereo CD layer vs. the stereo SACD layer on most any hybrid SACDs, even on modest gear. As a lifelong AES member, I’m digusted with the AES for publishing such claptrap.
