Life's full of compromises. Each day we make choices if only to render our lives more enjoyable. Adamantly staying straight on the line only causes harm to others and ourselves. The results of hard-lining are very visible in the news every day. Many times a day we arrive at a crossroad. We have to decide about going left, turning right or forging straight ahead. And there's always a reason, conscious or not, that we make the very choice we make. Why did you take the direction that leads home? It could be that someone is waiting for you there. Alternately, you might veer the opposite way and for the same reason. There's always something beyond our control that more or less prompts us to make the decisions we make and not others in their stead. So much for free will. |
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ence. That means the hall sounds differently. Something has to be done to match this new ambience with the rest of the recording. The balance engineer has to know the score and should be able to read along. This enables him to identify the most opportune splice points. And this is just a minimal fraction of all the work that goes into a final SACD product. That the skills at Polyhymnia are well recognized is shown in the extensive list of labels they collaborate and work with. |
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Multi-channel audio is really nothing new. In the early 70s, such experiments ran the abundant gamut of Quadraphonics and Quadro. Just as today, various systems and concepts existed then to record and play back multi-channel music. A thoughtful initiative of HVT was to invite one of the balance engineers from that era to give a presentation on the subject. Linn representative Latham had equipped Studio 2 with a choice of the latest Linn loudspeakers, amplifiers and digital and analogue transports while Hans Lautenslager came to share with attendees his adventures in the villa which Philips Polygram in those days called home. During his 40 years at Philips, Hans had experienced the heydays of vinyl, the launch of the CD medium and Quadro in-between. According to Mr. Lautenslager, stereo recordings then were exclusively on two tracks until the end of the 50s. Many recording engineers eventually felt that part of the musical hall environment wasn't properly captured. More modern techniques eventually enabled them to record to four tracks which were subsequently mixed down to two. This stereo signal now contained a portion of the ambient data. Some of these four track-recordings were luckily preserved. |
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In the early 70s and with a sophisticated matrix in combination with an encoder, CBS was able to squeeze four recorded channels into the groove of an LP. A playback decoder was needed to retrieve all four channels, otherwise you'd hear a normal stereo image. CBS called this SQ for Stereo Quadraphonics. There was little success for this system, mainly because the channel separation was very limited. Just as unsuccessful as CBS was Sansui in Japan with their QS system. Philips Polygram expressed interest in their techniques but an appropriate hardware playback system to protect the reputation for high quality PPI was keen on maintaining never formalized. JVC then invented a better way. Based on the theory that human hearing was limited above 15KHz, JVC placed an FM carrier signal in the freed-up LP bandwidth to encode two additional channels. A special pick-up with an elliptical needle plus a demodulator made true 4-channel surround possible. Though the JVC CD4 technique seemed promising and Philips produced some special recordings in support of this technique, success remained limited. On the other hand, EMI did invest in CD4 and outfitted its Abbey Road studio accordingly. |
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Through the Linn installation adapted with a specially equipped turntable and CD4 demodulator, Hans Lautenslager played us a sample from a Rachmaninov CD4 EMI recording. The ultimate success of these 4-channel recording was compromised by a run-time differential between the front and back channels, with the physical location of the front and back microphones ideally duplicating the distances of the loudspeakers to the listener in the playback situation. |
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Many of these 4-channel recordings from the Philips archives are nowadays processed by Polyhymnia and re-released by Pentatone whose Job Maarse elaborated on the recording made in Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, of Mikhail Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila wherein a special ceiling-suspended micro-phone spider array captured the distinct sonics of this famous venue. Also special about this production is that the orchestra was placed on stage together with the singers, rather than off-stage in a pit. That | ||||||||||
makes this recording very coherent. Talking about music and mastering is one thing of course, | ||||||||||
listening to one even better. Linn's new Unidisk SC multi-format player with built-in surround processor was now put into action. Not all listeners enjoyed the perfect 3-D sound due to a standing-room crowd but subsequent demonstrations of the Linn equipment in less-crowded circumstances allowed us to hear the system as intended. After this fascinating presentation, it was time for us to make the rounds. For the HVT days, a large tent connected all the buildings on the lot not only to protect attendees from the unpredictable Dutch weather but also to create additional exhibition space. With two days open to the general public, the third day for press and industry only, we made the choice for day one. |
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