From that same article --
Robert E. Seletsky
Nov 20, 2016 at 1:08 am | Reply
I must apologize for allowing myself to be misled. As of November 2016, following two years of exhaustive listening tests and spectral analyses, I’m afraid I must agree with Andrew Rose (whose own work is still not to my taste): Warner’s ‘Callas Remastered’ does not seem to be a new mastering at all, but a retread of EMI’s 1997 ‘Callas Edition’ and 2002-5 ‘Great Recordings of the Century’–themselves re-EQs, by the same engineers who produced ‘Callas Remastered’, of Keith Hardwick’s first, and still best, 1984-9 digitizations.
The timings of the 1997-2005 EMI discs, with rare exception, are identical, *to the second* with those in Warner’s version by the same team when one subtracts Warner’s longer silences at the beginnings and endings of discs and acts–a physical impossibility for something supposedly redigitized from analog scratch. Moreover, the sound has nothing to do with the analog sound. It is re-EQed to be a harsh and boomy version of the ‘Callas Edition’, very fatiguing to hear, but with the same recessed voices. The LPs and the aesthetic of mono operatic recording in the 1950s–especially at EMI–show the forward placement of the voices with instrumental accompaniment, not the other way around, crisply but never harshly, presented. Spectral analyses shows the unfortunately chosen re-EQing.
Rose is right that, certainly in old mono recordings, there is nothing above 22kHz, making the 24bit/96kHz ‘HD’ remastering a red herring. That Warner claims 69 discs worth of material have been remastered from the analog tapes in such a short time is impossible to believe when it took Keith Hardwick five years. ‘Callas Remastered’ is apparently the ‘Callas *Edition* Remastered’. One should also bear in mind that in 1997, the only recordings claimed to have been remastered from analog sources were the recitals, but the whole series was done at 20/88.2kHz. So any stereo material with frequencies higher than 22kHz (and there is some) would already have been attended to; the 24/96kHz is cosmetic.
As for ‘original’ analog tapes, that too is a red herring, as the tapes were copied continuously for decades to send to various international EMI branches for the creation of new LP stampers. If the Abbey Road people used analog sources–and I do not believe they did in 2014–it would hardly have been ‘original’: it would be whatever tapes were stored in the UK. And surely, the Cetra material would lack original tapes, having circulated in the public domain for half a century. Warner owns Fonit Cetra as well as EMI, and the Cetra operas are most likely re-EQs of Cetra CDC-2 TRAVIATA and CDC-9 GIOCONDA, the 1949 arias CEDARized versions of Warner’s own 1999 ‘Il primo disco’. Photos in the book accompanying the Warner set show purported ‘original’ tapes; but we must remember that most recordings were made in Italy and France, yet the tape boxes seen are from American manufacturers, and might be anything.
Head engineer Ramsay (of Callas Edition notoriety) takes misplaced pride in revealing the bizarre addition of faked record roar between bands in the recitals and at the beginnings of Acts and discs, to replicate LP sound; he seems to be unaware that those of us who bought the LPs would have returned discs with this characteristic as defective. No other artist’s work has been subjected to this odd treatment on CD. Ramsay makes it sound like a new idea, whereas it was present in the 1997 edition as well. At least the errors, introduced in 1997 to Hardwick’s initial digitizations by the same engineers–to which I called public attention in The Opera Quarterly and elsewhere–have finally been corrected, but that’s really all the best this set has to offer. Warner evidently spent its money on hype, not real remastering; ironically, these discs are sold for super-budget prices, without the great essays by John Steane and minimal notes by others, and libretti on CD-ROM only if one buys the whole set. If I am wrong, it really shows these engineers in a very poor light. I still recommend the 1984-9 EMI/Angel digitizations by Keith Hardwick (which often sound better in EMI Classics pressings of 1991-4) if one cannot find, or has no means to play, the LPs.
