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In the Forum: Didital Things
In the Thread: The High Resolution PCM files business, where?
Post Subject: Don't examine Pristine too closelyPosted by steverino on: 5/24/2014
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 Romy the Cat wrote:

The Brits Pristine “eventually” heard my call. A few years back I begged them to sell the raw 24-bit masters bit not the 16/44 releases, as the down conversion below 20 bit kills too much of sound. It looks like nowadays they get smarter and make 24 bit available:

http://www.pristineclassical.com/More/DownloadFormats.html

Unfortunately they do not make the raw 24-bit file available. They heavily process the files with their in house “restoration ceremony” and make the 24-bit after ceremony masters available. It is MUCH better then what they use to do porting this music to 16 bit on crapy CDs. Stull, I would like to get the raw 24-bit file BEFORE they do the mastering. It shall be my decision if I prefer their “mastering “and I do not what anybody makes this decision for me.

The Cat


I didn't notice Romy's reference of Pristine Classical. I had an "interesting" encounter with them via their "hirez" manipulations of Furtwangler's RAI Ring cycle recordings from EMI. They were of course deliriously recommended on Amazon so I went to their site to listen. If I had an MP3 player their various sound files might have been OK but each was dramatically inferior to the old LPs. I investigated further what they were doing and determined that all their various versions were sourced from needledrops of - you guessed it - the 1970s LP issue of the Furtwangler Ring on EMI. One set of encodings and probably the least bad were the straight mono files derived from the needledrops. The worst were the ones most loudly praised of course; namely, a "stereo" version. This was a slightly more sophisticated version of the old electronic stereo process combined with some sort of treble brightening to simulate a bit of treble air. Of course the sounds of the instruments became even more artificial sounding than with the mono needledrop version. I would have to assume that all of their sources are equally questionable unless they provide independent documentation to the contrary.

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