Bound for Sound May 2006 This is a interesting idea. A month or two ago I received a CD-R in the mail. I get quite a few of these things, usually from companies promoting home theater products, or reps looking to get me to open up some promotional material just because it is on a CD-R. But, this was a little different. It was a CD-R from a company called High Definition Tape Transfers or HDTT. The idea is a pretty simple and obvious one. HDTT takes high quality reel to reel tapes from the 60's and 70's, and then transcribes them to a direct burn CD-R. The sampler sent to me had classic cuts from Rimsky-Korsakoff, Richard Strauss, Mozart, Debussy and others.
As I've expressed within these pages in the past, I believe a direct CD burn (copy) of a CD can sound superior to the original. Yes, a copy sounding better than the original. The possible reasons for such a transposing of realities is still the meat of many a discussion, but the fact that so many in the industry (and hobbyists alike) have heard and demonstrated the improvement requires that the phenomena be taken seriously. My point is not that the CD-R can, or will, sound better than the original reel to reel tapes, only that CD-R burning is a highly reliable way of making truthful copies of original recordings.
In the case of HDTT, a well preserved reel to reel tape is played back over a highly modified and tweaked tape player with the line out being burned to a master disc; the master disc being used to direct burn the CD-R in my hand. At least that is how I understand it works, I may find myself corrected on exactly how the feed from the tape deck is burned, but as I learn how it ?s done, you'll learn how it's done.
I wouldn't go over the explanation with you were it not for the superb quality of the sound. Part of that obviously goes to the quality of the original recording; part of it to quality of the tape deck and playback equipment; and part of it to the CD-R burner and blanks used by HDTT. These are not inexpensive CD-R blanks. All put together, the results are impressive ... especially the strings, yummy. While the present recordings are from reel to reel tapes that were commercially available a few years back, HDTT hopes to soon have access to first generation original tapes in the future. If that happens, I think it very possible that a direct CD-R burn could be sonically superior to the original LP. That is an exciting prospect.
UHF Magazine Issue #78 "Munch's recording of the Brahms Second performance is brilliant,offering breathtakingly lyrical passages,for instance in the first movement,and impressive controlled energy in the final Allegro con spirito. This is about as good a version as you are likely to find,and the fact that it sounds so good half a century later is more than just a bonus."
Tone Audio Issue #8 "Let's face it these three recordings are truly benchmark performances warhorses, to be exact. But this is where the HDTT people grand slam home runs as each of the three DVD-As consistently exhibit grand sonic performance for naturalness, air, tone, pace and unadulterated dynamics, If you do not like these three diverse pieces of music there may be no hope for you! I have always said from an engineering standpoint that: EVERY ASPECT OF THE EQUATION EFFECTS THE OVERALL RESULT or more simply put: 'It all matters'! And in the case of the HDTT process, the means greatly affected the end results which I will gladly award 5 stars for both sound and performance!"
Bound for Sound April 2008 I've written about High Definition Tape Transfers (HDTT.. Google it.) in the past. Their CD transfers result in some of the finest digital recordings ever made by anyone. Trust me. With the movement toward downloading high resolution music, I've got a place for you to go. It's the Hi Rez Download Center at HDTT. You can download from their 24/96 .wav files that can be played back on a computer system, or burned to DVD and then played back from their. I don't even know what a .wav file is, but I hear they can be useful in making some superb recordings. HDTT has a nice selection of classical 24/96 selections, and though I haven't heard the Stravinsky L'HISTOIRE du SOLDAT in high resolution, I've had the 16/44.1 version from HDTT and it is absolutely state-of-the-art even as a lowly 0L' cee-dee. You haven't heard your Big Rig until you've heard it with the Stravinsky.
Bound for Sound Issues #197/198 HDTT Digital Recordings. Analog and digital recordings meet head to head. It stands for High Definition Tape Transfers, and the product lives up to its name ... and then some. The process starts with a studio quality, analog reel to reel tape. Then, via a Weiss analog to digital music system the digital masters are created. Once they are
satisfied with the digital masters, the music is burned onto a super high quality CDR one at a time. The results are, as I've mentioned in these pages many times before, the pinnacle of 16 bit 44.1 playback available. Of higber sonic quality than the late XRCDs from the Japanese Victor Company, or any re-issue known to me, these individually burned CDs demonstrate the height of possibility with the present digital music format. In my opinion, these burned CDs on a good Redbook player outperform all forms of SACD
as well as anything coming out of the major and minor publishing houses. The prices vary, and they tend to be quite high, but if a recorded piece of classical music is important to you, then it may be worth the additional expense to own the final word in sonics regarding that piece.
