Music that sounds great on your system

Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Sibelius, Dvorak, Greig, Handel, Purcell, Elgar, Piazzola, Walton, Brahms, Schumann, Mendelsohnn, ... well all the music I love, which forms an even longer list, sounds beautiful to me on any system I have owned. I never worry too much about the precise "hifi" aspect of recordings, so long as musical balance is lucid, and the recording is clear enough to be articulate!

All I want from replay is that it is capable of reproducing a musically well balanced recording with a musically lucidly balanced effect, and also be as articulate or as svelte as the moment in the music requires. You cannot have more articulacy than the recording, but you can have as much! Some sets are indeed capable of turning everything into a smooth Mantovanni style of sound, and Bach would be rolling in his grave at this!

All I need is a replay system that does nothing to attract my attention away from the music. Easy - as I know what annoys me in replay. Number One fault is "stereo" as it has precisely nothing musical to add, but, as it is always un-natural and imperfect, it is always worse than mono for me, even when replaying recordings that were intended as stereo only releases ...

ATB from George

A good question - & if we are honest we all have something that we like to show off with

Dear Mike,

There is one here who can definitely state that he has never shown off his replay equipment with his own collection of music. The defnite case is I!

If I wanted to show off my replay set [happened twice in 2001, by the way] I got them to bring their own choice of music! Aerosmith and Radiohead sounded dire on my CDS2, 52, 180, SBLs, but Gary Moore was very enjoyable for me as well as the visitor whose CDs they were. Later that year Dire Straits sounded rather nice too, but nothing could rescue a basically badly made recording, apparent on times. Come to think about it. Brothers In Arms sounded quite nice on a third ocasion in 2005 or '6 as well for another friend  ....

If people want to choose from my collection of music recordings they are most welcome to, but this would be because they wanted to listen to the music rather than the quality of recording and replay. This happens quite often, and should become more often in the future now! If they say the replay is nice than I comment that the music must not have engagaed them properly if they had their primary thoughts on the sound of it than than the music itself. Replay is a tool for listening to music, and replay should not take music as the basis of making fascinating sounds unless it is noted that the hobby in question is hifi rather than music as the mptivations for replaying recorded or relayed musical sounds in the first placec. The sound need only be faithful to the expression contained in the music. sufficiently that the ears and brain connect well with the music. For the music lover, once this simple fact is grasped, then the need for constrant upgrades and tweaking completely evapourates! However it is not a cheap option as obtaining more great music in recordings can cost a good deal as well!

ATB from George [who may or may not be alone in having more interest in the music than exciting dynamics, spectacular stereo, or whatever, in replay or recording. When it comes to music the dynamic contrasts are governed by style, and taste, and there are no absolute commandments in this, but a range that remains stylish. One would never find the dynamic contrast in Mozart's music that is often present in that, say, of Rachmaninov, but for me Mozart is listened to much more frequently than Rachmaninov, even if the actual sound of Rachmanonov's music is more colourful in tonal variation, because the different instruments used, and contains a much wider dynamic range, because of the numbers of instruments employed in so many cases].

George,  I am sure there are many like you,  I have a friend with more olive boxes than is good for him that refuses to let any but closest music friends listen to his system.  But he - & it seems you also - has to be an exception to the norm.  No problems,  all very personal & no one should forget that.  But all my other close by hi fi associates are happy to show off their pride & joy - even those with mid-fi stuff.

I have rarely shown off my hi fi,  but yes I have done so,  I selected my list based only on the OP question & did so for that kind of "show off" & not strictly for its music attributes - some are far from musical in the purist sense.  But maybe more important is all the list that I wrote up I do use to audition system changes focusing on the attributes I listed 

My music list can get very uninteresting for the purpose of the OP question

Baroque & ensemble & classic brass is something I am very close to because I used to play,  same for big band & even traditional british brass band material.   As a result some Mozart is important to me, and who can resist Beethoven.   I love blues mostly original Mississippi delta, also the background & history,  that developed naturally into jazz, fusion & some gendres of rock & roll.   

Dear Mike,

Thanks for us being able to share our diverging tastes without a hint of heat generated! T'would be a dull sort of world if we all the same, but being able to differ kindly is something increasing lost on so many here these days.

Thanks for your reply, and best wishes froim George

I like to scare friends with something fairly intense if they ask for a demo.

The opening track of Queens of the Stone Age "Songs for the Deaf" works a treat.

Guys, thanks for a great thread.

Some of my favorite posters here - BigH47, Guy, Stu, George, and Mike-B, makes for a comfortable feeling inside, after a tough day at the office. I would love to meet you all one day.

The office? A euphemism for wrapping up four weeks in a double blind study to treat my OCD with rTMS (magnetism), with no no idea yet whether I received sham treatment or the real thing.

So I take comfort here, and wanted to mention current music that sounds great on my system, including Bonnie Bramlett's album I'm Still The Same, hi-res Tommy (can't get enough of Keith Moon), Ode To Billy Joe with Patricia Barber, Bobby Darin singing Jive, Donovan on Poorman's Sunshine, Rebecca Pidgeon performing Spanish Harlem, Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem, and George Harrison Live In Japan with Eric Clapton.

Dave

Bach, Toccata und Fuge d-moll BWV 565

Played by Helmut Walcha in Lubeck in 1947 in a recording by DG and issued on their new "Archive" label, which was from the start dedicated to revealing old music in stylish performance on historic instruments, played with the most up to date HIP [historically informed performance] practice.

Well it is a wax [direct] cut 78 recording, mastered from the metal master parts ... It is a a great performance full of the chutzpah dramatic knife edge inherent in the music, presented in a very good recfording for its day. The recording itself actually apart from being mono, would bve good even by today's standard, and it is a tribute to the quality of CD over LP or even 78s [which were better for dynamic and pitch stability in so very many cases - there are some poor examples of course - than LP ever acheived, even if they had considerable surface noise from the shellac, though the master parts often yield very little surface noise] ... a tribute to the orginal quality of the recording that CD is finally able to reveal how fine it still is, technically. But it's the performance that is remarkable, and only when one considers the recording as being 64 years old does it seem remarkable.

So yes I have some demonstration discs, but rarely is the first attention drawn to the sound as a such! When I ask someone when they think a recording date was, the older the recording the more the person finds the informnation a surprise. In fact apart from the massive drop in quality which occurred with the arrival of tape recording and vinyl LPs, there are some very fine recording right back to the late 1920s, though to find the full quality of 78 recordingsyou need to find CDs remastereed from the original master parts, which are marvelous, and are not riddled with the noise that shellac pressings bring ....

ATB from George

When I first started on my hi-fi "journey" around 35 years ago, as a very "green" 15 year old, I took very little notice of the difference in sound quality between different LP's - I was only interested in listening to the music that I liked. As my experience of hi-fi grew, and my system gradually grew in stature from its very humble beginnings, I noticed that I tended to listen more to records that I knew sounded very good on my system. Even if I liked the music a lot, I would tend to avoid playing poor recordings that sounded dreadful, as I would just find the experience irritating. As my system got even better and more musically capable over the years, I found that I could listen to virtually anything, however poorly recorded, and still thoroughly enjoy the music. I now have a very humble system indeed (due to financial restrictions) and curiously I seem to have gone full-circle - I take no notice at all of the sound quality of different CD's and I just play the music I like, utterly regardless of how poor a particular recording may be. I have talked here about this before, but I believe that it is often much easier to enjoy music on relatively simple and inexpensive systems than it is on much more expensive and elaborate equipment. There is a sense in which the "hi-fi thing", if you will, can all too easily get in the way of the music and dominate the experience. I've no doubt that psycho-acoustics play a large part here, and it is a very complex subject. Also not everyone appears to perceive this aspect of reproduction. So in the past I have certainly had LP's which made my sytem sound fabulous, but the only thing that sounds fabulous to me now is the music that I love!

Peter

Some good points all round. I have always been able to justify (to myself if no-one else) that buying all this gear allowed me to hear more from the music I had already collected. I already had a few hundred Lps when I first bought a 72/140 and an LP12 which meant I heard all the detail and emotion that had passed me by before.

The way this forum is configured provides evidence that at heart there are plenty of music lovers present; this room gets plenty of posts on music of an extremely wide and eclectic range.

Every now and then I hear something on a record (or CD) that makes me think Wow! So when I briefly demo'd my system to a new acquaintance at the weekend it was helpful to use these tracks to highlight what it's all about;

The Band  -  Across the great divide  (Robbie Robertson's bass line is jaw droppingly good)

Eric Clapton  - Wonderful Tonight, from 24 Nights

I'm sure you've all heard the story abou the fella with the mega expensive system and only 1 or 2 soundtrack LPs to play on it .....?

This album sounds great on my system.

It will show up any system short comings and give your speakers one hell of a work out.

This album has blown many a speaker.

Stu