From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V16 #448 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Wednesday, June 6 2012 Volume 16 : Number 448 To unsubscribe: e-mail ecto-digest-request@smoe.org and put the word unsubscribe in the message body. Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: What's the best-sounding record you ever heard? [Peter Clark Subject: Re: What's the best-sounding record you ever heard? On Jun 4, 2012, at 3:32 PM, Mike Connell wrote: > > What about you? I want to hear how it hit you; was it on the radio, at a friend's house, or did you just buy something you read about? My epiphany was my roommate's Van Morrison's Astral weeks in 1968 and, yes, I'm older than dirt. And I know Steve Guttenberg, too. And John Atkinson. When I was growing up, you still were afforded the choice of mono or stereo records, vinyl. What I wouldn't give for those monos now. Also, back then music FM was uncommon, FM stereo even more so. The alternative music format was eight-track, which believe it or not was superior to cassettes which were just starting when I graduated college in 1971. AM radio ruled the world, or at least Durham, NC or Phoenix. You certainly wouldn't hear Van Morrison on AM, even after Brown Eyed GIrl. The black radio stations in Charlotte where I grew up didn't play ANY white artists. Even Beach Boys were hopelessly exotic when I was high school. I'm still trying to duplicate the overwhelming sensations of Astral Weeks for the first time. Nothing's come close, but not for my lack of searching. Coke heads used to call it "chasing the ghost," don't know what you'd call it now. Guttenberg and Atkinson are in the journalism wing of the audio business, I make turntables. I'm still stuck with vinyl after all these years, but I'm realistic enough to know that if there's any effort to made to keep up, you have to do digital. I have more CD's than LP's. I just paid for and downloaded my first digital last weekend, Minipop's new-ish EP. Worth it, but sounds lousy on computer speakers. Being in high end audio has its drawbacks. You get kind of jaded, because there isn't as much music out there as you would like to think. Lotsa trash, a lot of which I own 'cause I like it. But there's still a lot of badly conceived, written, produced and performed stuff out there. Happy remains a breath of fresh air after decades. I did have another "experience" few months ago with a jazz singer named Stacy Kent and her 2002 album The Boy Next Door. It was remastered a couple years ago and release on a German label, on vinyl, of course. Exquisite doesn't approach the right word. Even on my own gear it was something very special. My partner in crime (who lives down the street from Steve Guttenberg) by chance demonstrated the same piece for a customer who had schlepped it to the demo and called to tell me the same story. On the other hand, I got a terrible compulsion at the first of the year and could not rest until I found the entire Cocteau Twins ouvre on vinyl. I'm still partial to 4AD. And then I got a Beth Gibbons jones and had to own all Portishead published in UK. Just two recent examples. Peter Clark - -=High Performance Analogue=- redpoint-audio-design.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2012 9:14:09 -0400 From: Subject: Re: What's the best-sounding record you ever heard? "Spilt Milk" by Jellyfish. Absolutely amazing, especially the lush quality of the backing vocals. - ---- Mike Connell wrote: > I read an interesting article on cnet.com this morning, which is > below. Basically, at the end it asks more foucused from what the > topic of this post is. It ends asking: > > "I recently asked Stereophile magazine's editor, John Atkinson, to > name the record that made him take notice of the sound, and without > hesitating for a second he said, "Jimi Hendrix, 'Electric Ladyland.'" > Good choice! What about you? I want to hear how it hit you; was it > on the radio, at a friend's house, or did you just buy something you > read about?" > > and then has 5+ pages of responses from readers. Some quite interesting. > > I thought this would make an interesting topic here. > > After reading the article, for me the answer is a very clear memory > even after nearly 40 years. A real "wow" for me. While I had already > had a few dozen albums and lord knows how many 45s, I did not have a > real stereo and the world was just mono to me...we didn't even have > an FM radio in the house. Then I got my first stereo - a one-piece > unit: turntable, AM-FM radio and a good ol' 8-track all rolled into > one. I also got a set of Tandy/Radio Shack LV-10 headphones with it. > > The first song to ABSOLUTELY BLOW ME AWAY on headphones was "Hooked > On A Feeling" by BJ Thomas. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNnnWfUpYGg ) > > I could not believe all the instruments and music I heard in that > song. It was the beginning of me becoming an audiophile (within my > budget stereo-wise in the 1980s upgrade), having 300+ albums by the > time I went to back to college, even to the degree of purchasing > dozens of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab albums and one UHQR in the 1980s. > > The article: > http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57445385-47/whats-the-best-sounding-record-you-ever-heard/?tag=cnetRiver > > What's the best-sounding record you ever heard? > > Was it from long ago, or something more recent? What made it memorable? > > by Steve Guttenberg > > This might be a tough question for a lot of people: defining what > good sound is, and separating sound from music isn't easy. It might > be impossible to distill it to just one album or song. We tend to > like the sound of music we like, and conflate good sound with good > music. That's understandable, but when the sound jumps out and draws > your attention, take, for example, the sound of Jimi Hendrix's > feedback. It was Hendrix's distortion, not his songs, that forever > changed the sound of electric guitars. > > Paul McCartney said it was the sound of the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" > album that inspired the Beatles to radically change their sound and > make "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." > > For me, it was the first Led Zeppelin album. The music hit me hard, > of course, but it really was the power of the recording; everything > else sounded like black-and-white, and Zeppelin's music was in > Technicolor. Bonham's drums in particular were so much bigger, more > immediate and driving than other records in the late 1960s. Motown > and the Beatles records were way up there for me, but Zeppelin's > sound was beyond the rest. I wanted to hear that sound more clearly, > and that's how I became an audiophile. > > The first and second Zeppelin records were always with me when I was > shopping for new hi-fi gear. The methodology was pretty > straightforward; the speaker or amp had to unleash more of what was > in the grooves, and the more exciting the sound was, the happier I > was. I'd crank the volume way up and wait for something to happen. > When a speaker or amp did the trick, I bought it. In the late 1970s, > it was Brian Eno's "Here Come the Warm Jets" (what a great title), > "Another Green World," and "Before and After Science." Eno's > soundscapes and use of space really fired my imagination. The sound > was at once abstract and emotionally charged. > > I recently asked Stereophile magazine's editor, John Atkinson, to > name the record that made him take notice of the sound, and without > hesitating for a second he said, "Jimi Hendrix, 'Electric Ladyland.'" > Good choice! > > What about you? I want to hear how it hit you; was it on the radio, > at a friend's house, or did you just buy something you read about? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2012 14:51:32 -0700 From: Steve VanDevender Subject: Re: What's the best-sounding record you ever heard? Might I suggest: Warpaint - Happy Rhodes ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2012 11:18:08 -0400 From: robert bristow-johnson Subject: Re: What's the best-sounding record you ever heard? On 6/4/12 6:32 PM, Mike Connell wrote: > What's the best-sounding record you ever heard? to answer this, it's sorta an embarrassment of riches. lemme leave it to the vinyl age... i have two or three much venerated albums. two are getting a little bit beatup from use (i use Discwasher, but it's been nearly 4 decades) and one i was able to spot somewhere brand new and bought a second copy and it's pristine. 1972 Captain Beyond (self-titled album) my first exposure to really creative and well-produced music that was not Top 40. spacey, hard rock. 1974 Camel Moonmadness my first exposure to British prog rock ???? King Crimson Red (can't find it at the moment to look up the year) of more popular note: 1973 Yes Topographic Oceans (this is like a faithful old lover) 1975 Pink Floyd Wish you were here 197? Al Dimeola Elegant Gypsy i dunno, all of these albums had me dropping my jaw to the floor. - -- r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:07:26 -0400 From: robert bristow-johnson Subject: Re: What's the best-sounding record you ever heard? On 6/5/12 5:51 PM, Steve VanDevender wrote: > Might I suggest: > > Warpaint - Happy Rhodes yeah, Feed the Fire, Words ain't fer cowards, phobos. and it's not scratchy. - -- r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V16 #448 ***************************