Alison Krauss BBC4

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Thanks in advance,
Trev

Most of Alison's CDs have outstanding sound quality - some of them are reference recordings.

Start with this one - you will not be disappointed.

Her voice is incredible - I went with friends to see what I thought was O Brother Where Art Thou and it turned out to be the concert of the same! I hadn't heard of her before then and her voice blew me away - almost cartoon-esque how such a small lady could project such a fantastic sound!

She really excels on vinyl and the Robert Plant album sounds terrific, albeit I think she plays second fiddle to Robert on many tracks.

MilesSmiles recommendation is stunning on vinyl albeit it costs some! So Long So Wrong has some cracking good tracks also but I must confess to being much less convinced by the make vocalist who pops up from time to time - Hick!

Peter

PS Really annoyed not to have caught the bbc show.

Peter

Is it on iPlayer perhaps Peter?

I largely agree with Trev.

I have Raising Sand and three other Alison Krauss CDs.

I personally wouldn't go so far as to say that Raising Sand is unlistenable, but it's certainly noticeably fatiguing.

Her other CDs with Union Station are fine.

Alas, for some reason not available tonym.

Peter

Lonely Runs Both Ways and Forget About It are both very good.

The live album mentioned by Oliver is extremely good, especially on MFSL vinyl, worth putting up with the hillwilliams who surface every few tracks.

Now on Iplayer

quote:

Filmed at the Tracking Room recording studio in Nashville, the queen of bluegrass-infused country, Alison Krauss performs songs from her 2007 album A Hundred Miles Or More. Backed by members of her regular Union Station band, Alison is joined for duets by James Taylor, Brad Paisley and Tony Rice.

Broadcast on:
BBC Four, 8:30pm Thursday 12th February 2009
Duration:
30 minutes
Available until:
8:59pm Thursday 19th February 2009

quote:

Originally posted by MilesSmiles:
Most of Alison's CDs have outstanding sound quality - some of them are reference recordings.

Start with this one - you will not be disappointed.

Thanks for the tip - I'll see if I can locate it. Plus - the consensus seems to be that most of her CDs are fine - I just guess I chose a poor one.

Northpole (Peter) - where did you find the vinyl versions? I always prefer vinyl for "non classical" music, but it can be hard to find.

Milo Tweenie - You're right, I was exaggerating a bit when I said it was unlistenable, but I guess I was disappointed that I'd bought a CD which was so fatiguing to listen to - particularly when the sound on the TV programme was so much better.

Thanks everyone,
Trev

I've not heard it tho lots of press on it. I shouldn't complain about rough voices as I listen to Dylan, but this team just didn't thrill me. I have the AK+US, I like it very much. Nothing on TV tonight so I'll listen to it and my collection of Emmy Lou Harris on vinyl. Enough of Dylan for now.

Trev
I bought my lp's in Graham's Hi-Fi however, they only keep a small selection of albums and I'm not sure whether these would still be in stock.

Diverse Vinyl can be a good source for albums but be warned, the records I referred to aren't exactly bargain basement!

http://www.diversevinyl.com/htm/results.php?sp=0&al=Any...=10000000&kw=krauss#

Peter

Just watched the programme on iplayer, she has an amazing voice and her choice of musicians is superb.
Re: AK vinyl, it's bloody expensive.

I too just watched and enjoyed this on iplayer. The new HD feed is very watchable even on a big plasma screen. She certainly has a lovely voice and some of the songs she sang were really gorgeous. Can't get excited about the hillbilly stuff though.

Thanks for highlighting this Trev.

Ian

quote:

Originally posted by Trevp:
Did anyone else here listen to this programme?

I was completely stunned by the purity of her vocals and the musicianship of the backing band.

Thus encouraged, I went to buy a CD. I ended up with "Raising Sand" where she sings with Robert Plant. Unfortunately, I found that I had completely wasted my money because - yet again - the CD was unlistenable because it was severely clipped. Surely this kind of ham-fisted mastering is particularly inappropriate to this type of music?

I've tied to include a picture here of a sample of "killing the blues" (I've never done this before but if it works you'll see what I mean).

[IMG]/home/trev/Desktop/Screenshot-02 - Killing the Blues.png[/IMG]

If anyone can recommend any Alison Krauss CDs which have not been mangled, please let me know and I will try them.

Trev

I have almost all of of her albums. They all sound great and I must have listened to them many many times.

Not sure why you say that "Raising Sands" is unlistenable. It's done a little different compared to her other albums, but it sounds very good. In a lesser system(no offense here), you will find the bass muddy and overpowering... if your system resolves the lower registers well, you will appreciate what Robert and Alison is trying to create.

Kmchow 98,

The album is clipped. You can see it if you look at it using Audacity or a similar program. It can't sound good on any system. The bass sounds horrible because the peaks are chopped off. I have other CDs which are not ruined by insensitive mastering which sound incredibly good on my system.

Clipping causes serious problems with digital reproduction because a flat topped waveform has many ways of being interpreted by the DAC. This causes aliasing distortion.

quote:

Originally posted by Trevp:
Kmchow 98,

The album is clipped. You can see it if you look at it using Audacity or a similar program. It can't sound good on any system. The bass sounds horrible because the peaks are chopped off. I have other CDs which are not ruined by insensitive mastering which sound incredibly good on my system.

Clipping causes serious problems with digital reproduction because a flat topped waveform has many ways of being interpreted by the DAC. This causes aliasing distortion.

Hi Trevp,

I discovered Alison Krauss after listening to this album(raising sand). Subsequently, I bought 6-7 of her albums. All very good.

Perhaps it is clipped. But that wasn't on my mind when I was enjoying it.

Hi Kmchow,

The consensus seems to be that most of her albums are well recorded and mastered, so I'm going to try some of the recommendations out. I guess that "raising sand" might be an exception because Robert Plant probably approved the final version. T-Bone Burnett is a well respected producer so I would think that the final mix was probably excellent (and Northpole said that the vinyl version was very good), and with good mastering, I would think it would be an amazing CD. Its just a pity that the mastering engineer spoiled the sound.

By the way, I was exaggerating a little when I said it was unlistenable (due to my disappointment with the sound quality) - but I do find it quite fatiguing.

All the best,
Trev

I also got into Alison through O Brother. The thing about most of her albums is that if you have one you probably don't need more. The recordings are nice but every album follows the same format and, if you can't take the other stuff, no amount of albums will change your mind.

Raising Sand is an interesting one. T-Bone productions are anything but fatiguing. So, I fired up Audscity and Cakewalk Sonar. I never trust the former as it has some graphics cards issues, which appear to be undocumented. Sure enough, Audacity shows clipping. Sonar does not!

Next step was to source a copy of the reissued Raising Sand from a colleague. Did this ages ago after a previous thread on such issues. Interestingly, massive difference. Clipping on both.

So, source yourself an early CD copy of Raising Sand and check it out.

FWIW my system clearly showed a difference in sound but there's no way I would characterize that as fatiguing. More a lack of space around the drums and acoustic bass. Certainly not a dealbreaker. An especially surprising outcome given some views if the cdx2.

You might want to look at system set up.

Mike

Hi Mike,

The main problem for me with this CD is the bass which sounds very "muddy" to me. I have other CDs with acoustic bass which sound perfectly good - you can hear the transient detail and the bass is powerful without being overpowering. Looking at the waveforms, a lot of the flat top clipping appears to be at lower frequencies (of course also wiping out any HF information which may be carried in these lost samples). Maybe the digital processing circuitry in your CDX2 is better able to produce an acceptable sound from clipped data than my CD5i, but surely using the source-first principle, CDs should absolutely not be clipped in the first place. We are paying money for damaged goods. Our systems should not have to compensate for CDs which clearly do not conform to red-book standards. There's a saying in computer programming which I think applies here: Garbage in - Garbage out.

All the best,
Trev

How do you tell an early RS CD from a later one?