On 22/06/2012, Jon Samuels wrote:
> The earliest tape I could find in the RCA vaults was from 1949. Seth
> Winner once told me that he found a Toscanini concert recorded on tape
> by RCA in 1948, which is certainly possible (the musician's strike of
> 1948 meant there are almost no RCA commercial recordings from that
> year). I found tapes for all the 1949 RCA Red Seal sessions I
> remastered (Heifetz, Horowitz, Kapell, Rubinstein, Monteux, Stokowski,
> Toscanini, etc.), except one. I'm pretty certain that the
> Kapell/Dorati/DallasSO Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 3 session of
> January 7, 1949 was recorded only on wax and lacquer, not tape, but
> that could be due to the fact that it was recorded in Dallas, TX, or
> perhaps because it was done so early in 1949. As an additional caveat,
> there are some 1949 and 1950 RCA classical recordings that today exist
> only on metal, but other recordings from those sessions exist on tape.
>
At that early period, would you say (having presumably listened to both)
that the tape had better or worse sound than the discs?
I have seen it suggested that Heifetz sounded better on disc than on
tape. (At least, in the early 50s).
> I never found any paperwork that discussed the switchover from wax to
> tape at RCA, nor whether some metals were dubs of tape or simultaneous
> recordings. I do know that EMI started simultaneous recording with
> tape in October 1948, and that they eventually switched over to
> dubbing 78 metals from those sessions tapes.
>
Regards
--
Don Cox
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