Solti's Ring Remastered - Wagner Society of New York

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However, it is possible to obtain superior sound by mastering at a higher sampling rate and bitdepth, before down-converting it to 44.1/16 for the CD. When the Solti Ring CDs were firstdigitized in 1984, the professional mastering standard was 48/16. That was superseded by 48/20in 1993 and then supplanted in turn by 48/24 in 1996, which was the professional standard at thetime the 1997 Ring CDs were prepared. A year later, in 1998, 96/24 mastering was introduced,which produced still further sonic improvement in transfers of analog originals. CDs preparedfrom 96/24 masters first appeared in 1999, in the Decca “Legends” and RCA “HighPerformance” series. Sampling at 96kHz made it possible to double the highest frequency thatcould be recorded – compared with 48kHz – giving more faithful reproduction of overtones andreducing distortion and artifacts caused by steep filters, an improvement that could be heard evenon conventional compact discs. Unfortunately, the 1997 Ring remastering occurred one year tooearly to take advantage of the new technology. (A few specialist audiophile labels have recentlybegun mastering stereo Blu-ray audio discs at an even higher resolution of 192/24.)Decca has been coy in refusing to reveal the sampling rate of the Blu-ray disc that comes withthe 2012 deluxe edition, stating in its ads and publicity material that the Blu-ray is “the completeRing on one disc presented as lossless 24-bit files.” I have located a statement regardingtechnical specifications of the Solti Ring Blu-ray disc by Stefan Bock, the founder and managingdirector of msm-studios in Munich, Germany, the company to whom Decca contracted-out theauthoring of the Blu-ray edition. The Ring Blu-ray is 48/24. Mr. Bock, who supervised thetransfer of the Solti Ring to Blu-ray, was asked why the Blu-ray was encoded at 48/24 instead ofthe commonly used, superior 96/24 resolution. He responded as follows: “We have discussedwith Decca about delivering 24/96 files, as we would have loved to have this title in even higherresolution on Blu-ray. I was told that the restoration work on the analog tapes has been done in48k. So I think, the Blu-ray disc carries the best sound available.”ConclusionsAfter comparing the nine versions of Das Rheingold described above, it is appropriate to drawsome conclusions. All considered, purchasers will find the 2012 edition to be the best yet, but –had Decca taken the time, expense, and effort to return to the original analog master tapes tomake a new, state-of-the-art digital transfer – it could have been even better, especially at thehigh frequencies.Although engineer Philip Siney conscientiously enhanced the older, 1997 Cedarized digitalmaster tapes for the 2012 deluxe reissue, you can’t put back what has already been removed. Ifthe high frequency response has been attenuated, you can boost the high frequencies that remain,in order to counteract the dullness, but you can’t restore missing overtones that have beensheared off by the Cedar process. A frequency analysis of the Blu-ray disc shows that the highfrequency spectrum of the contents was apparently rolled-off sharply at 20kHz and cut off by22kHz. The analog original tapes would have had a wider frequency response; a 96kHz Blu-raymade from them would have sounded noticeably better than a 48kHz Blu-ray, which is only anincremental improvement over the 44.1kHz sampling rate of the CDs.It strains credulity to accept the company’s explanation regarding the original analog stereomaster tapes that their “degradation had been significant, and it was deemed impossible to make
superior audio transfers from them.” After all, we are not talking about just one tape, but fourseparate operas recorded in 1958, 1962, 1964, and 1965: the crown jewels of Decca’s operaticarchive. Even if one concedes that all four of the mixed-down and edited first-generation stereomaster tapes could have been similarly and simultaneously rendered unusable by deterioration ofthe oxide coating or splices, it should have been possible to make new transfers by returning tothe original multitrack analog master tapes (as RCA did for their “Living Stereo” SACDreissues, with digital edits – conforming to the selected takes in the original session logs –eliminating the need to physically splice the master tapes). Alternatively, analog reserve tapes,safety copies, or submasters could have been used as a source for a fresh transfer.Decca has released many 96/24 remasterings of analog tapes of equivalent vintage that are evenbetter sounding than Solti’s Ring (for example, in the 50-CD box set, “The Decca Sound,” issuedin 2011). Somehow, all these tapes miraculously escaped deterioration. While the 2012 Ringedition, with its origins in a 1997 Cedarized, outdated digital transfer, should not be regarded asmaking “a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” it is regrettably a lost opportunity for Decca, who couldhave created a definitive, up-to-date transfer of this landmark recording.Reportedly, it took 40 years for Solti’s Ring to earn back its recording and production costs.Decca’s current “bean counters” probably did not want to commit the studio time or budgetaryresources to undertake a new transfer, mixdown, and digital editing of the 14-1/2 hours of fourchanneloriginal analog master tapes (comprising two channels for the orchestra and twochannels for the voices) as the basis for a new high-resolution 96/24 transfer. Since that wasevidently deemed too laborious a task of reconstruction, it is incomprehensible that Decca failedto make a new transfer from readily available analog secondary sources instead, such as reservetapes and pre-existing edited backup copies.Presently, there are newer and more advanced methods of noise reduction than the early versionof Cedar, now obsolete, that was used in the 1997 Ring edition. Although Decca states that themost modern noise reduction software and mastering tools available have been utilized in the2012 upgrading of the 1997 transfer, it would have been preferable if they had made a fresh start,rather than superimposing their latest efforts on a tape previously de-hissed by a superannuatedversion of Cedar.Nor can a 48/24 transfer be considered state-of-the-art or cause for celebration. In a noteincluded in the 2012 Ring reissue, it was disingenuous for Decca to congratulate itself for being“particularly fortunate” in having “the foresight to make [its 1997] transfers at a higher bit-depth[24] than the prevailing lesser issuing standard of red-book CD [16], so that the full dynamicrange of the masters is preserved.” This verges on sophistry. By the time Decca made its 1997transfers, 48/24 was a well-established industry standard. Except for some stragglers stillmastering in 20-bit, most professional mastering by major record labels was done at 48/24, theolder 48/16 equipment having been mothballed long ago. Rather than being foresighted inmaking a transfer in 1997 at 48/24 which was by then common practice, it can be argued thatDecca was shortsighted in not making a new archival transfer after 1999 at 96/24, if only as aprecaution against possible future decay of the analog master tapes.
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Page 3 and 4: particularly applicable to the 2012
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Solti's Ring Remastered - Wagner Society of New York

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