You & Your Friend + Keith Don't Go - why do people play these songs to show off their speakers?

It's because brothers in Arms is one of the best recordings and a crap system will not reveal all the details. Mark knopfler is one of the best guitar players ever.
Yeah, but "You and Your Friend" is on their 1991 album, "On Every Street". It's track #6. I like that track a lot and use it for listening tests. It's well-recorded and has lots of detail. I use the "Brothers in Arms" album as well. Great album.

I was recently introduced to Nils Lofgren's "Acoustic Live" album (which, ironically, on the cover shows him with a guitar that's clearly plugged in). "Keith don't go" is not bad, but I prefer "Some Must Dream". It's a good tune and superbly recorded.

If I want to push things a bit I dial up Joe Satriani, "Seven Strings". That'll usually rock the house.

On my do-not-play list is definitely John Mellencamp's "American Fool". Not because I have anything against Mellencamp, but I was showing off my TCA wares at a trade show and the folks in the room next to mine played that album over and over and over and over and over and ....... for an entire 3-day weekend. I haven't been able to listen to it after that.

Tom
 
Tom,

Good points on "Brothers in Arms" and "On Every Street" - both albums are very well recorded and can show off detail, texture, emotion - stuff that audiophiles usually look for. 🙂 And some good tracks too.

Also BIG fan of Joe Satriani here...

Something more proggy - see how this plays on your system:

 
It's because brothers in Arms is one of the best recordings and a crap system will not reveal all the details. Mark knopfler is one of the best guitar players ever.
Knofpler is great but Brothers in Arms IS a crap recording! Not the music itself but the mixing, production, etc. Way too bright and cheap sounding. That's not "detail" it's bad mixing. Too bad. Typical of early digital mastering IMO.
 
Brothers in arms : Too bright is how it sounds on system thats too bright. To my ears it sounds very nice, although there's a lot of early 80's digital reverb on it. Great bass.

The album was not digitally mastered, it was done in the analog domain. Same with tracking and mixing. The only digital was the tape machine it was recorded on. And the resulting CD of course.
 
It seems that the vinyl version was done in the analog domain, but the CD version wasn't:



:The Dire Straits Brothers in Arms CD I mastered in 1985, one of the very first albums recorded on the Sony 24-track digital machine, was the first CD I mastered that was totally mastered for the CD medium. It was also longer than the vinyl version. That original version had to be mastered in the analog domain, in spite of how great Neil Dorfsman's mixes were".

https://tapeop.com/interviews/105/bob-ludwig/
 
The first CD was also mastered analog. Remember there were no digital mixing consoles and digital audio workstations in 1985. Digital tape machines had analog inputs and outputs.

Bob Ludwigs remaster was digital. And its really good I think.
 
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