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Audiophile music

tuga said:
The best or most realistic piano (and small ensemble) recordings I've listened to are by PlayClassics. The engineer, Mario Martinez, will provide a pink noise file to calibrate the playback level if you ask.

www.playclassics.com

TRT Sound - Play Classics

Listen to the world's most transparent recordings. Feel the sound as if you were present on the hall. Enjoy classical music at its best.
www.playclassics.com
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Any examples of music to look for?
 
I streamed this from Qobuz recently and liked it a lot (not that the cover had anything to do with it).

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I think of the Mobile Fidelity albums that were such a thing back in the 1970’s when I was first starting to purchase hi-fi gear. All the shops had a rack of Mobile Fidelity, Direct-Disc Labs, Sheffield Labs, Nautilus, etc. They were generally re-issues of very good albums that were well recorded. They were sold in hi-fi shops and used to demo gear. A few notable ones I have in my collection are:

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Alan Parsons Project - I Robot
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Beatles - Abby Road
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Genesis - Trick of the Tail
The Cars - The Cars
 
Woodface said:
Some piano recordings sound like they were done in a bathroom.
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Like this ? the bathroom with all the hard reflective surfaces gives the recording ambience.
As with Cowboy Junkies, The Trinity Session, recorded in a church.
Or the Led Zepplin song recorded in a hallway.

 
I don’t think there’s such a thing as audiophile music. There are albums remastered on audiophile labels and I own loads of them on 24K gold CD or SACD. But the best sounding album I own is the 2003 CD of AC/DC’s Powerage.
 
The frustration for me is that re-issues are invariably of albums that already have fine sounding editions, often with diminishing returns as to what could be ‘improved’. I understand the usefulness of providing fairly inexpensive decent copies where original releases are rare or expensive but it would be nice if some of the reissues dealt with albums that never had good originals.

Of John’s list here, I’m very familiar with all bar the Parsons and Tull and every one of them had great sounding releases to start with, most of which are better sounding than the MOFI imo with the possible exception of ATOTT.

John said:
I think of the Mobile Fidelity albums that were such a thing back in the 1970’s when I was first starting to purchase hi-fi gear. All the shops had a rack of Mobile Fidelity, Direct-Disc Labs, Sheffield Labs, Nautilus, etc. They were generally re-issues of very good albums that were well recorded. They were sold in hi-fi shops and used to demo gear. A few notable ones I have in my collection are:

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Alan Parsons Project - I Robot
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Beatles - Abby Road
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Genesis - Trick of the Tail
The Cars - The Cars
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A longtime favorite of mine would be Blue Rodeo's album from 1993, Five Days in July. Great music that was very well recorded and with top-notch production. Originally only available on CD, a vinyl version was released in 2015.

 
I find once you listen to, say Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, you get hooked in to listen to Elton for the night.
 
The nicest sounding thing I have on vinyl is probably the studio side of a first UK pressing of ZZ Top’s Fandango on London records.

A plum LZ III comes very close, as does a first UK press of Clear Spot.
 
daytona600 said:
Audio Fidelity Mid 50/60s one of the 1st Audiophile labels
Produced some stunning records. Pity a handful only ever reissued by Analogue Productions

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I’ve got US originals of both of those! A fair few more too. Their kitsch ‘Doctored For Super Stereo’ range was great fun! Some visible in this old pic:


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I’ve slimmed the collection down a bit since as I’m totally out of shelf-space (some are in the shop), but I’ve obviously kept the more batshit crazy ones.
 
les24preludes said:
As somebody who grew up on a Bluthner you must know that pianos sound different. I grew up on a Bechstein boudoir grand and that's a different sound again. Walter Gieseking made all his recordings on Bechsteins including his famous Debussy ones. The sound is woody and a bit tubby. A Steinway is a different sound again - steely and more percussive. The finest Steinway I ever played was in the Oslo studio where ECM made their recordings. The engineer was Jan-Erik Kongshaug, a wonderful engineer and a fine guitarist. This was early 80s - a bunch of us including drummer Jon Christensen went one evening to the studio to listen to the Keith Jarrett master tapes Jon played on. That was the Steinway that was on the ECM recordings. Quite an evening in all kinds of ways.

So bottom line is that with a really good system you should be able to identify what kind of piano was being used. That's a big ask, but it's worth making the point that pianos do sound different. Have a look at this video of Tiffany Poon selecting a Steinway B from the NY showroom. You should be able to hear the difference even between Steinways.

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Just a random follow up, but I thought anyone who enjoyed the above video would find this one about how Steinway build their pianos interesting:


PS Once you have the YouTube algorithm well trained it burps great stuff like this up all the time!
 
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