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In Reply to: sound is so real it stops you in your track! posted by jazz1 on November 19, 2002 at 08:50:31:
Completely agree with the Chesky recs... most of my favorite sounding recordings are on Chesky. I love Paquito's Portrait of Cuba. I think New York Reunion with McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson is still my all around favorite. Henderson's sax solos breathe and I swear you can even hear them reverberate off of the back walls of the studio, Piano notes are clear and soft and natural - no "plinky" sound that ruins so many piano recordings, Ron Carter's bass is pure and deep, and the same with Al Foster's drums - clean and undistorted. His cymbal work especially - every shimmery tone is completely three-dimensional. The most natural recording of a quartet that I can think of. I've been thinking of an SACD player (I wonder how the Marantz DV8300 SACD/DVD/CD player is? Looks like it may be interesting.), and I noticed recently that New York Reunion is on SACD now - perhaps all the motivation I need. A couple of Fred Hersch Trio's recordings on Chesky are also beautifully recorded, as are Badi Assad's. Johnny Frigo with Bucky and John Pizarelli Live From Studio A is also very natural sounding (and teriffic swing jazz too). A couple of other really wonderful souning recordings that come to mind are Union and State of the Union on the Naim label, both by the piano trio of Wertico, Torff, and Hobgood. Most of the music is slow paced, ethereal, but when you listen closely, you hear real depth and beauty, and the sound is exactly what you are looking for when you say "Stops you in your tracks". Again, particularly the acoustic bass, the cymbals, and Laurence Hobgood's piano. He's much more subdued on these recordings than on the typical Kurt Elling date, but still very expressive, imaginative, and articulate.
Follow Ups:
Mike M. writes:> I think New York Reunion with McCoy Tyner and Joe
> Henderson is still my all around favorite.C'mon man, this music was recorded ELEVEN years ago. Sure, the recording is good, but the music is dated, static, archival.
Any jazz music over, say, ten years old is museum music. You need to get out more and listen to TODAY's music. Sheesh!
"Any jazz music over, say, ten years old is museum music."Well, that takes care of most if not all of the innovators in jazz.
What's the joke? What did I miss? I know you're not serious.
nt
C'mon Daryl, be original. Besides that, don't take things so personally, although if the shoe fits, it might make one sensitive, you know?I'm sure if you browse through my postings, you'll see a mix of ages of music I listen to and recommend, but the OVERWHELMING majority is very current.
Besides, you single out one recommendation of mine, 11 years old, out of a list that also mentions more current recordings. Severius's list below listed about a dozen recordings all of which were approximately 40 years old! There's a difference, if you think about it. The other thing here is that I was giving suggestions based solely on sound quality... that's what this thread is about, in case you hadn't noticed.
Why would having "the best sounding CD I own" in SACD be the deciding factor to buy into the new format? The "best sounding CDs" are already awsome. Maybe if SACD offered vast improvement for the WORST sounding CDs in my collection, I would consider it. Otherwise, for me, the only factor that would lead me to SACD is pretty much across-the-board availability of new titles on all record labels...
Perhaps I should be spending more time on this board than Hi-Rez as my main focus is CDs for which I consider the sound quality pretty darn good and perhaps can get at a good price with used recordings.Hi-rez folks are stating that in many cases that SACD recordings are bettering even those CDs that sound pretty darn good. One example is the Patricia Barber recordings recently issued in SACD format. How much better I assume is dependent on one's system. I am not going to buy them at $25.00 to find out as I already have them on CD.
I believe folks on Hi-rez have been listening quite a long time to jazz and classical recordings and many are audiophiles. SACD now introduces something new for them to get excited about. I agree to some extent but I'm in another phase of music listening. That being grabbing the music that is available out there as I have only listened to jazz now for 2 years and classical for about 6 months and there is lots to catch up with. The better sound quality would be icing on the cake but not my main focus!!
I did not have a really good CD player so it made sense when I upgraded to keep SACD under consideration. I bought the Sony 9000ES and then upgraded to the Sony XA777ES. I'm quite happy with CD playback on the XA777ES. The best feature of the 9000ES was the video, IMHO, so I upgraded and I own another player for DVD playback.
Maybe. I see your point. I just figure that the recording process must have been as near perfect as possible to produce such a CD, and if SACD has the capability to translate or convey more resolution, I can just imagine the results to be that much closer to reality. We deal with the law of diminishing returns in this pursuit, don't we.. where the slightest improvement in resolution and detail adds exponentially to our enjoyment? I have no first hand experience listening to any of the Chesky SACD's, but Chesky themselves tout the improvement over the standard CDs.
Yes, I too would like "the best possible". I think that I'm reacting more to the nonsense I read over at Hi-Rez as to why SACD is the "end all" of audio perfection. The trouble is, as I think you well know, most current CDs are more than good...especially jazz recordings. SACD, as much as I would like to embrace it wholeheartedly, looks to me like a "transitional" format which, to make things even worse, requires its own dedicated hardware. FWIW, I don't buy the arguments for "combo" or "universal" players -- they tend to compromise one or the other portion of their playback quality. So, with an already very significant investment in a CD library, I'm just not convinced right now. Truly, what's next? Suppose SACD (physically spinning platters) give way to CompactFlash, or some other "non-moving" digital format? Then I've got to have yet another playback device? Right now, my best guess is that at some point computer hard drive storage becomes totally MASSIVE during the next few years. We'll be able to store terabytes easily. When that becomes the case, we can all have "music warehouses" in our homes, and download the entire contents of whatever the format of the day is, and retrieve those files to be played optimally by a single high quality DAC. Until then, I'm done investing in new formats.
I go along with your thinking on getting into a new format too, thats why I've been holding off so far. When you say our digital storage will become MASSIVE, you're not kidding. That's the problem. I already have a taste of that problem due to all of my kid's MP3's that are hogging my hard drive space. Can't clean them out quick enough. Worse than the MP3's though, would be any serious audio files, because I don't think I could get myself to trust any compressed format. Digital audio fidelity is only now reaching some of its potential, and that seems to be due to sampling rate increases, etc. I have real doubts that the info can be compressed without losing some critical info, although I've never done any serious listening to MP3s. Digital storage of uncompressed data would have to be MASSIVE indeed!
....for uncompressed CD quality, it's something like 10 MB for each minute of stereo sound.
dh
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