is there a market?


Is their a large enough market within the audiophile community and music lovers alike to start a recording company that recorded primarily jazz and classical music the right way?  Is there a chance to capture the great orchestras of america in a totally analog process from start to finish just like they did back in the fifties?  I would think many orchestras would jump at the opportunity to be part of the effort to be recorded like the great orchestras were in the mid 20th century.  Is there still equipment in existence and engineering know how to make this happen?  There certainly is a renewed interest in vinyl and the sound it produces even if it is done digitally.  How about the real thing?
tzh21y
Recordings in the 50's and 60's were made on tape. remastered, they can sound really good, but the actual 1950's pressings are not that good.
many of these tapes still exist and are available on CD, a much better format. (Supex, Signet xk50, Ariston, Audire, B&W). 
Dan you are missing the point.  Some folks, myself included, do not want it in digital. We want ALL analog. Apparently you don't agree but we believe that it is more realistic that way. There is always something lost in the A to D conversion. There is a reason why the most sought after, expensive albums are an all analog chain. 
Analog- it isn’t just that, either. The early stuff was done really simply- two track recording of a jazz combo or whatever. There is something very alive about some of those recordings, before we had complex boards, multi-miking, outboard processing, etc. An immediacy that makes the recording sing in a way that doesn’t sound as processed, even when arguably in the analog domain. By the ’70s, at least with studio recordings, all kinds of stuff was going on in the recording, mixing and post-production process. Some of it winds up sounding spectacular, but so many variables, and so much to get wrong.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always considered myself an ’analog only’ guy and don’t want to turn this into the A v D thing (which gets beaten to death) but some of the recordings I have on vinyl of newer stuff never saw tape to begin with and sound amazing. Granted, it is more prog rock, like the Steve Wilson stuff, but there have been occasions- RLJones Girl at Her Volcano was an early digital (in process and in large part I think in recording) and sounds very good (particularly given how early it is, and how bad her roughly contemporaneous Pirates sounded); there is a live Billy Joel record, Songs in the Attic produced by the late, great Phil Ramone that was recorded digitally-it is pretty impressive. I’m not trying to sell you on digital, but only pointing out that one of the reasons the older records sound good isn’t just the analog part in my estimation, it’s the not being messed with/confusion/multimiked/mixed/processed to death that is also killing the "life" in some of these things as the technology progressed. Otherwise, you’re preachin’ as they say.
PS: Dan- re old pressings and quality-  I don’t think the pressings were all so bad- in fact, some of the 6 eyes or other early jazz are great, as were some of the classical and pop on other labels,  but condition is always an issue with a record that old in my experience.
best,
bill hart
There is so much that goes into a great recording.  Simpler is better, but there is a lot to know.  For example, the Cleveland orchestra was recorded by Decca, Kenneth Wilkinson at the mason hall in Cleveland and not severance hall.  Why?  Because he knew what he wanted to hear in an acoustic sense.  He knew right where to place the microphones.  He knew where he wanted the musicians to be with respect to the microphones in a very detailed sense.  Its not just about the recording path, but how to actually record in let's say analog, and really make it sound as great as analog can be.  How many even know how to do this?  What to listen for and so on.  Some know right away, like Wilkinson.