I agree.
But there are usually things more than just the recording/mastering quality to behold. For example, there are many recordings of important historic perfomances by some of the all time greatest masters that only exists on the now 'technically inferior' media, Sure the digital restoration/remaster can revive those to a certain point. but you'll still need to tolerate many rough edges. Afterall, enjoying music was not always science. Sometimes, It's like a kid chosing his hero. Mine was the Superman. He was so cool, so manly
. And I never really cared why he wore his red underwear over the trousers, or why he'd fly in that funny pose.
I'm more into the classical music than other genres, so i think i shoud talk about classical. Back in the age of LPs , from the end and final encore of mono age, up to the fruitful days of stereo (~70s) and dawn of the digital age (80s), there was usually a clear standard while buying a record:
1, The title/composer
2, The collaborators and location
3, And the last, but usually the most important if you're after the sound quality : Names of the balance engineer and director.
It was an golden age for recordings, it was a time the finest forms of 'art' was almost fully judged, and represented by one or few masterminds. And not by the share holders, board members, or, the 'trend' .
One of my all time favorate recording director, EMI's Walter Legger, he was almost like an golden hallmark IMO. And i think it'd be very fitting to add a quote from his memoirs here:
'I am convinced that in the arts, committees are useless. What is necessary are people like Karajan, Culshaw and me; we know not only how to achieve the best artistic results but how to attract the public and carry out the whole operation with carefully chosen collaborators. Democracy is fatal for the arts; it leads only to chaos or the achievement of new and lower common denominators of quality.'-----------
And since i don't know when, there are the peoples that chose records only by those listed on the 'penguin guide' etc. I agree, those listed records were usually of the highest standards, both technically and artistically.Which would save one alot of effort and money when making a basic collection. But they shouldn't be the ONLY standard you follow. Sure, chosing by yourself, if you had sufficient artistic taste and knowledge, it'd usually be 'all roads lead to Rome'. But during the course of finding, and self-improving, you'll also discover lots of recordings not so good when compared to those masterpieces, but still very interesting and worthy of of your appreciation. It was fun.
For example, Vivaldi's Four Seasons. There must be more than a million different recordings, and there 're the great names, I MUSICI, The English Concert, BPO, Kremer, Accardo, Mutter, Perlman, Zukerman, the list goes on and on. All a little different here and there. But if you look at the 'guide', St Martin/Marriner's (DECCA) is the best. Yes, buy that one and no more. But then you'll be missing all the diversity, the colourful faces of art. There's only one Mona Lisa, but you should also enjoy all the different but still beautiful smiles.
