open reel tape Archive

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Scheherazade – The Philadelphia Orch./ Eugene Ormandy – RCA (1972)/ HDTT

by Audiophile Audition | Feb 11, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

An excellent four-channel surround version of this standard. RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Scheherazade – The Philadelphia Orch./ Eugene Ormandy – RCA (1972)/transferred from an RCA quadraphonic open reel tape by HDTT – Pure Audio Blu-ray with choice of either 4.0 or 2.0 DTS-HD MA 24/192K *****: There is little more to be said about this music, and plenty of versions of it out there, include several in 5.0 hi-res surround on SACD, by Gergiev, Ponti, Macal and Barry Wordsworth. If you don’t have an SACD deck but do have a Blu-ray player, this would be an excellent choice. It is a better orchestra than most of the others, and the four-channel sonics do have a bit more impact and clarity than the three-front-channel version that is my personal favorite – that on an RCA SACD by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony. It is definitely the most spectacular of all the versions and the three channels across the front are nothing to sneeze at. I only wish I had three exactly matched frontal speakers rather than a lesser one at the center (though it is the same Von Schweikert brand). HDTT squeeses the utmost hi-res fidelity out of the prerecorded open reel tapes […]