New Mercury Living Presence Mastering


Eloquence, the Australian label has recently released two recorded sets of Paul Paray conducting the Detroit Symphony from the original Mercury Living Presence catalog.
These extensive new sets have been remastered by Thomas Fine, son of the original producer Robert Fine. After listening for a while, I discovered to my dismay that he has emasculated the original Mercury sound to sound like run of the mill current commercial CD recordings.
No less of an authority than Henry Fogel in a review misguidedly calls them “excellent restorations,” presuming that they NEEDED restoration.
These are classic recordings that were incredible sounding when first released on LP and subsequently on CD transfers by Philips.
It’s a travesty! All the magic is gone. On a high resolution set the sound is comparatively lifeless and homogenized. Evidently Thomas thought he was “fixing” the sound to appeal to mid-fi consumers.
What a missed opportunity!

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@rvpiano 

You might want to look here and here for openers

For an audiophile board discussing classical music, you're in the wrong place.

Messing with MLP? Now THAT’s a travesty almost certainly.

In any case it would be an interesting listen. Something a little different? I will reserve final judgement until after I might hear. At least it’s likely for real and not some placebo solely  in people’s minds We will see/hear….