The Golden Age of Classical Recordings (1954 - 1967)
Recordings during this period were produced using valve (tube) amplifiers and the lacquers were cut using valve driven lathes. As a result these early records have a rich glowing sound quality not present on most later pressings made with transistor technology. The use of simple microphone set-ups, usually just one or two (ie Analogue Recording) may in part account for the more natural and satisfying sound of these early recordings.
Audio file format
"The Masterpieces" provides music in Ogg Vorbis and Mp3 format.
Vorbis aims to be more efficient than MP3, with transparency being available at lower bitrates.
WAV Files are the original, uncompressed masters.
"The Masterpieces" then uses these WAV 24 bit files to encode the Audio file.
