He did, on two counts. Just a few quick words from him and I'm no longer interested in taking the JBLs home. Company policies would have had me stuck with them if I bought them and I can't demo them at home first either. It would have been a royal pain in the arse anyway.
He also found this for me.
http://www.amazon.com/1812-Overture-Capriccio-Italien-Wellingtons/dp/B000PMFTE0
Yes, Seth did ask me to recommend an 1812 with real cannon. In this case bronze cannon made at Douai France and the same cannon use by Napoleon in 1812 at Moscow. The recording also includes the carillon at the Riverside Church New York.
This was my reply to Seth.
Funnily enough, by far the best version of what you are looking for comes from the fifties!
This is by far the best and has the most realistic cannon shots. The performance is also the best.
There is nothing to touch this one.
Back then the Minnesota Orchestra was the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.
These Mercury Living presence recordings were made by the legendary Robert Fine, and his wife, Wilma Cozart. The recordings were made on Ampex machines, this one a two track. Microphones were spaced Telefunken omnis. This Telefunken outfit morphed into Neumann.
His wife when she was nearly a hundred years old remastered these great recordings for the Digital age. She had a vintage Ampex machine tweaked to perfection by a Japanese specialist.
She did a remarkable job of remastering.
A lot of these Mercury Living presence recordings were originally recorded in three channel, left, center, right. These were either three track Ampex magnetic tape, or three track optical recorders. Wilma Cozart remastered these for SACD, and they are fantastic.
On the CD is the history of the recording of the old cannons and the historic cannons for Beethoven's Wellington's Victory.
This is a fun disc and the fidelity is superb and puts the vast majority of modern engineers to shame.
Yes, this recording will give any subs a work out. It is not just the bass though, the whole acoustic envelope is perfect with phenomenal transient response.
Trust me, you won't go wrong with this one!
The only negative to this recording is that there is no chorus. Overall though despite the fact this recording was made in 1958, the mono one in 1954, this is still by far and away the best recording technically. Really everybody should hear this, and see how in many ways how little far we have advanced.
Despite the over dubs, the tape hiss is slight and never intrusive. As far as I can tell Robert Fine never saturated the tapes which is an amazing achievement.
I have just listened to it. I have not played it in some time. I'm even more impressed. After the quiet string introduction the first hard drum beat made me jump out of my skin.
Everything is recorded perfectly, strings, woodwind percussion and especially the brass. In fact I think this gets absolutely top honors over anything done since, for the most realistic recording of orchestral brass. It is just like the real thing.
The disc also contains a wonderful performance of the Capriccio Italien and Beethoven's Wellington's Victory. This includes very accurate recording of vintage muskets.
Initially Beethoven was going to dedicate his third symphony, the Eroica to Napoleon. However Beethoven came to realize what an awful despot Napoleon was and vigorously scratched out the dedication. To rub salt in the wound he wrote a piece to celebrate the Duke of Wellington's victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.
In April 1959 we all made our way to the Hotel Russel on Russel Square, for the annual Audio Fare.
Just about every room was trying to belt out this recording, largely unsuccessfully. Styluses jumping grooves and general miss tracking the rule, along with blown and bottoming speakers.
That year was quite the show!
Even now this recording can only be reproduced properly by the very finest of reproducing systems. It takes much more than good subs, I can tell you that!
