No CD 318 no Gould!

You know that his really late recordings were done on a Yamaha and that his really early recordings (e.g. the first Goldberg's) were not on CD 318 right?

When YOU make a recording, do you ask the technicians to add a lot of hiss and turn down the sound of the piano?

I know of several cases where there's been an argument between the artist and the sound engineer. The artist would want to be able to hear the hall, recreating what one hears when they're at a recital - the piano at a slight distance and resonance around. But sound engineers like a more "pure" sound - piano only, preferring to add reverb in later so they can control the sound of the "hall."

I've never heard of a sound engineer preferring digitised reverb to recorded reverb. Most large spaces are recorded in such a way that reverb is picked up by extra mics in the distant portions of a space. These mics can then, after the recording process, be selectively faded in or out according to taste. But that is beside the point, because the argument you are describing is "what sound should we produce," not "how do we produce a certain sound." In the latter case, the sound engineer knows best.

Until someone actually does that, we won't know.

BTW, some of pieces from the Rachmaninoff "Window in Time" project don't sound like they are being made by a robot to me, and I wouldn't claim to be able to tell them from a human playing. I don't know if I think they sound like Rachmaninoff himself exactly, but they do sound human enough to me to pass.

The thing that seemed strange to me was the recording from the pianist's viewpoint. We all know that that is not the best position from which to hear the piano. We have to "suffer" through that when playing ourselves - why would anyone want to do that for a recording?!

I have this argument with every sound engineer every time I record. Without exception.