30 Years In Classical Music

In the world of classical music recording, Fonè has for almost thirty years been using advanced techniques, aimed at re-creating the atmosphere of the original performance. Each new recording is the result of an enthusiastic encounter between the art of performance and the art of recording and aims to reproduce the spirit with which works of the past were executed.

One basic feature, which determines the difference between fonè and other record companies, is the recording of performances in their natural spaces, which is in the places where they were originally presented. This leads to a constant search for suitable locations, and the choice of churches, theatres, country mansions, drawing rooms and so on.

The recordings are carried out with the utmost simplicity, the only way not to do violence to the music: all the equipment is high fidelity; use is made of valve-type paired microphones manufactured in the years 1947 and 1949 (U47, U48 and M49) with an extremely natural and transparent timbre and a bi-microphonic field effect; these microphones have a very important history: they were used to record the Beatles at the Abbey Road Studio and by the RCA for the “Living Stereo” recordings.

No use is made of electronic manipulation or artificial correction of the signal, which while making sound easier to realize also render it unacceptably unnatural. With this method, the musical information can be transferred to the analog standard, to the digital standard DSD.

Fonè uses for the analog standard Nagra 4S, Studer C37, and J37 and Ampex ATR 102 machines; for the digital standard, in collaboration with Philips the latest DSD (Direct Stream Digital) technology. For all successive stages of elaboration and control where the replay is required, highly sophisticated systems of musical recording are used.