Best recorded CDs - Best sounding

Jump to Latest
#124
Quote:"can you more specifying the CD
A Charlie Brown Christmas.
cant find the CD here in germany.
Greetings from Germany
Jürgen"


I too was intrigued by that album. I did a research on Amazon (.com, .de, .fr, .co.uk can't remember which one); seems to be quite easily available.
 
#125
This is a small selection of music I am using to test the sound of a system:

Long After You're Gone - Chris Jones >>> a very clean recording with crisp guitars and very deep bass

For Heaven's Sake - Grover Washington Jr. >>> slow jazz with cool atmosphere male and female voice (left-right) should not sound harsh on the high notes on the end of the song

Junior B - Yello >>> good studio production. I would say a HighEnd club sound
 
#126
I've taken the liberty of copying this posting by me from another forum and will just re-post it here. It's a little redundant, some of this is contained in an earier post but it helps to keep things in context.

Anyway, here tiz...


Re: Best mastered Cd's
« Reply #28 on: September 28, 2008, 01:07:04 am »

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So far the best that I've heard is "Passion" by Mercedes/AMG, which unfortunately isn't for sale to the general public as it's only available when you buy an AMG. It's a sampler format, produced to the very highest standards in the world, the BLER or Block Error Rate has been documented and verified as being no higher than 10. The best Audiophile labels on the market are between 50 and 20.

There is one other CD that is at this time, the "best" mastered CD in existence (TTBOMK). It's "The Puget Sound! 2008 DIY Speaker Contest" compilation. This is a special edition of the music available to the judge's for evaluation of the entries. While the Judge's only listened to 2-3 minutes of the choices they selected, this disc has the complete piece. It was produced as a joint effort by Winston Ma of First Impression Music, Gary Leonard Koh of Genesis Advanced Technology and Bruce Brown, Mastering Engineer and owner of Puget Sound Studios.

All the stops were pulled to produce this disc and it has a BLER of between 0.5 and 0.3, which is perhaps the lowest ever produced outside of JVC's R&D laboratory in Japan. It utilizes a proprietary multi-step mastering technique that is not yet economically viable and was burned onto a MAM-R Audio Master 1x-12x mastering disc after special preparation and a proprietary damping material was applied to the top of the disk. The disk was also balanced and trued to prevent vibration prior to recording.

There is only one copy in existence and it was the Grand Prize for "Best Sound in Show" at the speaker contest, going to John Nail for his 3-way speaker entry ("The Purple Puppies.")

Just in case you're wondering, I haven't sent it to John yet and have listened to it twice myself 😉

Best Regards,
TerryO
 
#129
TerryO said:
the BLER or Block Error Rate has been documented and verified as being no higher than 10. The best Audiophile labels on the market are between 50 and 20.
Click to expand...

What does the BLER have to do with the quality of the production values on the CD? The BLER has little or no corellation to the number of uncorrectable read errors. I would assume once a CD is transfered to memory or hard drive the BLER would become 0. Kenny G with no errors is still Kenny G.
 
#130
scott wurcer said:


What does the BLER have to do with the quality of the production values on the CD? The BLER has little or no corellation to the number of uncorrectable read errors. I would assume once a CD is transfered to memory or hard drive the BLER would become 0. Kenny G with no errors is still Kenny G.
Click to expand...


Scott,

I don't claim to be an expert by any means, but I take it as an indication of the quality and care that has gone into creating a disc.

Here's some info (from discdupe.org) that correlates with what my general understanding is:

Types of Errors
Various discs were tested using a Clover CD Analyzer.
The tests are not intended to be comprehensive, but cover only Block Error Rates. This is nonetheless a good indicator of whether or not the disc is good.

WHAT ARE ERRORS?
Block errors on a disc are not a physical thing. They are a manifestation of how a disc interacts with a player. So different players can produce different error-rates from the same disc. Although there are rigid specifications that define what a CD should be, there are no such specifications for players. Therfore, to ensure wide compatibility, discs should have low errors. Additionally, a disc that is unreadable on one player, may seem to perform well on another.

The CIRC error correction used in CD players uses two stages of error correction called C1 and C2, with de-interleaving of the data between the stages. The error correction chip can correct two bad symbols per block in the first stage and up to four bad symbols in the second stage.

BLER
BLER, or Block Error Rate, is the number of data blocks per second that contain detectable errors at the input of the C1 decoder. The "Red Book" specification allows BLER up to 220 per second averaged over 10 seconds. These days, with high speed readers commonplace, the generally accepted maximum is 50.

E11, E21, E31
An E11 error means one bad symbol was corrected at the C1 stage. An E21 error means two bad symbols corrected at the C1 stage. E31 means three or more bad symbols at the C1 stage, and is uncorrectable at C1 and so is passed on to the C2 stage.

Because the data is de-interleaved between the stages, each of the bad symbols is now in separate blocks, and so they can be handled by the C2 stage. As a result of the interleaving, one uncorrectable symbol at C1 can become up to 28 bad symbols at C2, which is why E12 is often much higher than E31.

E12, E22, E32
An E12 error means that one bad symbol was corrected at the C2 stage. E22 is two bad symbols, and E32 is three or more bad symbols at C2 and therefore cannot be corrected. It is theoretically possible for C2 to correct four bad symbols, but not all players can do so. To allow for high compatibility, we consider E32 to be uncorrectable, even though some drives may be able to correct it.

Best Regards,
TerryO
 
#132
scott wurcer said:
Fair enough. My general conclusion is that virtually all problems with digital end up being analog.
Click to expand...

Scott,
While it's a bit Off Topic, your observation places you in very good company!
Both John Tucker (eXemplar) and Dan Wright (Mod Wright) have at various times offered players with modified output sections.

At the last VSAC, I spent a good part of 3 days in the ModWright/Cardas/Exodus Audio room. I talked to Dan about his Transporter (pretty nice BTW!) and he stated the stock transporter's digital section is very good, but the analog output section could use a lot of improvement, which is what he concentrated on with very good results, IMHO.

Best Regards,
TerryO
 
#133
Top sounding albums

For me there are quite a few depending on the style of music you are into.

Blues: Led Zepelling, Led Zepellin III
Standout Track: Since I've Been Loving You

Pop: Talk Talk, The Colour Of Spring
Standout Track: I Don't Believe In You

Alternative Pop: The The, Mind Bomb
No standaout track, entire album is amazing

Alternative Dance: Yello, The Best Of...
Standout Tracks: Rubberbandman, Jungle Bill, The Race

Alternative Dance: Engima, MCMXC a.D.
Standout Track: The Principles Of Lust (Find Love)

For me Talk Talk's Colour Of Spring is just a masterpiece of songwriting, production and engineering and is my trusted benchmark for any system listening
 
#135
BT - This Binary Universe (electronic for you eleccies)

Art of Noise - Daft (electronic-ish)

Steely Dan - Aja

Kate Bush - the whole story

Michael Jackson - Thriller

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Terence Trent D'arby - Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby
 
#137
Preservation Hall Hot 4 with Duke Dejan (no title)
Preservation Hall records, 2004
Recorded at Ultrasonic Studio in New Orleans, mastered at Gateway Mastering.

I discovered it on a compilation from that label.
Back from a professional trip and found it now in my postbox, as part of a CD batch I recently ordered from Amazon. Trumpet, guitar, bass and piano to accompany the veteran dixie singer Duke Dejan: very natural and holographic acoustics, bass is present and articulated, and absolutely amazing trumpet. The more I turn up the volume, the better everything sounds... Highly recommended.
Very nice jacket as a bonus.
 
#138
"Fleet Foxes"
(no title); double album, Bella Union records, 2008

Splendid "cool pop" album.

If only a greater number of British groups could be recorded that well...(I don't want to trigger any controversy here but on my system at least, sadly they often sound compressed, poor resolution, limited frequency bandwidth).

Leaflet says sountakes were made part in the musicians' or their families' home, part in studio (London Bridge UK, Avast Studio Seattle US). Very homogeneous though, and as I mentioned, excellent sound (high resolution, transparent, extended bandwidth etc.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom