Anechoic recordings of symphonic music..

[midrange]

Back in the early 80s I played in the BBC Radio Orchestra, which played light music. We recorded in a studio that had thick pile carpeting, all 4 walls and ceiling were sound deadened and there was a floor to ceiling thick curtain 9/10ths of the length of the studio separating the brass wind and rythm from the strings. It was horrible to play in. At the mixing Mantovani levels of reverb were added to the strings.

 

[Pano]

Wow that's nutz. It must have been hard to hear each other, a strange feeling. Why would the beeb want to record so dry? For control later?

 

[Remlab]

I downloaded some of these and was a bit surprised at the format. They are 48 Khz sample rate, and 192 kb MP3 - each track recorded about 20dB lower than it ought to be. Then I realized that you are meant to do this multitrack and mix them together. Strange, but useful perhaps.

The Denon anechoic CD is 44.1/16 of course, and already mixed into stereo.

It was a surprise that I had to turn everything up to its absolute maximum for normal playback levels. Even with this, the maximum peak I could get was just over 100db/1m