ARTCRAFT Cassettes feature recordings of Interpretive Arrangements on the Studio's 7' Steinway Duo-Art "AR" electric player grand and/or the 6'6" Steinway Grand Pianola, Style "O". They are excellent performances, and some cuts of these recordings have been featured on radio broadcasts - especially those devoted to Ragtime music.
NOTE: Due to the overwhelming success of our ARTCRAFT Music Rolls business, which is 'soaring' due to the conversion from decades of PO mailings and printed advertising material, we have temporarily discontinued Cassette recordings. It is our hope to provide ARTCRAFT Cassettes, and possibly CDs, in the very near future.
Check this Web page in the near future, when we ought to reintroduce ARTCRAFT Recordings, once again!
Thank You! — L. Douglas Henderson (October 28, 2000)
We hope you'll bear with us, for the Cr02 Stereo Cassettes that are produced by the Studio are without equal!
ARTCRAFT is firmly committed to the high-quality analogue Cassette recording process, featuring a strong audio signal … high bias Master Tapes on Tandberg open reel decks (at 15 i.p.s.) … real-time Cassette duplicating … and Steinway grand pianos in a perfectly-balanced acoustic Studio situation. We also use professional quality AKG cardioid dynamic microphones, which put the instrument "into your room" instead of "around the corner" as so many brittle digital recordings seem to do, because of problems in recording the pianoforte. In spite of the decade-plus of media hype, analogue open reel decks continue to be built for the high end market … and analogue SOURCE recordings are still being produced for those who wish to hear the piano "close up" and without a muddy echo effect.
Mr. Henderson — the ARTCRAFT arranger — says, "CDs with 16-bit sampling rate are fine for many purposes, but you can't beat an analogue source piano recording: on CD, tape or an old LP." (Sixteen bits was too low a standard for capturing the elusive 'singing' quality of the treble piano strings. Now the industry is talking about 24-bit digital audio, after years of promoting CDs as the 'perfect' medium for sound recordings!)
As with the acclaimed ARTCRAFT Music Rolls, ARTCRAFT Cassettes enjoy a connoisseur's niche of their own. They can also be compared with the sound of an actual piano, given good speakers and high quality audio playback equipment.
(May 26, 1997)