Fidelio!

I always look forward to visiting recording engineer René Laflamme of Fidelio at FSI, because he always has new fun recordings to play.

He didn't disappoint, either. This year's treat was the Micheal Donato Trio, which delivered a smoking "Nocturno." Next up was Laflamme's recording of the carillon of St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal. The high-rez digital recording revealed all the ambient noises of outdoor Montreal, while also offering direct and immediate sound of the carillon itself.

"It sounds like you're standing right in front of it. It doesn't sound at all like you were on the ground and it was way up in the steeple," I said.

"I wasn't standing on the ground," Laflamme explained. "I was up in a tree, holding Schoeps v62s!"

Later this month, Laflamme will begin selling native-resolution downloads of his 24-bit 88.2kHz and 96kHz recordings on his website. Expect the cost to be about $30/album. "Uncompressed digital files of that resolution eat up a lot of bandwidth," he explained. "It's an expense."

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