What is the worst recorded CD you have?

Telarc made a number of recordings of Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony doing large scale choral works. They were uniformly awful--thick, opaque, congested on both ends--finding popularity only with people who were impressed by blatty organ pedal notes and huge banks of muddy choral sound (same folks who buy recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir). Some say that Shaw--a dying autocrat at the time--insisted on the mix.

will

Mainliner: 'Mainliner Sonic', although I believe it was a calculated maneuver to replicate the sound of your speaker cones imploding upon themselves.

I've owned (and sold) some pretty crappy mid-'80's digital transfers of early jazz recordings that were pretty nasty...most recently, I was bummed out by a two-disc Ellington CD set that sounded as if the soul of the music had been forcibly wrenched out.

The worst case of bad digital transferring was evident in a set of Greek rebetica recordings transcribed from '78's and metal discs from the early part of the century. Intolerable...sounded like you were listening to a TV speaker playing from another room. Granted this is a tough task, but I own a few discs of music from this vintage that are actually quite nice. I imagine that you just have to CARE about the music you're processing to do it justice.

Will....Your post raises a whole other issue. What is a choral sound? Mr. Shaw always felt a chorus should communicate as one voice.

The hyper detailed recordings popular with a lot of Audiophiles by people like John Elliot Gardner are anything but choral singing. Instead of one voice, Mr Gardner gives us 60+ individual voices singing the same thing at the same time. Mr. Gardner even calls his main group the "English Barogue Soloists"; ie, a large group of individual soloists; not a chorus.

Sugarbrie, you're right, of course. But there is a big difference between coherent choral sound and muddy, smeary recording technique. Listen to recent recordings of the Kings College boys and men to hear the difference. They have a new release (sorry, info not at hand but email me if you want it) of the Handel Coronation Anthems that is absolutely superb from both choral and recording perspectives.

It was my privilege to sing for Mr. Shaw on a number of occasions. Until his last few years he was a marvelous choral pedagogue. At the end, his hearing had gone and he became a petty tyrant--no fun at all.

Lord, grant us the wisdom to know when to quit.

will