Sometimes you record drier and closer specifically so that you can control the amount of space later in the mix-it can make it easier to splice takes because you aren’t cutting as much tail and the added tails smooth over the seams. I agree about noise removals, to a degree. Some noises make things natural-but others are blunders that seriously detract from the experience, and their removal betters the end production.

Modern live recordings can have more atmosphere. But sometimes not that much. For instance, the natural reverberation of the hall (and audience noise) are minimised by close microphone placement. This Bernstein recording seems to have had two doses of rather mechanical reverb added in the original CD mastering. So stripping it off and putting in the sampled Musikverein accoustic is no more artificial. Where it gets more complicated (and I share your doubts) is when the remastering doesn't start from the original tapes, but uses various means of recovering information lost in the original vinyl or CD mastering. Sometimes this can result in something that sounds far more realistic and alive than the very conservative vinyl masterings of 60 or 70 years ago. But was the information really there to be recovered, or was it merely added, to give a best guess at what the actual performance sounded like? And if so, is this bad in principle, a great idea, a hard judgement call or a matter of taste? Some recent issues from Alexandre Bak, for instance, sound much better than previous issues of the historical recordings being remastered, but spectral analysis shows there is sometimes actually a smaller frequency range in the remastered version - just better arranged for ear and brain to cooperate in hearing it as a vibrant reality.

Watching this was seriously cool.

Older recordings were usually straight to two track stereo (or one channel mono in the really old days), but that's not how it's done today. Today there might be 100+ channels on the recording.

Very true, and yet most of my favorite classical recordings were done with 2-3 mics. Consequently, that is how I still record classical music to this day... and it's a LOT less equipment to haul!

@@j.lindback Especially by Deutsche Grammophon in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The trend today is for fewer.

Those who can do, those who can't sit around a bitch day and night about all they think they know.

Don't buy it and you're objection will be noted.

I whole-heartedly support mastering at higher rates. It's not about preserving what people can hear, it's about getting artifacts of the digital conversion outside of human hearing. At 44.1KHz, filter ringing and other artifacts go well into human hearing range. Having wider band-width is just a side benefit.

Stephen Baldassarre You’re talking about using higher bit rates as an intermediate step. The implication in the video is about the end product.

El Y There is benefit from delivering in high-res formats as well. Converting to 44.1K requires extremely aggressive anti-aliasing filters, even when done at the end. It is simply impossible to go from 0dBb to 120dB attenuation in a 2KHz window without causing damage to the pass-band. Plus, aggressive digital reconstruction filters are needed on playback. Higher rates reduce artifacts within the human hearing range because all the junk now lives above it. I do agree that all the talk about preserving audio up to 40K is a stupid marketing gimmick though.

Stephen Baldassarre The damage can be minimal or inaudible if the low-pass filter isn’t steep. It can span much more than 2 khz. Heck, it can start at 15K. In a real concert hall unless you’re sitting in the hall right next to the violins, you won’t hear those highs anyway as they don’t travel far.