What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol.IX)

On vinyl from 1987. Springsteen is very hit or miss with me, but when he hits it's a home run as this is. His singing here is emotional and soulful, like on Darkness on the Edge of Town. The instrumentation is basic and apt. And very nice sound for a DDA recording.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpVGKnrLz-Y

Tom Poster, Jennifer Pike, Doric String Quartet

String quartet in C minor, Op. 35 (completed by D'Indy) by Ernest Chausson

Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet in D major, Op. 21 by Ernest Chausson

The Grave movement from the Concert is one of my all time favourite pieces of music.  There is something so gripping, so haunting, so honest, so moving about it.  So simple yet so profound and symbolic.  I could listen to the climax, which might amount to 10 seconds, over and over as it completely immobilizes me and leaves me powerless against resisting an emotional response.

I think Tom Poster, Jennifer Pike and the Doric String Quartet make a nice team here.

Suzanne Vega. Self-titled debut on vinyl from 1985. Fresh sounding. Nice vocals.  Half the songs have no percussion, unusual for a pop LP.

First listen on CD.

Love this album for the same reason!  I have always felt MM ruined the group's sound.  "Cheat the Hangman" is one of my favorite cuts

Anthony

Didn't MM always sing like he had a turd in his mouth????

why?see this review from sound stage:

http://www.soundstagexperience...usand-shades-of-blue

Very simply.

You need some Early Music lover friends Meetings, listenings; hifiing.

You need some really good records what wake up to love theese tunes - otherwise give it up.

You need good set what delivers an audiophile enjoyment here. It happens quite occasionally in the hifi world; Naims - especially Olives - are perfect in this area.

And there are really lots of excellent records; usually after 1995.; complet 'Golden Age'

You/we are sitting on Internet a lot - CDs are usually avaliable if you know not only Amazon and ebay.

So - go ahead. You will find treasures.

Great album with a fantastic line up:

Larry Coryell  guitars

John McLaughlin guitars

Chick Corea electric piano

Miroslav Vitous  double bass

Billy Cobham  drums

Diego Ortíz: Recercarda Primera

from Trattado de Glosadas 1553

Performed by friends; very good sound, really...

Vinyl:-

Here's to Madge!

Pollini's brilliant Diabelli variations. Not much happening here as my CD player is under maintenance and I'm stuck to itunes. Even with a good async DAC, sound is only acceptable, lacking the conviction and persuasion of the CDP.

EJ

A truly good DAC and good playback software can match and surpass a very good CDP.

it requires a decent amount of technical knowledge to put such a set together though

Hi Aleg, the difference is probably that my dac is only good and not truly good But my CDP is definitely very good and quite a bit more involving. No shortage of tech knowledge here, if I may be so immodest. Of course, there is a bias towards CD, as I mentioned before I like handling the physical medium. To each their own, I don't like my apple enough to grant it the honor of playing source for longer than necessary.

Cheers,

EJ

On CD:-

EJ

good to hear you have that awareness. A lot of people toss together a DAC with a good review ( have you ever read a bad one ;-)) and a computer and some free software and are disappointed it doesn't sound as good as their CD-player,

while there can and has to be done a lot of 'tweaking' on software and hardware level to make a general purpose computer sound as good as a dedicated playback device like a CD-player.

not all people have that awareness and skills to do so.

That's also the reason I think Naim is and will be so successful with their streamers, they figured it out for you, even though you still see a lot of difficult technical issues popping up.

As easy as that, then!

For one reason or another, I had not really bought classical music since the Mozart bicentenary. When I return to those CD's now, they sound thin (especially HIP from 20 -25 years ago) or overly ripe (Davis' 70's Mozart operas).

Since I joined this forum I've taken up quite a few of the recommendations by yourself and others. Even on my Uniti2, the Alpha and Harmonia Mundi recordings just sing. But it's not just the quality of the recordings that seems to have improved - some of the younger musicians are phenomenal and their feeling for the music and how to perform it lifts even lesser works. I'm even getting over my dislike of the counter-tenor!

Regards,

Vlad

from the Montecassino Codex:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgVjsNHbjOg

Carlos Mena - 'complicated' countertenor means ultraexcellent voice but quite difficult task for the hifi set.

On average set you will skip this track.

On good set - totally goosebump.

This is getting played a lot at the moment..