Whatever genre ...

Let's fun begin 

I will tell you mine latter

Telegraph Road, Dire Straits

nmartin771:

Whatever genre ...

Let's fun begin 

I will tell you mine latter

For low-frequency tested, I recommend:

1. Nils Petter Molvaer, album: "Khmer", track 2: "Tlon"  (after 2:40 min)

2. Mercan Dede,  album: "Nefes", track 6: "Zefir"   (Real earthquake, subsonic!)

God Hates Us by Avenged Sevenfold, Nightmare album. From silent clean guitars to death metal in a second.

Fred Bigot :  Hot Spectrum ; Disco Pillow ; I Love You So

Plastikman : Ask Yourself

Lustmord : The Ambient Abyss ; Black Star ; Deep Calls To Deep

:Zoviet * France : On The Edge Of A Grain Of Sand (Between 1:24 & 1:33 mostly...)

Back in the day, when installing BIG speakers for a living in literally hundreds of living rooms, we had our trusty DJ flight case of LP's we knew would be a "control" for positioning, tweaking and making sure the system was installed as well as it could be.

Amongst these reference tracks, a favourite track of mine was Wholly Humble Heart by Martin Stephenson & the Daintees

Superb production - It sounds spectacular on big speakers like Penta's - really shows their depth and spacial quality ....also fine though Linn isobariks, Naim SBL's   etc etc.  Find it on his excellent album Gladsome, Humour and Blue.

Also liked to play the albums below - all well recorded, dynamic and musically satisfying LP's - It was good to play these  in houses where they would be an unknown genre, and hopefully  an introdution to new music, to go with the new hi-fi... 

Typically "Who is that, where can I buy it  ??" was the question - which showed us the Hi-Fi was doing its job -- ie, playing music in a believable/engrossing manner.

Albums included :

Steve Earle, Guitar Town - one of the fist DDD releases I think, but still OK despite that.

Johhny Clegg and Savuka - Shadow Man. (Sounds a tiny bit 80's now - the keyboards I think -  listened to it on my Beogram last week)

Nic Jones - Penguin Eggs

Martin Simpson - Sad or high Kicking

June Tabor - A Cut above

Al Green - Lets Stay Together

Hildegard of Bingen - Gothi Voices ( Emma Kirby)

J C Mellancamp - Scarecrow

Kevin McDermot Orchestra - Mother Natures kitchen.

Stevie Ray Vaughan - The Sky is Crying

Solomon Burke - A Change is gonna come.

All of the above are well worth owning.

war pigs- black sabbath

what difference does it make- the smiths

i started something- the smiths

four seasons -berlin philharmonic/nigel kennedy

baba o'reilly- the who

First I will go with one hit, big hit....

The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary

One more, relatively new :

Massive Attack - Atlas Air

Alright now - Free from the 70's

Also The Jean Genie - Bowie  1972

just been on Vintage tv on the astra 28' satellite(freesat)

Powerfull, brought back lots of happy memories!

tony

One of the first albums I ever bought was the abum Fox by Fox.

A friend of my parents had a B&O HiFi - I can't for the life of me remember which one, but it was the wood with black keys that were like a thin flat sheet of black metal with thin slits between each button. The turntable had a platter with about little 6 rubber buttons to place the record on and a pick up arm that was so thin and pointy I'd never seen anything like it.

I listend to his Fox album on that and was blown away. Being an impressionable lad - all of about 12/13 I went out and bought the album (record) for myself and hoped it would sound as fantastic on my parents TEAC when I got home - It did't  - and I vowed there and then that as soon as I had a job and my own money I would have a B&O. So when I got my first job, I was in Harrods on a weekend shopping trip and the Beosystem 4500 was being launched.

I came back to Exeter, checked my savings and ordered the complete 4500 system (Beomaster, Beocord, Beogram-CD & Beogram), and Beolab Pentas. Fortunately they were doing interest free and with my deposit I could just about afford it if I didn't eat, and at 21 who wants to eat? When it arrived and was set up, I dug out my old scratched Fox album, placed it on the BeoGram 4500 and boy did it sound good.

Every time I try a new system I take that album with (in CD format now), and this year I replaced the 4500 with a Beosound 9000.

The tracks that do it for me are "He's got magic" and "Only you can". They have an awful lot to answer for :o)

I also think that Hiroshima by Sandra is stunning to listen to. Sandra is the vocal on the albums by Enigma.

Stoobie

The king of darkness Ozzy Osbourn with the beautiful song - Dreamer

Got loads of music which is musically dynamic, but sonically flat.

The Mars Volta - 'Frances The Mute' for instance, could sound so much better if it's dynamic range wasn't mashed (it's RMS is -5dB in places), even though the music is very dynamic. Shame really. There are loads of examples of music like this!

Music which has a BIG dynamic range is really, really hard to come by nowadays with ever decreasing dynamic levels at the mastering stage. It doesn't make a huge deal of difference if the dynamic level goes up from f to fff if it's just going to hit a limiter and only go up 1dB.

My benchmark album in terms of dynamic range is Fleetwood Mac's Rumours - absolutely stunning sounding record. 18dB of dynamic range between the highest peaks and the RMS level in most places! I think about the loudest it ever gets is -12dB RMS at the end of the chain, which is the loudest part of the album. The whole album just sounds amazing when you turn it right up! Not fatiguing in the slightest but the drums are so big and punchy...

I usually prefer listening on vinyl partly because of the increased dynamic range of most vinyl masters. Vinyl itself has a smaller dynamic range than CD potentially can, but CD allows you to push the RMS levels much higher as the medium itself doesn't distort. Vinyl will start showing all sorts of issues which you push it higher than ~-10dB of range, which means the album can't be mastered too loud when transferring across to vinyl.

No contest here.........

"I'm in the Mood for Dancing" by the The Nolans!

All together now........."Ooh Ooh Ooh ........Ooh Ooh Ooh.......Ooh Ooh Ooh......Oooh - Yeah!"

Dark side of the moon (vinyl album), 180 gram pressing, 30th Anniversary edition. Now to choose a song...

Nothing I have played comes close.

beoaus.

beoaus:

Dark side of the moon (vinyl album)

Agree.

I bought a vinyl circa 1975...... fantastic music.

Unfortunately I then went on to make the mistake of buying a Pink Floyd double album which turned out to be all the unsuccessful rubbish they'd created before Dark Side!

Graham

DSOTM is actually quite restrained compared to the absolutely best recordings out there for dynamics. It's worth being aware that remasters and more recent releases don't tell the original story, though.

Here's a comparison between the CD-layer and the SACD-layers of the 2003 Capitol release:

Harvest by Neil Young is quite good if you want exceptionally well done dynamics:

And if you like R&B,Thelma Houston's got the sound:

Things to watch out for. The Who from the 1985 CD-release, and then how it's been ruined for the 2010 Deluxe Release version superduper overcompressed, etc.

1985

2010

Interesting story Stoobie,

I was remember my first blown away song, that was ages ago and my friend played me on his dad's Technics hi-fi Enigma - Sadness ... wow that was wow I was blown away and I will remember that for life ... like everybody of us remember "FIRST" time 

Second song was at my other friend brand new SONY system and it was Sting - Englishman in NY...

Soundproof can you explain for us how to look at those graphics's ?

A Swedish Audio Society have created free software that will help you check your music, to see how it's been mastered. What the graphs show, is how much headroom for dynamic span there is in the music, between the softest and the most powerful portions. If everything's been compressed and pushed to the ceiling (solid black bars), then there are no dynamics and everything's at an even, loud drone.

When there is "room to breathe" and telling differences between the narrowest and widest portions of the track, then we can assume that the music will sound more lifelike and similar to authentic music.

Explained in detail here, and with a download link to the software (PC).

http://www.lts.a.se/lts/masvis

First listen to:

the roots of coincident -  from the album Imaginary Day - Pat Metheny Group

before name another dynamic song; also one of the best song tittles 

Forgive me for being thick, but what do the figures for DSOTM mean. To these uncultured eyes, it would appear the CD side is more dynamic than the SACD side, or am I completely wrong? I do know that the vinyl version of the 30th anniversary edition sounded better than the CD of the same album - it seemed more dynamic. The CD sounds flat though obviously the background noise is better.

Forgive me for being thick, but what do the figures for DSOTM mean

Dark Side of The Moon! The album's title.

Another remark:

it is impossible to speak of 96kHz 24bit of a SACD format. It seems the DSD format is converted to a LPCM first! So is this a objective comparison?

Note: most SACD conversions to LPCM conversions are done at 88,2 or 176,4 kHz because of the characteristics of this format. 

Kokomo:

Forgive me for being thick, but what do the figures for DSOTM mean

 

Dark Side of The Moon! The album's title.

Not that thick! I meant the dB figures! It would appear the CD has a slightly wider dynamic range - which is counter intuitive. But I may well be interpreting the figures wrongly. I have many recordings of this album including the mobile fidelity version.