Search - Jean C. Roche, Jean Roche :: Birds Awakening in Bresse

A good, but not great, bird CD

James Remsen, Jr. | Lindenhurst, NY USA | 05/24/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"From Jean C. Roche's Sittelle label comes this disc, one of several they have published of dawn choruses of birds in different parts of Europe (chiefly France). Roche made the recordings of birds and a few frogs on this CD himself, and they are loaded with sound...capturing the wonderful cacophony (that's not really the oxymoron it seems, if you like listening to birds) of an early French morning. If you listen to a lot of CDs from this label (I have), you know that Roche's technical crew produces nature CDs that are very "hot" sounding; that is, the intensity of the sound is very high and the discs have an overall "bright" sound. When done carefully, this kind of mastering is something my ears happen to like; I enjoy hearing high frequency sounds (which most bird songs are) delivered from the speakers with a lot of "punch." But this disc, unfortunately, suffers from overkill on the high frequencies; some of the bird songs lapse into distortion. This somewhat taints my enjoyment of what could have been a great bird disc. I love these Sittelle CDs and try to grab every one I can, but those of you looking for their best efforts can pass this one up. It's not terrible, by any means, but the sound quality just isn't top notch."