Thread: Membran: "The Royal Philharmonic Collection": has anybody heard it on surround?

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Post by Luukas October 3, 2015 (1 of 11)
I want to buy some new albums from the catalogue of the "Royal Philharmonic Collection". I have yet only one album of the series - Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 & Overtures, Wordsworth - and it wasn't very impressive. I want to hear your thoughts about the series before the ordering process.

Post by sylvian October 3, 2015 (2 of 11)
Luukas said:

I want to buy some new albums from the catalogue of the "Royal Philharmonic Collection". I have yet only one album of the series - Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 & Overtures, Wordsworth - and it wasn't very impressive. I want to hear your thoughts about the series before the ordering process.

I have got only these three titles:

Elgar: Cello Concerto - Yoohong Lee/Menuhin
Elgar: Enigma Variations - RPO/Menuhin
Delius: Orchestral Works - RPO/Seaman

the surround sound is fair but not very impressive in comparison with some DSD recordings. E.g. this one:

Delius: Double Concerto, Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto - Little, Watkins, Davis

I gave up collecting Membran releases since both symphonies by Shostakovich sounded terrible. I have got rid of them and tried to look for other labels where possible.

Post by Joseph Ponessa October 3, 2015 (3 of 11)
Luukas said:

I want to buy some new albums from the catalogue of the "Royal Philharmonic Collection". I have yet only one album of the series - Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 & Overtures, Wordsworth - and it wasn't very impressive. I want to hear your thoughts about the series before the ordering process.

Many of the individual releases are highly esteemed -- Mahler's First, Rachmaninov's Second, Franck's Symphony, Bruch's Violin Concerto, Rite of Spring, The Planets, Carmina burana. I don't care for the Beethoven Piano Concertos, but I like the solo piano releases (though I'm not sure why they form part of a philharmonic collection).

Post by wehecht October 3, 2015 (4 of 11)
Luukas said:

I want to buy some new albums from the catalogue of the "Royal Philharmonic Collection". I have yet only one album of the series - Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 & Overtures, Wordsworth - and it wasn't very impressive. I want to hear your thoughts about the series before the ordering process.

Interpretively the various discs conducted by Charles Mackerras are all very good to excellent and the phony mc sound isn't bad. The two Haydn symphony discs conducted by Jane Glover are excellent performances ( when reviewing the original Tring release of 101/103 the esteemed Mr. Robbins Landon called it the greatest Haydn symphony recording he'd ever heard, but then again Luukas, that was before you were born!) and again the sound is acceptable though nowhere near the Channel, Bis, chandos etc. class. All are burdened by the usual Membran production shortcomings, almost no time between works, notes not updated from the originals, etc.

Post by wehecht October 3, 2015 (5 of 11)
sylvian said:



the surround sound is fair but not very impressive in comparison with some DSD recordings. E.g. this one:

Delius: Double Concerto, Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto - Little, Watkins, Davis

As we all learned to our dismay very few of Chandos' recordings are native DSD despite the claims on the packaging. The last disc in the series, Delius in Norway, clearly states that it's a 24/96 PCM recording. I imagine the first two were as well. Nonetheless I agree it's a fine recording.

Post by Claude October 4, 2015 (6 of 11)
The surround sound on the RPO SACDs has been generated artificially. These are stereo recordings from the 1990's.

Post by Joseph Ponessa October 4, 2015 (7 of 11)
Claude said:

The surround sound on the RPO SACDs has been generated artificially. These are stereo recordings from the 1990's.

The original releases were stereo, but those were mixed from many microphones. I wonder if the Mch releases sound so good in general because the SACDs are remixed from the original thirty-odd channels of recorded sound. Only the engineers of Membran know exactly what they did, whether their separate channels come from remix or postproduction voodoo.
I have the same question about the Beethoven cycle by Herbert Kegel, which has been released both on SACD and on Blu-ray audio in multichannel sound. Were those quad recordings, or have they been remixed from original multiple master tracks, or were they generated by hanky panky?

Post by Claude October 5, 2015 (8 of 11)
Membran issued all their SACDs in multichannel, including those made from mono sources (their Supreme Jazz and pop oldies series, consisting of public domain material, i.e. probably mastered from CDs).

So I don't think they did some remixing for the RPO series, since these are budget releases.

Post by hiredfox October 5, 2015 (9 of 11)
Claude said:

The surround sound on the RPO SACDs has been generated artificially. These are stereo recordings from the 1990's.

and in only 44/16 PCM to boot... they sound truly awful.

Post by sylvian October 5, 2015 (10 of 11)
hiredfox said:

and in only 44/16 PCM to boot... they sound truly awful.

True but sometimes performance is valuable as well!

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