Using my HD800S, Lyr3 with a Psvane 6SN7 UK Black Plate, Yggdrasil DAC, and the AES digital feed from my Emotiva ERC-3, I just listened to both of my Solti CD’s and from 9:25 to the 12:00 minute mark and no voices in the background. In the days of making recordings on analogue tapes there was always the possibility of some bleed through of the magnetic information from one revolution of the reel to the next. Pre or post echo was not uncommon. A lot of the equipment of those days was not as revealing as today’s and on some CD’s especially the higher cost re-mastering’s by K2, MOFI, and others, especially those done in Japan, bring out finer or more obvious details that are revealed more clearly than was ever possible with the equipment of the past.
At the start of the 9:25 mark the opening bars of the 1st movement come back with great vehemence for the entire orchestra, especially the pounding tympani. At points the horns and some wood winds are playing more softly than the others behind the rest of the orchestra. Horns and some woodwinds can mimic or sound like the human voice in ways that say strings and tympani can’t, especially when embedded in 90 some other instruments most of them going full tilt
When I got out of the service in 1970 and started my life in audio I early on acquired (on LP of course) my favorite rock; CSNY, Stones, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, etc. But I was exposed to classical all my life growing up so I also had Mozart #40 and 41 on EMI with Giulini, Klemperer’s Beethoven and Brahms, the usual war horse recordings of the day. While shopping at Franklin Music one time my sales guy there was Jimmy who I believe also had some ties to the classical music station in Philly, WFLN. I saw a copy of Mahler’s 2nd symphony with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra on RCA. The cover caught my attention and he suggested I might like it but to be prepared for much more complexity to decipher. And he was right, it turned my brain inside out trying to take it all in and follow all the lines of melody, rhythms, and instrumentation in the scoring, even compared to the classical composers I was very familiar with. But, I’m still constantly surprised at the occasional, “never heard or noticed that before even after so many repeated plays”.
When I listened to say CSNY it was easy for my brain to hear each voice and instrument individually or in combination right out of the starting gate. I honed my skill at doing that with Beethoven, Brahms, et al, over time. Had to start all over again with Mahler (and Wagner with all his leitmotivs in combinations in his late opera’s). But, anyway, I sidetracked myself, LOL!
Was this a CD or Streaming / Download you were listening to?
); however, Im not treble sensitive so for me to perceive something as shrill likely suggests there is an issue, maybe its just a random coincidence of a couple of suboptimal recordings.