There is no surface noise or tape hiss unless you listen very closely. This is due in part to the latest computer technology. The producer, Jacob Harnoy, has assembled a formidable array of hardware and software with the aim of extracting as much music as possible from the old discs. He is very successful at this because he has excellent musical instincts and a great deal of patience. Technology alone cannot deliver these results.
Some distortion remains, especially in the louder passages.
This must have been present on the original tapes and could not have been remedied. I could not hear any evidence of the first, while traces of the echo remain as a blurring of the timbres in the Trio, D 898. The sound of the second Trio is not the same as that of the first, with a more constricted feeling, less high end, and a duller sound. It suffers less from distortion, so on balance it is as good. This is also the longest Compact Disc I have ever seen - nearly a minute over the theoretical maximum for the format.