When will there be decent classical music recordings?


With "pop" music the recordings are such that you can hear the rasp of the guitar string, the echo of the piano, the tingle of the percussion ... and so on .... and in surround sound.
Surround sound is brilliant in picking out different instruments that would otherwise have been "lost" or merged with the other sounds.
Someone will say well that is not how you listen at a concert, but that is just archaic. As a friend said many years ago to me ... whats wrong with mono?!
I am sure Beethoven or whomever would have been excited if they could have presented their music in effectively another dimension.
I have yet to come across any classical recording that grabs me in the way it should, or could. Do they operate in a parallel universe musicwise?
I used to play in an orchestra so I am always looking out for the "extra"  presence in music ... in amongst it, not just watching and listening from a distance


tatyana69

I disagree with your assertion about "no decent classical recordings", as from my point of view in the audience I think a lot of today's and yesterday's recording engineers and producers do a nice job of recording orchestras, though not necessarily replicating the concert experience.  And the engineers do use a good deal of spot miking to bring out different instruments in a mix beyond what you might hear in the hall, if they, the producer and the artist want it. 

I see your point of view, though.  You might want to get a copy of the Telarc multichannel SACD of the Cincinnati Orchestra's recording with Stravinski's Petrushka, my understanding is that the recording was made more from the conductor's standpoint than from the audience's.  Also, DG makes recordings that often spotlight instruments in a way that is not necessarily what you'd hear in a concert hall but what the people making the recording felt was musically appropriate, that might be along the lines you're thinking of. 

Mercury Living Presence 35 MM recordings from late 50s early 60s will change the way you think about classical music recording forever.
Be careful what you wish for.

In the case of a classical symphony orchestra, to present the kind of detail you appear to be looking for a recording would likely have to be made with dozens of microphones spaced throughout the orchestra and placed close to the performers, with the outputs of those mics recorded on dozens of tracks, with those tracks being subsequently mixed and extensively processed on elaborate electronic consoles. Many such recordings have been issued over the years, on various labels including DG that was mentioned, and in addition to sounding nothing like what is heard in a concert hall they generally sound awful IMO/IME.

The best and most realistic recordings, such as the early Mercury recordings Geoff rightly suggested, as well as many early recordings from RCA and Decca, as well as many recordings or reissues on audiophile-oriented labels such as Chesky, Telarc, Reference Recordings, etc. were recorded with "purist" techniques using a minimal number of microphones (often just two or three), and were engineered with minimal electronic post-processing.

Regards,
-- Al