Air Studios, Hampstead, 10 February 2017, including direct cut mastering, for Chasing The Dragon Productions
Mike Valentine’s enthusiasm for making audiophile recordings is undiminished and brought the press, including Mike Fremer of Stereophile, and myself amongst others,, to the legendary Air Studios for yet another session, each more ambitious than the last.
Mike Valentine centre, Mike Fremer, right
Entitled ‘A Tribute To Spain’ the programme included two pieces from Bizet, concert performances with mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton, together with Rimsky Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol and Chabrier’s Espana, these classical showpieces.
It was a large orchestra, filling the ‘large hall’ recording auditorium at AIR, this long established performing group is called the National Symphony Orchestra (which is freelance), here conducted by the noted Debbie Wiseman. Mike ambitiously masters in multiple formats to get many bites at the sonic cherry, including direct cut to vinyl lacquer, this done at the silent mastering suite high up in the building.
It was a large orchestra, filling the ‘large hall’ recording auditorium at AIR, this long established performing group is called the National Symphony Orchestra (which is freelance), here conducted by the noted Debbie Wiseman. Mike ambitiously masters in multiple formats to get many bites at the sonic cherry, including direct cut to vinyl lacquer, this done at the silent mastering suite high up in the building.
More easily organised in the main control, the stereo signal also goes to a Studer A80 analogue tape recorder , and to a Nagra stereo digital recorder, plus the Air in-house facilities these including real time HD and DSD encodings.
By definition these were live takes, recorded in their entirely after some rehearsal and will not be subject to editing. In any case editing cannot be performed on a direct cut lacquer master disc. The sessions were in part chosen to fit successive sides of an LP master and in the event over 90% of the available space was used. Filling a disc up, as used to be done, makes no sense at all for an audiophile production where the intention is to maintain high quality sound to the end of the piece and not to use up the disc to the end of the physical record.
The National Symphony Orchestra is well practiced in playing to order, and got on with the job in timely fashion helping the whole production to run quite smoothly. In addition to the multiple formats CD LP and High Res downloads, the recording was captured with several independent mic arrays including Mike’s own favourite Decca tree spaced array with vintage valve powered Neumann microphones and also a binaural head for an exclusive binaural headphone compatible replay format release.
The National Symphony Orchestra is well practiced in playing to order, and got on with the job in timely fashion helping the whole production to run quite smoothly. In addition to the multiple formats CD LP and High Res downloads, the recording was captured with several independent mic arrays including Mike’s own favourite Decca tree spaced array with vintage valve powered Neumann microphones and also a binaural head for an exclusive binaural headphone compatible replay format release.
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