The Solti Ring: Half Speed Mastering at Abbey Road Studios

Revitalising Sir Georg Solti’s masterful recording of Wagner’s Ring Cycle was a monumental undertaking, utilising the latest cutting edge technology. Here Miles Showell, mastering engineer at the famous Abbey Road Studios explains how his meticulous half-speed vinyl cutting process has made the recording sound better than ever.
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[@antoineduchamp4931]

You are a top man Miles... heavens you are providing 2022 quality sound for these masterpieces to a new generation of listeners... your skills are so badly needed for these incredible recordings... well done.

[@videomen11]

All your hard work and love paid off! This Ring never sounded so good and alive. It's like a new recording. THANK YOU!

[@fcamiola]

Watching the Gotterdammerung documentary right now...all Ring all the time! Cheers for making this amazing recording even better.

[@antoineduchamp4931]

Miles, the online classical music critic in NY has expressed his horror that the magnificent Decca classic box set of Antal Dorati recordings of all 104+ symphonies of Joseph Haydn are being withdrawn... he says they need Decca expertise to be remastered... they are some of the greatest recordings ever made by Decca. Any chance they will be remastered?

[@All-Home-Home]

El arte de la calidad y el buen gusto!

[@smithpm81]

excellent work

[@zrogon]

I saw the price and I died a bit inside... well done Decca on pricing the fans out of this. jacka$$e$

[@mookymookymooo]

Holy crap how has this got so few views

[@djtrendsetta5766]

The new Beyonce just dropped?

[@Emrla1]

I placed an order for the lip version of the Solti Ring in the presentation box. I’ve not gotten any word on when it’s coming to me. What’s up? Who can I write to?

[@CanuckFluter]

Now keep your grubby fingers off the compression dial!!

[@stevepillemann9373]

Wann kommt denn der gesamte Ring in einer Komplett- Vinylbox samt Blu Ray in Dolby Atmos heraus? Weiß das zufällig jemand?

[@CanuckFluter]

But don't be sad, they will release this again and againg and again and again. My concern, is they will continue to re-release this latest incinerated version with high compression and clipping.

[@Pets0undz]

I wish I understood better the impact of the 2008 Universal fire. I thought the original multitracks had been lost in the fire. It's entirely possible that other protection copies are in better shape anyway. I would be definitely picking this up, I'm just curious about the lineage.

[@martinhicks6020]

I suspect the tapes used here were the (digitally copied/noise reduced) re-edited versions ( by John Culshaw who was the original recording engineer) from 1997.

[@Sthunderrocker]

They were not in the fire. They had previously been determined to be unusable, but with today's technology and tape baking they pulled off one last transfer.

[@martinhicks6020]

There has always been a fundamental problem with the long playing record format - distortion. The master disc is cut using a flat faced cutter and the playback stylus is at best an elliptical profile which results in harmonic distortion - heard as a 'warmth' to the music. Also the playback stylus is only orthogonal to the groove at one place as it traverses the disc unless a parallel tracking arm is in use(almost unknown). Additionally the velocity of the stylus along the groove reduces as it approaches the centre of the disc, thereby reducing the upper frequency response and signal to noise ratio. Also, the lack of consistent orthogonality of the stylus to the groove path results in a changing frequency dependent phase relationship between the two channels as the disc is played, which causes blurring of image positioning. With frequent playing the record groove will wear and any dust particles will embed themselves, causing audible noise. LPs are notoriously difficult to keep in a pristine condition as even removing and replacing them in their sleeves demands care and dexterity in order to avoid finger prints and surface damage over time. As recordings these days are always made digitally there seems little purpose in transferring them to a less precise analogue format. I have owned the Solti ring since its first release in 1958 onwards. The re-edited digital issue of 1997 on CD is infinitely better in every way and is playable on reasonably affordable equipment. Even using a Linn set up the LPs were never a match. But the recordings were very special for their time and heard from 1997 CD or Blu-ray are a revelation.

[@ctrlzyx2]

Well stated. I'm sure you'll agree there are actually multiple "fundamental" problems with the lp. Digital done well is a fantastic medium and requires almost zero effort to get good playback.

[@Sthunderrocker]

You'll be glad they're offering sacds

[@jenieceboveja619]

🌷 p̲r̲o̲m̲o̲s̲m̲

[@ernestrobles1510]

Decca! Your customer service is crap. Where’s my set? Give me a contact. All the links on your site are down.

[@marklipian6139]

Just informed that the “BOOK” has been cancelled; and still have received NOTHING from Decca from whom I pre-ordered the entire LP Ring set 9 months ago - which was “special” because it included a beautiful box for all four operas, AND THIS SPECIAL BOOK. It is unclear whether this means they are canceling the ENTIRE Ring set (I.E., the box, the book, and the four LP sets); or literally JUST the book. And through I have tried several times to communicate with DECCA customer service about the late delivery, and now the specifics of this cancellation, they NEVER RESPOND. (This time, they say the Website is “temporarily down” and unavailable, for “maintenance”.). This is extraordinarily, and unacceptably, poor behavior, performance, and customer service by DECCA (and by extension, UNIVERSAL), in my opinion.

[@jeki6035]

Naaah....I'll wait for the next anniversary Quarter Speed pressing....and then the eight speed pressing after that. Paying exorbitant amounts for literally diminishing returns. Nice scam.

[@CanuckFluter]

I have the golden ring sacd highlighrs disc. Decca took this recording and squashed the dynamic range down to a 9 or 8. That is in the red. So now Decca seem to be taking classical recordings and squeeezing the DR out of them like pop music releases. This is totally irresponsbile and totally unnecessary! Deccadeopped the ball on this one!!!

[@1998mchp]

Compression and clipping on SACD 44.1 layer and HD 192 download of Die Walkure. I can't understand why this was released like this....lots of prep effort, baking tapes etc...then it looks like it went thru a Loudness War 2023 filter....LPs may be different as they will not track with such RED LEVEL loudness.

[@CanuckFluter]

@@1998mchp I think they are trying to appeal to the younger set who tend to listen on earbuds and cellphones but that is definitly not the market for opera. This is a travesty. I don't blame the engineers, this stuff is ordered up by the guys in suits!

[@Sthunderrocker]

​@@1998mchpthere is clipping in the original recordings on some of the vocals.

[@vinny142]

"It sounds like it was recorded yesterday" And then you come along and force that sound through a bunch of filters and algorythms just to be able to cut it, so people can then use mechanical devices to scrape that recording off the vinyl and apply another set of filters to undo all the crap you had to do to make it audible, and then they insist it sounds better because it's a litle warmer and lacks all the high fidenilty sounds that you where recording at half-speed for in the first place. I totally understand if this was about nostalgia, about getting the authentic sound of records from back then, but it;s not. It's about the snobbery of how wonderful a record sounds when it sounds nothing like the original that it as made from. If you accept how a record sounds then you cannot object against a CD and an EQ because this recording was EQ'ed to an inch of it;s life to fiton the flipping record in the firrt place.. Oh audiophiles... grow up.

[@donprudenzio]

You sure got your panties in a twist. No one is forcing you to buy this? Also, what snobbery? I see a man who is incredibly enthusiastic about these recordings and his craft. Of course, the video itself is part of the marketing. We can also be sure that he probably knows a lot more about this stuff than you do, although in itself that’s obviously no guarantee for success. Besides, it’s a 4-minute video, what exactly do we really know what they’re doing during the remastering process. Are you part of the team? Doesn’t it make more sense to wait for the final release to give your judgement?

[@nk-gp1ml]

I sold my expensive turntable and large classical vinyl collection a few years ago. I listen entirely to digital and am perfectly happy with the sound quality, low maintenance and convenience. Whatever the vinyl playback filters and distortions are doing, the sound of LP can be breathtaking with a quality and character to that sound that digital rarely achieves. However, the cost and aggravation of getting LPs to sound at that level is not something I would recommend.

[@JanPBtest]

The Blu-ray audio edition of this recording is exceptional. Not to mention no breaks in the music.

[@canadianmaestro7228]

If Solti and Culshaw were alive, they would vomit. Leave great recs alone, as the artists intended them to sound -- as the original analogues sound! Will always listen to my LPs and 2012 CDs of this masterpiece cycle. Knob tweaking and pseudo-scientific twiddling -- marketing ploys. In the end, everyone's ears are different, and they are the only final arbiters of what sounds good to an individual.

[@martinhicks6020]

I'm not sure Solti had much time to listen to his own recordings from LP as he led a very busy life and travelled extensively. I suspect the only times he heard the recorded results was from replays of the 15 inch per second two track stereo replays from the unedited mastertapes at the venue after each recording session supervised by John Culshaw.

[@CanuckFluter]

foobar2000 1.6.17 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 log date: 2023-12-09 22:22:23 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Analyzed: ? / ? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DR Peak RMS Duration Track -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DR8 -5.90 dB -19.63 dB 2:50 01-Unknown Album DR11 -6.33 dB -21.08 dB 4:51 02-Unknown Album DR8 -6.28 dB -19.71 dB 3:42 03-Unknown Album DR8 -6.34 dB -17.05 dB 6:24 04-Unknown Album DR8 -6.33 dB -18.61 dB 2:18 05-Unknown Album DR10 -6.32 dB -21.88 dB 10:12 06-Unknown Album DR7 -6.33 dB -18.11 dB 4:43 07-Unknown Album DR8 -6.24 dB -17.99 dB 5:47 08-Unknown Album DR13 -6.31 dB -25.37 dB 5:26 09-Unknown Album DR9 -6.33 dB -21.91 dB 2:12 10-Unknown Album DR7 -5.94 dB -19.28 dB 7:53 11-Unknown Album DR12 -6.34 dB -23.12 dB 9:13 12-Unknown Album DR12 -6.41 dB -25.21 dB 2:32 13-Unknown Album DR7 -6.02 dB -16.74 dB 8:46 14-Unknown Album -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Number of tracks: 14 Official DR value: DR9 Samplerate: 2822400 Hz / PCM Samplerate: 44100 Hz Channels: 2 Bits per sample: 1 Bitrate: 5645 kbps Codec: DST64 This the DR of the highlights disc, "The Golden Ring" Very poor DR.

[@Sthunderrocker]

Have you compared to the esoteric sacds to see if they have better Dr?