Fondamenta Label

[yabaVR]

After lots of wiggle the download of the Navarra recordings in 6 parts happend to be easy.

Now I listened to some of the recordings, every CD recorded at different places/times like you can hear.

As I understand the Phoenix Process the ultimate AD conversion is made with a Devialet amp (I think the 'old' Expert Line was at work?).
Technically the recordings are stunning in the fact of having a very low level of jitter in it. Very smooth, no edges, very homogeneous...nice 

The sound could be very healing to some D owner who still have some digital edginess in their audio chain. They will be very pleased.

But...and I can only speculate on this, there was very much processing done after AD conversion and for my taste it was overdone. CD1 sounds kind of dull to me and CD2 being the best in respect of SQ for me (especially the duet recordings a very good). 

The processing cut down the sough of the analogue recordings to a very low level and just to me the instruments lack of the high transients as does the decay of room reverberation. The tension of the musical representation suffers in a way of that.
It may not be of much respect to say the instruments (especially the cello) sound 'dead' but (and this I don't know) either the digital processing was overdone or the recording itself (since being kind of 'old') are not of high resolution.

The music itself is gorgeous and as their date of origin is in the first analogue stereo years it wouldn't bother me to hear that (in form of sough and the like) if I can only get more of the 'living' instrument to hear from.

Maybe Phoenix can resolve on some processes made while mastering this beautiful music.

Congrets for the job anyway. I'm tensed to hear future recordings made by the Phoenix Processing.

gui

Is this what's termed damning with faint praise.

Not sure how you are able to tell that what your hearing (or not) is the re-mastering or the quality (or lack of) on the master tapes.

No damning from my side. I was rather questioning how/what they did while remastering.
Phoenix claims that no harm is done to the music signal cleaning it up while remastering. That's a strong claim. I for myself heard quiet the opposite of that with other remaster when comparing it to the original. Especially the strongly reduced sough of an analogue recording is the bad as I experienced. Never before heard such a digital processing not deleting fine details in the music and there is very low sough on the Navarra remastering, hence my questioning. But if they are right on what they claim...my congrats. A comparison  to the same recording published on another label should give a hint on that though. Very interesting.

gui