Linda Ronstadt/Nelson Riddle

Lew: No offence taken as I'm sure none intended.

Lewm ...

Linda was indeed re-doing the old ballads as you said. I was brought up on this music. My Mom was a huge fan of the big bands of the 40's and I got indoctrinated. I have albums by Jo Stafford, Helen Merrill, June Christy Sinatra, Freddy Martin, Dick Haymes, Margaret Whiting, and a ton of others. I thought Linda Ronstadt brought a fresh voice into the mix ... so I bought them all. Even a box set with French pressings. The French pressings are quieter than the domestic ones, but the domestic ones sound just as good.

A bit off-analog, but I recently discovered that Wolfgang's Vault has a bunch of old live concert recordings of Linda Ronstadt at her peak that can be downloaded for $7 each. Unfortunately they are not on LP, nor even high-rez. But some of the performances are unique!

Oregon, My mom was an opera singer, and our house was always filled with music, classical and/or operatic, but she did not know much about jazz or the popular singers of her day, such as the ones you listed and more. However, I benefited from her love of music in many ways, including the fact that my dad bought her what I now know is a pretty nice mono audio system in the early 50s, to include Altec Lansing 604 co-axial driver, driven by a mono HK tube receiver off a Garrard changer. Access to this system allowed me to experiment on my own to define my tastes in music, and thus I found out about jazz via mostly Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis. When I first heard "Kind of Blue", that was an epiphany.

My last post on this thread is over a month old. In it, I referred to my ARC Ref 150 amp which had been recently upgraded to SE status, which included KT-150 tubes. Since then, my ARC Ref 150 SE amp is pretty broken in now.

Ok ... so I'm spinning some Linda/Nelson LPs right now. I am just amazed. Forget the audiophile lexicon ... all I can say is WOW!! What a voice and my amp does a terrific job of projecting a wonderful sound stage in front of me.

Oregonpapa ... I get why you were so impressed by your ARC Ref 75 SE. I think ARC made some real magic with the Ref amp SE line.

That said, I am dubious I would be able to fully appreciate the music or the amp without my DEQX PreMATE speaker and room EQ correction device. If interested in the DEQX, check out the thread which was active a couple of days ago. Al (Almarg) is reporting set-up progress with his new DEQX HDP-5.