In Reply to: What discs do you put on to show off your system? posted by mbnx01 on July 8, 2015 at 11:04:05:
And I'd probably have wildly different answers to it, depending on what I've been listening to recently. ;-)For classic two-channel, I agree with a couple of the "golden age of stereo" selections mentioned in earlier posts on this thread (i.e., the RCA Living Stereo and the Mercury Living Presence albums). In fact, I was just listening to a couple of MLP's yesterday, and, geez, they were so good!
Lots more I could have picked of course. I'm consistently amazed by that Dorati/LSO CfO - in some ways, I even prefer it to Reiner's (heresy, I know!). It's one of those recordings that, to my ears, has just sounded better and better over the years as my equipment has gotten better. And that other Dorati Bartok album with the Philharmonia Hungarica benefits from a more spacious acoustic than Mercury often employed. That Eastman album was one of the later ones done at that locale and is magnificent in its combination of image specificity (sorry for the audio rag term!) and holistic rendering of the entire acoustic as well as it can be done with only two channels. I don't mean to impugn the other golden-age recrodings (Living Stereos, early Decca/Londons and EMI's, Command Classics, Sheffields, some Vox albums with Skrowaczewski, etc.) - these just happen to be a couple that, as I say, I listened to recently. BTW, I'm showing the LP covers for the two Bartok albums, but what I actually own and listen to is the CD incarnation - via computer AIFF's of course! (But I've always loved that LP album cover for the CfO, which was bumped on the CD reissue!)
More modern two-channel:
More modern "non-interventionist" Multi-channel:
Modern "interventionist" multi-channel:
There are so many more choices that could have been made - we're living in a golden age ourselves right now!
EDIT: I just couldn't resist adding a Naxos blu-ray audio disc in here too! ;-)
Edits: 07/08/15
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Follow Ups
- I love questions like this! - Chris from Lafayette 18:33:33 07/08/15 (4)
- Your post cost me eight dollars. - Doktor Brahms 17:48:56 07/10/15 (1)
- RE: Your post cost me eight dollars. - Chris from Lafayette 00:16:58 07/11/15 (0)
- Re: MLP - unclestu 19:02:18 07/08/15 (1)
- Yes - I have that Civil War set too - Chris from Lafayette 23:13:23 07/08/15 (0)