From: tmcfarla@fraser.sfu.ca (Tara McFarlane)
Subject: Re: Hindi or Classical CD's
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 09:18:28 GMT

i have generally found classical indian cds to have excellent sound. sure,      quality can and does vary. what is essential normally is that you look for cds
that are 'DDD' meaning the recording, and all the processing are done digitally.next you have to make sure it is on a good label. finally, if we were talking
about some other genre of music you could look for a review of the cd you
were interested in. however, i at least, have found reviews of indian classical
music to be difficult to come by so i tend to stick by certain labels,
the nimbus label in particular. my guess is that someone of indian extraction
approaches music selection differently. namely, you look for the work of 
favorite artists, and go by word of mouth from other indo-whatevers. i've
noticed that within india and indian communities abroad the vast majority of
music is sold in tape form, moreover i suspect that a lot of the favorite
artists and recordings are produced in india. well, music produced for tape
release is rarely recorded digitally and i have my doubts that digital
technology even exists in india. the sort of it is, you get music on tapes
recommended to you, or the music you are looking for is not recorded digitally
and so it sounds awful if it is rereleased on cd. however, if you are willing
to search out indian music produced on western labels (which might be ignored
by indian communities even though it may be far more easy to find in western
countries than music on indian labels), i think you'd be pleased with the
quality. 

now i don't know where the participants in here are responding from, mostly
from the usa and uk i suspect (when i was in india a few months ago i noticed
an article in the times of india bemoaning the fact that email even was not
available in india yet). i'm in canada myself. i bring this up because where
you live determines how you are going to find this stuff. i can't offer any     advice outside of north america. however, in the states i find tower records
to be an excellent source for classical indian cds. you have to look in their
international music section (usually filed by countries). now i don't know
how accessable tower records is in small town usa. i'm more familiar with 
larger cities myself, particularly seattle. but if you are stuck in a small
town mail order is probably your best bet. do avoid columbia, and the like.
they sell nothing but mainstream pablam. nimbus has its own mailorder 
catalogue i believe and i've posted its address in this news group previously
i believe (it's gone now though). i'm sure there are other reliable sources
but i find nimbus' indian classical masters to be an excellent series that
would exhaust my disposable income at least if i tried to purchase all
they offered.

finally let me say that there are advantages to cds other than sound.
one is that they hold a helluva lot of music. they can contain over
70 minutes of continuous music. therefore you don't have to get up
and flip the tape over, or wait for the auto reverse. additionally longer
pieces of music can be recorded seeing as more time is available. second,
third, whatever (i'm giving up the count) song selection is much easier as
most cds are now programmable. the drawback with cds used to be that they
were expensive. i took this for granted myself seeing as i generally found
them about twice the price of vinyl while that was still being sold, but 
recently i've looked at the price of cassettes which i never buy myself
and found that there isn't too much of a price difference.
 
besides, how ofetn have you had a tape eaten?        
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Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.misc