>>3 Kenneth Wilkinson is quoted as saying (in Michael H. Gray, The Birth of Decca Stereo, in the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, Nov. 1987, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 7): "You set up the Tree just slightly in front of the orchestra. The two outriggers, again, one in front of the first violins, that's facing the whole orchestra, and one over the cellos. We used to have two mikes on the woodwind section -- they were directional mikes, 56's in the early days. You'd see a mike on the tympani, just to give it that little bit of clarity, and one behind the horns. If we had a harp, we'd have a mike trained on the harp. Basically, we never used too many microphones. I think they're using too many these days."
For a similar interpretation better carried out in playing and sound, Ansermet's second stereo Firebird (and his last recording) with the Phillharmonia is one of the best.
Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra as conducted by the composer tests a system's ability to focus solo instruments and groups in space, to accurately represent in true proportion the dynamics of a soft solo and a full orchestra plus everything in between, and to transmit faithfully the exposed voice of every instrument. Engineer Kenneth Wilkinson's characteristic stage layout is so clearly mapped you could draw a picture, from the four horns in the left rear, not far from a woody xylophone, to the trumpets in the right rear, to the woodwinds spread in the middle distance from center left to center right, tympani and bass drum center rear, high percussion on extreme opposite sides of the stage (those sides well beyond the edges of the speakers), a harp in the right center front, second violins behind the firsts on the left, and so on. The whole orchestra is right there before your eyes and ears, from the tiny tweet of a solo piccolo to ail the percussion going full blast to the whole ensemble letting loose at the end. The Decca mike tree puts the bulk of the orchestra outside the lateral distance- a few feet- covered by the tree itself, and I actually heard this arc of continuous sound arrayed behind and around the speakers rather than clumped claustrophobically between them.
For the audiophiles who were more concerned with spaciousness, depth, and a romanticized ideal of luxuriant richness and warmth, than with the accurate reproduction of instrumental sounds, The Kenneth Wilkins's recordings may sound very good. However his recordings were objectively flawed by a swaybacked frequency in order to make them sound more spacious, more deeply layered, and more euphonic” than the actuali live performances. This took some of the edge, bite, and realism from music. Fidelity to sonic truth would dictate that recording have no character of their own at all to fully apreciate music as the music.
Of さ more very large by correct revitalization, depth of a helped sound and abundant richness and warmth || is romantic, and, for a high-fidelity lover connected with a pictured ideal more, recording of Kenneth ウィルキンズ can think very well. However, his recording becomes the stratum by them more deeply broadly, and the spinal column executes execution in life than actuali which was objectively defective by the frequency that curved in order to be able to let beautiful sound key think more. This caught edge or one slice and a little of us of realism which I had finished looking at from music. A faithfulness for truth of a sound, recording is completely completely apreciate music as music with a character of their thing if I will order you that I do not have it.
I think practically everything that Lewis Layton did was misguided, or just wrong. All the recordings by him sounds awful. What he was doing was compressing dynamic range during loud parts and pulling up the volume during quiet parts.