Sound Recording Reviews

Only a few weeks prior to this writing, OASI Recordings mailed a flyer to their customers announcing what appeared to be the first CD edition of the complete recordings of Enrico Caruso. Produced by Bayer, a German label heretofore unknown to the author, these recordings promised to be brand new transfers of the original recordings, "cleaned up" by the trademarked NoNOISE system. The NoNOISE process is not new to CD collectors, having been used by Philips on a series of reissues of analog tapes from the 1950s, including some of the original 35mm Everest recordings. This writer's reactions to the NoNOISE system, based on the Philips reissues, had not been entirely positive, the process having removed much of the original hall ambience, making the recordings sound rather dry. In addition, the high frequencies seemed a bit mufiled when compared to good LP pressings of these same recordings. The OASI flyer was reassuring, stating that "Whatever the results this may have had on instrumental and orchestral recordings, it has truly worked wonders on this material!" One statement in the OASI ad provided cause for concern: the claim that the new set began with the 1900-1901 Path (Anglo-Italian Commerce Co.) cylinders. Knowledgeable collectors have been aware for at least thirteen years that these dates are incorrect, thanks to a superb article by the late Martin Sokol,1 and more recent research by Dr. John R. Bolig,2 which places them between October and December, 1903. But since the OASI advertisement stated that the CDs were "ADD," it was reasonable to assume that these were fresh digital transfers of the original recordings. The review copy was purchased through a local record dealer who orders regularly from Koch Imports (the U.S. importer for the Bayer set). Upon opening the large box and examining the CDs, the author became suspicious, since the CDs were stamped "AAD," which seemed to indicate that these were not brand new transfers of the Caruso recordings. As shall be explained below, this proved to be precisely the case, the CDs being nothing more than a careless reprocessing of previously released analog tapes. The Bayer collection contains fourteen CDs allegedly covering the complete Caruso recordings, plus a fifteenth disc devoted to a demonstration of the various stages involved in removing the noise from these recordings, including a first stage of filter-