J.S. Bach Masterworks

Excelente producto, todos los cd impecables. Buen sonido. Recomendado

Nice collection of Bach. Other reviewers with more expertise than I have already commented on the collection, inclusion choice, etc.I went back and forth 3 or 4 stars for recording/mastering quality. I lean toward 4 as for the price - its a good value. Ultimately, though, there were just a number of quality issues that lead me to decide on 3 stars. From reviews I expected a bit more consistent high quality ... and was occasionally disappointed.Ergo, my 2 cents...Some of the disks are great. I expect classical/instrumental and vocal music to sound great - "great" is what they >should< be. Many are good - good is acceptable, it's passing, but it's not going to get high marks from me in review. Problem is, I felt several fell short of good. And a couple are down right teeth-grating. First, several had somewhat mushy and recessed sound sound, lacking clarity and presence and having a pretty flat ambiance ... if there really was an ambiance at all. Some of the recordings are old so have, as expected, some hiss and sound kinda compressed but given the "era" I can get over that; I see the point of not messing with things trying to clean these up and ending up losing some character of the original performance. Interestingly in one older recording, you can hear faint humming along to the music in the background (very subtle, need very clean system to hear it...). However some that aren't "that old" seemed to be marginal in production. It wasn't unusual to have pops and clicks here and there in addition to the frumpy sound described above, even on 'newer' recordings. Hmmm. I saw some reviews saying CD8 had problems. I was a little worried about that, so listened to ALL disks before reviewing. All mine played fine, but on disk 8 I noticed one one track ended abruptly mid song. Really annoying! On a couple others, St. John passion in particular, the tracks have horrible cuts - herky-jerky, cutting off the last word(s) of phrases and hacking sustains then jumping into the next phrase but missing the first split second. This resulted in these disks being jarring and nearly painful to listen to. Is it amateur hour in the studio? Really? I'd rather have a few looong tracks containing multiple movements in smooth succession than 30-some tracks with cringe-inducing cuts between each and every movement. BUT if you do decide to chop it up, at least massage it a bit with some fades and restful pauses so it's not the auditory equivalent of riding a vintage bicycle down a flight of stairs. Needless to say, the production pretty much ruined the performance for me.Overall I'm satisfied with the 33 disk set ... satisfied. But just. I'll enjoy many of these disks for many years so 3-4 stars and I recommend the set for the price I paid. But there were those CDs that were just oh so disappointing. If you rip to MP3 and listen on your phone with earbuds or in the car with the windows down, other than the few disks with choppy cuts, you may not be disappointed. If you have a hi-fi system, and/or listen with decent headphones amped, expect to enjoy many tracks, but have some "meh, okay" experiences as well as a few that leave you wondering if that particular disc might be better repurposed as part of a mobile along with broken coke bottles and tin-foil balls.

I like the fact that all of Bach’s music is in one package.