I've successfully gotten away from my reference CDs, and instead am simply buying LOTS of new, usually-cheap CDs to expand my musical experience. But it's so tricky, and sometimes surprising. A SONY reissue of Mozart's Requiem by the Bach Collegium Stuttgart (1979) sounds like utter crap, while the lower expectations of the remastered Tom Waits Asylum Years collection is VERY satisfying. Ah...go figure.
Kudos to Shostakovich 1 and 15 by Cincinnati/Lopez-Cobos on Telarc (as expected), but also the rag-tag, intimate-sounding Philharmonic Cassovia give wonderfully human renderings of Tchaikovsky greats on a Naxos-sourced Amadis cheapie. So I spend much less time comparing tweaks with
"Companion" or Crawl (sorry), or Jennifer W (remember?),
and prefer to get cute with Nora, Cassandra, as well the Mahler, Brahms and Mahler catalogues and jazz reissues. Tony and Bill's duo is GREAT for masculine voice reference, though. And Nojima plays Liszt: the top octave playing should sound like wooden keys slapping the beds and NOT metallic ones. Good ref for DACs, cables, clean AC, etc.
Aaaargh...I'm falling into it again!
Kudos to Shostakovich 1 and 15 by Cincinnati/Lopez-Cobos on Telarc (as expected), but also the rag-tag, intimate-sounding Philharmonic Cassovia give wonderfully human renderings of Tchaikovsky greats on a Naxos-sourced Amadis cheapie. So I spend much less time comparing tweaks with
"Companion" or Crawl (sorry), or Jennifer W (remember?),
and prefer to get cute with Nora, Cassandra, as well the Mahler, Brahms and Mahler catalogues and jazz reissues. Tony and Bill's duo is GREAT for masculine voice reference, though. And Nojima plays Liszt: the top octave playing should sound like wooden keys slapping the beds and NOT metallic ones. Good ref for DACs, cables, clean AC, etc.
Aaaargh...I'm falling into it again!