Uncommon piano recording

My recollection was that Horowitz was famous for only using his only piano for concerts.  Googling for that I came across http://www.bruceduffie.com/mohr.html which is a real gem for those interested in all matters relating to the art of the piano technician (and copious references to 'the Horowitz piano' therein).

Bert, no comment from me on the samples you posted as I've not had a chance to listen to them yet.

Thank you ozpeter for refering me from down under to this very interesting interview. It reflects many of the impressions I got from the discussion with the tuner I mentioned – though he had worked with different artists.

I really admire these people for their passion as well for their technical and sensual capabilities that help so much to give as full joy of music. Their work certainly is much underestimated in public.

The replacement clip indeed sounds much better!  But if the WM-D6C recording is really of the identical source material, I am surprised (from my own long experience of using them) that it sounds so different, and would be wanting to check out the recorder carefully.

Paul

Yes Paul, you may be right with your concern. I think there are several points to consider:

1. I did not run the WM-6DC under strict conditions for comparison. That means the level was set rather conservative which forced me to do some hiss reduction which falsifies the sound quality slightly. The analog setting is much more affording indeed. As I told, I ran it just for fun.

2. The WM-6DC was the last in the signal chain. There was the Microtrack attached to the analog output of the premix of the SD788. Then the WM-6DC again was attached to the analog output of the Mictrotrack. In fact, that was not fair to the analog recording device because the analog signal chain was much longer than for the other recorders. Also I cannot swear that the analog mix was set very carefully and that holds for the output of the microtrack as well or even more.

Nevertheless I am still impressed about the quality of these old machines.