Vtory's Music (Re)Discoveries

Discussion in 'Music and Recordings' started by Vtory, Aug 25, 2022.

  1. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    DCA Stealth < SMSL HO200 < SMSL M500.3

    upload_2022-9-28_17-18-48.png

    https://open.qobuz.com/album/0030911104825

    This album was recently recommended by an audio pal when we chatted about weight and heft in the classical music context. With a bit of research on the internet, I found Sir Arnold had diverse career development (trumpet player, film composer, and conductor). I'm pretty sure his orchestration benefited from such colorful experience. These overtures well demonstrated excellent melodic sense as well as rhythmic sense.

    On the Stealth, I appreciated the nicely extended low frequencies in the orchestral bass drum -- in the second track ('Beckus the Dandipratt Op 5') particularly. The drum was reproduced with head-shaking weight. I was surprised that my audio's reproduction maintained top-notch clarity without any sacrifice.
     
  2. Rob the Comic

    Rob the Comic banned from ASR

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    Love this album also. For me it’s ‘The Pyramid Song’.
     
  3. Rob the Comic

    Rob the Comic banned from ASR

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    Thank you for this thread. Some recordings I haven’t heard and many I haven’t heard of! I look forward to some listening.
    May I recommend Nojima’s Ravel; I have heard the greats for many years but this disc was a revelation to me. Hough’s cycle of Rachmaninov is sublime, but I like just as much his lesser known recording of the Saint-Saens concertos, in particular The Egyptian.
    I listen to the solo piano with the Utopias and the HD800’s for any classical with a band.
    CA6D2456-84FF-4C88-B989-F0C5BF2C22DF.jpeg

    FE59CCB4-7BF5-4E4E-9CD2-2CAA093538AF.jpeg
     
  4. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    DCA Stealth < SMSL HO200 < SMSL M500.3

    upload_2022-9-29_18-5-3.png

    https://open.qobuz.com/album/0030911103521

    This evening, inspired by @Rob the Comic 's post above, I listened to Minoru Nojima's recital. Pretty damn great by all means. What impressed me best was he conveyed hugeness, effortlessness, and fluidity in a highly intimidating style. Elegant and poetic. Wow. It must be a big shame I didn't know this pianist until today.

    Recording quality seems excellent, too. Even more so considering it's not from a major label such as Decca. I don't know who was the recording engineer, but this guy exactly captured the immediacy, brilliance, depth, and richness of piano tones. Needless to say, everything I listed was superbly reproduced by the Stealth. I bet the Susvara would reproduce a little differently (and likely more fantastically), which I will try later tonight.

    Of course, I will also check out the other album Rob listed. Thanks very much for the recommendation!
     
  5. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    DCA Stealth < SMSL HO200 < SMSL M500.3

    upload_2022-9-30_19-42-20.png

    https://open.qobuz.com/album/cw1kumdp5y6db

    Thanks god it's friday. Time to listen to legendary rocks. While I never caught Led Zep's live (all the lives occurred before I was born), I really like this album. These tracks allow me a great opportunity to hear what I missed. And today's listening got even better with Stealth.

    The Stealth's low-frequency dynamics were highly engaging. I could immediately appreciate lots of high-quality heft. For example, in the 14th track ('Moby Dick'), Stealth communicated more of the visceral excitement from John's drum solo. The extra midbass relative to upper bass benefited this magic show. Yet no hint of loss in details, clarity, and texture. This track, surely along with other songs in the album, demonstrated how well Stealth was tuned in low frequency weight, bass definition, and their balance.
     
  6. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    Reference Recordings is a small audiophile label, and the recording engineer was Keith Johnson who is well known among audiophiles (and seek out his recordings). One of the best known piano recordings among audiophiles is Nojima Plays Liszt (recorded before the Ravel album), which is often used as a demo and evaluation disc.

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    My favorite album from Reference Recordings and Keith Johnson is The Medinah Sessions, by Chicago Pro Musica (comprised of musicians from the Chicago Symphony). Outstanding in every way, sound quality and performance.

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    @Metro Thanks for wonderful recommendation and schooling me about the label!

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    DCA Stealth < Topping LA90 < Gustard X18

    upload_2022-10-2_16-17-56.png

    https://open.qobuz.com/album/z45rcoh9lcflc

    No idea why. But I do believe rainy days are perfectly paired with stellar jazz musics, creating a great 'mariage'. It's very rainy in Philly today. I revisited one of my long time favorites.

    This is an interesting later recordings of Oscar Peterson, which I've played multiple times with various audio rigs and thoroughly enjoyed. Very energetic work partly because of team-up with younger musicians.

    My Stealth teaming up with Topping and Gustard demonstrated how delicate its treble range could sound. In most of previous listening, my attention usually had been drawn to Lewis's cymbal accent, sacrificing Oscar's piano slightly. Or less often the opposite. I liked either way though. With the Stealth, the cymbal was still moderately spicy, but in better balance with the piano. I feel like I could capture the better picture of the whole musical structure and developments. Really well-balanced degree of sibilance.
     
  8. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    Hifiman Susvara (stock) < Topping LA90 < Gustard X18

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    https://open.qobuz.com/album/bfzph8r01cbvc

    Procrastinated to update this thread for the past few days. But will rebegin updating.

    Today I revisited Lyle Lovett's second live performance. Highly enjoyable and also of a great quality by any means. Lyle assembled a fantastic ensemble and I really like to hear how he interacted with his band in the performance. There were a number of lovely songs, too. The concerts held in Austin and San Antonio in 1995 (if I recall correctly) must be awesome. I really envy those who joined the events in person.

    On the Susvara, I could clearly hear the treble was slightly hotter than the same songs in the studio recordings, but there were no emphasized sibilants. The shaker sounded very natural and realistic. The bass was also reproduced with a nice amount of weight, coupled with a satisfying purr.
     
  9. ChaChaRealSmooth

    ChaChaRealSmooth SBAF's Mr. Bean

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    Listening through Yggdrasil GS, Starlett, and Verite.

    I'm going to admit that I'm taking a break from evaluating Caldera seriously. I decided to relax to Linkin Park's One More Light album and plugged in Verite.

    The way the Verite plays the opening guitar with the nuance it does (OMG the string delineations), the Verite's separation and layering as the music adds instruments and gets more complex while not losing focus on Chester Bennington's voice...it's so addicting that I mashed the replay button more than a few times.

    And honestly, I think that this kind of feeling is the reason why we're all in on this crazy hobby. We want the experience of hearing the music we love rendered in such a way that we're absolutely enthralled. In a hilarious way, this makes the gear simultaneously important and not important; the gear can enhance the experience by being betterer, fitting more to our preferences, etc, but ultimately the gear should fade away and it should be about the music. The reasoning is circular and recursive and is utter madness at times, but damn, moments like this make me so glad that I discovered audio and am a part of SBAF.
     
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  10. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    SMSL M500.3 > SMSL HO200 > ZMF Caldera

    upload_2022-11-6_12-20-59.png

    https://open.qobuz.com/album/0073145377982

    After giving the new pair of Caldera 48 hours of initial burn-in, I wanted to hear its capability and traits. Then this album by Nils suddenly came to mind. Great way to enjoy Sunday morning.

    A short intro to the album. It's very experimental take of the fusion of jazz and electronica. And to my knowledge it's one of the first such combinatorial approaches at the time it was released in 1997. Nils not only showed exquisite finesse and subtle control, but also weaved/interjected his trumpet sound over a sensually pulsating and textured sonic landscape.

    On the Caldera, I consistently heard solid imaging and natural-ish timbres across this album. It also delivered an expansive, spherelike headstage, throughout which sounds suddenly popped in and/or slid along the outer edges of a multilevel 3D circles. There's clearly something I am inspired to say beyond merely deep and wide soundstage. Studio effects were reproduced in a highly euphonic and effortless way. This presentational nature seemed to make the sound a tad diffused to my ears tho.

    Another thing that impressed me was how Nil's trumpet was rendered with Caldera. The trumpet sound spreaded like a spilled drink across the free space, flooding it. Plus, for unknown reasons, the reproduced trumpet felt like a morphing mixture to some extent. There was a great amount of information I could hear: shifting shapes, subtle sonic contours of tones, and rushing breath. It's really an immersive experience.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2022
  11. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    SMSL M500.3 > SMSL HO200 > ZMF Caldera

    [​IMG]

    https://open.qobuz.com/album/0798387952066

    Another deep-dive session with Caldera this morning. This album contains an early 90's selections of John Medeski, Billy Martin, and Chris Wood's (aka MMW) works well revealing their genre hybridness. I damn love their approaches to mix various styles of jazz-rooted music such as funk or jazz ballad with familiar rhythms obviously inspired by the East Coast hip hops. I was wondering whether and how much Caldera pull the colorful story out of the recorded signal.

    Throughout the whole album, Caldera carefully revealed that there was a lot going on with successfully disintegrating all the messiness. Everything sounded transparent and orderly. For example, in the first track ('Chubb Sub'), Caldera reproduced organ, double bass, and drum with abundant musical storylines as well as barreling-down momentum. Caldera didn't quite replicate clearer sightlines into the paths charted by each instrument like Stealth, but it did offer the bulging and air-chuffing beat. Double bass notes wove dexterously through the busy passages. Organ notes beamed with color and kept their composure regardless of their pace. The hi-hat took its place amidst the percussive space. Caldera also helped me clearly identify John switched to piano later in the track, without throwing timbral differences at me.
     
  12. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    ZMF Caldera/Cowhide < SMSL HO200 < SMSL M500.3

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    https://open.qobuz.com/album/ca0s3vcak7nka

    I'm generally under the impression that cowhide+Caldera is the most masculine, bold, and energetic in presentation among the three pads sent to me. So, I wanted to pair with vocal recording with abundant physicality as well as ambience, which led me to this album by John McLean and Patricia Barber.

    On Caldera, Patricia's voice was highly intimate. It came with not only sexiness but also a sense of air temperature. It was also easy to hear lots of breathing room where notes traveled. Inside the venue, Caldera reproduced airs around the crowd, the instruments, and Patricia's voice. Her voice also exhibited a good heft as if it was hard hitting the microphone diaphragm. How physical it was.

    On the other hand, McLean's guitar plucks sounded fully alive and right in front of me. The phantom image was convincingly realistic with his breathing, the air encircling him, and his playing movements. There seemed to be more lower midrange energy with the Cowhide Caldera, which made the hand booms were more visceral. Needless to say, everything sounded very harmonic.
     

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