I recently tried a couple of these and they're pretty stunning in the way they present musicians in a space. One Mic
I first played it over the Technics/Yamaha/JBL L82 system. Listening now on the Rotel/Marantz/CM 10 system. Even more mind blowing.
I quite like Boris too. His distinctive vocals don't appear on this album, which is slightly dark and moody and almost ambient. Very good though and has a nice deep bottom end. Kind of reminds me of The Vanishing of Peter Strong without the lyrics. Cheers, Robert
The mention of Boris Blank jogged my memory and I gave this a spin. Definately a sound stage show-off... Malia & Boris Blank - Convergence Boris makes sure your full range speakers have something special to reproduce. Cheers, Robert
Boris never does vocals afaik. You're probably mistaken with Dieter Meyer who does the vocals on Yello. I have the Malia-Boris album too on vinyl.
This album is wild.. thanks for the recommendation. Sound envelopes you… distorted plucks on track 1 coming from way outside my speakers, and walls. Really great.
I know there's not a lot of love for classical music around here (I saw a few on this thread), but there are very few studio recordings, that have anything approaching the kind of natural, spatial, layered, kind of soundstage that classical recordings do. Sure, many have a soundstage, but it is almost never a representation of the actual acoustic space where the musicians were when they recorded. Usually, soundstage is fabricated, and even then, it won't have the same sort of feeling of hearing the original acoustic space. Classical recordings are qualitatively different. The soundstage is there, because all the musicians were playing at the same time, in the same acoustic space, and the recording engineer took good effort to capture the musicians as they were when they were playing. Recordings where you can hear each musician in the actual place they were when they were playing, where you can hear the space around them, you can hear how far other musicians are from them, you can hear "the walls" (can get a good sense of the size of the acoustic space the musicians are in). This is a typical way a chamber ensemble is recorded. Notice there there is only one pair of stereo mics (Blumlein pair in this case), to record all the musicians. So, when the recording is played, the violinist will on the left, will sound like they are on the far left because that is where they were were when they were playing. Not because the engineer panned them to sound like that is where they are. The violist on the right of her, will sound slightly further back. Orchestral music, is recorded similarly, with more mics. But with the same efforts to capture how the musical event sounded. It is not unusual for percussion, for example, to sound like it is coming 20 feet beyond my front wall. And behind all the other musicians. Or violins on the left, and beyond the outer edge of my speakers.
That Brukner I posted was recorded with four mics, I believe. While not a definitive recording, you could sit and map out the orchestra very easily. (Can't vouch for those MP3s, tho.)
Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session (1988) From Wikipedia page: [The group] wanted to record live with one stereo microphone direct to tape...it was actually recorded on a Sony Betamax SL-2000 video cassette deck connected to a Sony PCM-F1 analog/digital converter, using one single Calrec ambisonic microphone.
All that being said, the game changer* for me was: Ernst Krenek - Static and Ecstatic My system at the time (late 90's), was pretty high end, and an imaging champ. Threshold 400A amp, Audio Research SP8 preamp, Oracle TT, Sleeping Beauty cartridge, Koss Model 1A full range electrostatic speakers. I had plenty of prog and jazz recordings (still do), that I really thought created a good soundstage, and they did, but not at the level I knew was possible. I was working at Moby Disc Records, and someone traded this in, so I figured I'd give it a shot. The cover didn't look like any classical recordings that I've seen, it was composed in 1972, so, I figured it wasn't like all the boring (to me) pre 20th century classical music I previously tried to get into. Within the first few moments, I was already astounded. Despite how good I thought all those 70's, 80's recordings I owned created a soundstage, this was on another level. I could actually hear the acoustic space in which they were playing, I could easily tell which instruments were closer or further from the mic, it really sounded like I could walk into the soundstage and steal a violinist's bow from them. With all those 70's rock recordings, sure the musicians were in various positions around the soundstage, but the acoustic space did not exist. One of the only exceptions I can think of, is the title track of King Crimson's, "Islands". It was obviously recorded much more like a classical recording, than a rock recording. It has a real sense of acoustic space in which the musicians are playing. * Game changer in my opinion of what a great soundstage sounds like, and a game changer in what classical music can sound like. It wasn't until I heard this, and other atonal, dissonant, angular, thorny sounding classical music, that I became a fan of classical music.
Gonna add one that I discovered via Paul M at PS Audio. “Jazz At The Pawn Shop”. If someone has already tossed this in, apologies.
I've mentioned this on here before, but "Straight Back" from Fleetwood Mac's Mirage is a good test of your system's capabilities. It actually places the bass behind you in the soundstage and (in my case) a good ten feet to the left of the left speaker. I don't think this was intentional – this was the last track to be recorded and mastered for the album, and I think they accidentally recorded the bass out of phase.
The Decca (London) set of Wagner's Ring cycle under Solti's baton was a technical triumph when the first entry (Das Rheingold) was released in 1958, and while its then-groundbreaking imaging has been bettered since, it gives an idea of what was possible early in the stereo era. Anyone with a tolerance for Wagner should listen through the set at least once.
I'll have to check this out on Qobuz. There's something I don't understand; why was Betamax used if the analogue audio was output to digital? Betamax was capable of high quality audio recording in its day.
The 007 soundtracks of the 60's. Even though the mono versions are my favorites the stereos are great too.
Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out (Analogue Productions double LP 45RPM) and the Tone Poet stereo LP of John Coltrane's Blue Train are excellent albums for sound stage.
