Home Music Lane

It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

Re: Top 5 - Must Sound Good Audition CDs

203.12.171.18

I've been thinking about this question for a few days now. These aren't in my top 5 which often tend to be whatever I'm playing most at the moment, just for familiarity on the comparison, but sooner or later I always get around to playing these:

- a nature recording like Nature Recordings "Frog Heaven". I look for realistic sounding insects and frogs, and absolutely incredible sound stage and pin-point imaging;

- something recorded in a highly reverberant space - any of David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir's recordings made in Thoronet Abbey, and the Dempster/Oliveiros/Panaiotis "Deep Listening" on New Albion. I still don't know what the last one SHOULD sound like (read the liner notes and you'll understand why) but it sounds different every time I play with my system. I look for the sense of space;

- solo piano - one or more of the tracks from the Stereophile test records;

- human voice - often Meredith Monk just to listen to the range of possiblilites possible with voice;

- a percussion disc - some of John Cage's pieces, Stefan Micus's "Koan" (ECM), or Hart/Wolff/Hennings "Yamantaka" - the last is good for a mix of high pitched and very low pitched percussion and some effects which sound quite elctronic even though it's totally acoustic.

All of the above are reasonably to extremely well recorded, and all yield useful information on how "natural" things sound for me.

David Aiken


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Schiit Audio  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • Re: Top 5 - Must Sound Good Audition CDs - David Aiken 15:56:28 03/11/99 (0)


You can not post to an archived thread.