How to find the good CD recordings?

shadorne, it is my understanding that for Tidal to be meaningful from a quality standpoint would require me to buy more equipment (DAC) etc and I'm not ready to go that route yet. It all sounds complicated and expensive. But I will check out the 2014  LZ masters.

lowrider, I did notice that IV had no credit for mastering.

I'm probably not the type to want a bunch of different CDs of the same album. I realize that this would be the best, and really the only way, to find what sounds best to me, I'm just not into this enough, yet, to put the legwork and money into it. 

So I will be relying on reviews to a large extent. Thanks for the references.

lowrider, my CD player is an Arcam CD92. It got good reviews in its day and supposedly the DAC was something special then. That's all I know about it.

I'll spend some time with my Zep CDs tonight and see what I can hear.

And I guess the practice of comparing a Pink Floyd CD vs a Zep CD is probably not the best approach.

whart,

I lean toward the delta blues but like it all. I'm not an expert by any means. 

I lived in Clarksdale as a child and we have good friends in Greenwood. He is an engineer and worked on the BB King museum in Indianola and he met BB many times. The delta is a fascinating place culturally. So much art and literature came out of it. I love going back. Their is a great blues record store there, Cat Head music. The guy who owns it pretty much runs the blues festival. It is amazing how many Europeans come to it. They seem to appreciate the blues more in Europe than we do here. Most of the acts at the blues festival tour in Europe often but not much here in the states.

Anyway, my Zep 1-4 CDs were mastered by Diament. I've listened again tonight and they are not as bad as I first thought they were. 

Have not listened to much Free except for their one big hit. Will look into that. And thanks for the reference to Black Cat Bones.

If you haven't looked into Gary Clark, Jr you should. He is very talented and has some blues based stuff mixed in with heavy guitar work and even some R&B.

whart wrote:

None of the Zep albums are in my view of audiophile quality-- it is somewhat sad, given the significance of the band, that they weren’t able to put together better quality recordings.

I came late to LZ (1978-ish) and even though never an audiophile I kind of got that impression even back then. They seemed to have other priorities than production value whereas with Rush, Floyd and others, production seemed to be very important to the band.

I do find that the Pink Floyd stuff is very well produced, at least from DSOTM onward. Rush also. I got rid of my Yes cassettes and albums years ago. I need to look for some of their CDs.

whart, I also like the older Zep and lean strongly toward their blues based songs. So strongly in fact that I've gotten into the blues that inspired them and have collected many of the blues songs they, well, ripped off. Unfortunately all of these blues songs I collected via iTunes which I only recently learned and now recognize are of fairly poor quality.

I really, really don't want to go down the rabbit hole of collecting blues 45s (or earlier) so I'm not even sure how to go about getting quality recordings of that music......which was as often as not produced on old equipment and with fairly poor quality.

I have enjoyed going to Clarksdale, Mississippi (where the fabled crossroads are) for their spring blues festival. There are stencils of Robert Plant's face spray painted all over Clarksdale.

lowrider, interesting that you mention the loudness wars. I don't think loudness and volume are the same thing but certain CDs are definitely louder at a given volume than others. A new CD I purchased recently by a new glam band, The Struts, is noticeably louder than most of my other CDs. The quality seems fine, but they're not really a sit and listen type band. (Going to see them in October. They're nothing earth shaking but they are a breath of fresh air in an otherwise pretty stagnant rock landscape.

lowrider, my system is an AR LS16 tubed pre-amp and a Madrigal Proceed HPA2 (Levinson) amp with Aerial Acoustics 7b speakers. Totally inherited, I had nothing to do with their selection. Not sure how it stacks up but is leaps and bounds better than anything I've ever had.

I look forward to looking into the sources you guys have provided.

I have found that on eBay and Amazon it can be hard to get specific info about any given disc. I'm assuming I can take the i.d. number of the disc and look it up on some of the sites you guys have recommended.

jafant, thanks for that info.

tomcy6, Robert Palmer's book (not that Robert Palmer) called Deep Blues has been on my Amazon wish list for a while. 

I have to agree about the quality issue with the older blues. It simply isn't going to be there and, if you go to some blues festivals it is not always about some level of instrumental or vocal virtuosity (although it is often there). It is much more of an emotional and expressive experience.

The festivals are a great place to experience the blues. Many of the local blues greats have children and grandchildren who are in the business now. Cedric Burnside, grandson of R. L. Burnside has a number of albums out (they are technically hill country blues, not delta, but play a lot in the delta). Junior Kimbrough has family members who play as well.

Cedric Burnside is a great live performer.

Off topic again, but I'm listening to Led Zeppelin I on vinyl right now. I got it about 1980. It does not look too good and there are some clicks and pops here and there but it sounds pretty good on an old and only middling turn table and a $50 phono pre-amp. Maybe as good as the CD I have. I'm impressed.

chemman, every one says it is easy but I can't seem to figure it out.

First scenario: Tidal on computer, computer into back of pre-amp with a 1/4 jack to RCA. And you say sound quality is okay-ish with that set up? If so, that's what I need to try first.

Second scenario: Node2. So Node2 to router then router to pre-amp. It is the router to pre-amp that hangs me up. What type of cable? My pre-amp has only RCA and XLR inputs and the router is in a different room.

Thanks for the recommendations.

This is way off topic, but have you Zep fans seen Greta Van Fleet? To me they almost seem like a LZ parody but I think there is some talent in there. I think they need to take a year off, listen to zero LZ and only listen to the blues then come back and write some songs.

No, Deep Blues is more of a guide to who's who and what their history is. Not a buying guide. 

I had a Robert Johnson collection on vinyl years ago. Will look into the CD you mentioned above. I do not have a collection of blues music. Mostly just scattered singles from iTunes or southern music CD compilations (Oxford American some of which are quite good). I need to put together a collection of the basics.

Next time I'm in Clarksdale, possibly this fall, but definitely in April for the blues festival, I will spend some time and money at Cat Head music. The owner Roger Stolle (nice guy) who runs the festival teams up with Jeff Konkel who runs Broke and Hungry Records to do some documentaries on delta and hill country blues as well as a video series called Moonshine and Mojo hands (worth a watch). Broke and Hungry Records records a lot of the local musicians in an economically as possible way. I'll let Roger spend my money in his shop.

Thanks gosta. I'm still working out all the pros and cons of Tidal. If it is worth it to pay $20 a month ($240/year!) for the hi res stuff then it seems to me it would be imperative to have the equipment to listen to it at the highest quality level and I'm still just not sure how to do that or even if I want to spend that much more money for that additional equipment.

I might even consider the low-res subscription just to find music I like and then find good recordings of it on CD.

I'm re-listening to my earlier Zep CDs and maybe they'e not as bad as I thought. I think more volume (they way it was intended I suppose) would probably help. 

Replacing the equipment I have (which was all free) is not really an option. I'm fairly sure I cannot afford higher quality than what I already have (Aerial Acoustic 7Bs) unless I started trading and selling which is a rabbit hole I am not going down at this point since I really don't know enough to do so.

As I've been listening to my CD collection again (it has been years, only about 100 CDs) there are some standouts. I mean obvious, immediate standouts. The original release of Sting's Soul Cages is just amazing. I keep going back to it over and over. It is one of those situations where even though none of the songs on the album are my favorites, the sound is so lush and bright that I keep wanting to hear it again. The same with Pink Floyd's Animals and Wish You Were Here.

Sting's Ten Summoner's Tales sounds good too but I really dislike a lot of the songs on that album.

I will look into that. I may have some of that on vinyl. When I was in college in the early 1980’s I bought a used double album called Led Zeppelin BBC Broadcasts. It cost me $20 which was crazy money for me back then. It was my understanding that it was bootleg and it looks it. On the back it says "Taken from BBC Broadcasts in 1971 and 1972 recorded at the Royal Albert Hall and at the BBC studios in London. Under that it says, " Due to the unavailability of some master recordings and transcription disks, some surface noise may be evident on certain tracks."

If I remember correctly the SQ is not too good but some of the performances are great. The back of the album lists Whole Lotta Love including "Minnesota Blues" which is really Elvis’s Mess of the Blues. Plant is fantastic with this. I need to put it on the TT and see what it sounds like.

Here it is on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/LED-ZEPPELIN-BBC-Broadcasts-NM-Sunburn-Eva-2x-double-LP-Royal-Albert-Hall/1...

I also have what you are referring to via iTunes. It includes Traveling Riverside Blues and The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair. I think those are the best two songs out of the whole bunch.

I need to get that CD. I’m pretty much done with iTunes.

Thanks for all the great advice and discussion folks. I'm still all ears.

Okay Nicholas, how about dropping the names of your 5 favorite prog rock CDs? Or more if you have the time.

I looked up my Zeppelin CDs on the dynamic range database. My 1990 Zep I Diament did not rate very well, but II and III by Diament and IV by Page all rated very high.

I'm going to look for a Physical Graffiti CD next. I'll use the database but open to suggestions as well.

I have all of their major releases on vinyl but most of those are worn out. I have two In Through the Out Door albums. One is still in the brown rapper and the sleeve is unmolested by water so it is in decent shape. The others were mishandled......and played on a record changer stacked high! Remember those?

Off topic, but my late uncle, a neurologist in New Orleans, was a classical music aficionado first and probably an audiophile second. I remember his Klipsch speakers from the 1970s and that his components were McIntosh.

For a long time one whole wall of the listening room in his house in the Quarter was shelves of LPs from floor to ceiling.

He went entirely to CDs when they came out. I do not know what happened to his LP collection. The last few times I went to see him that same wall was completely replaced with CDs. He had some sort of connection with Sony and Sony would send him CDs to preview before they were released. I think my aunt, his sister, donated the CDs when he died or they were sold in the estate sale. I have a handful of them, maybe 10. I like mainstream symphonic works but have only a basic knowledge of classical music. My cousin has the speakers but does not use them. I think they are in a self storage unit.

I can't speak to audio, but in the photography world dynamic range is a big issue from film to camera sensors to monitors to printers. We obsess over histograms which show not only the dynamic range (as 'x') but also the amount of luminance across the dynamic range (as 'y'). And you want each of your components to have the widest dynamic range capability.

However, the dynamic range of the finished photo (or print) nor the histogram even, tells you anything about whether it is a good photograph or not.

I suspect the same is true of music but don't know for sure. I'd guess the dynamic range is just one element of what makes a song sound good. Could be totally wrong.

jafant, will do! 

Slightly off topic but not really.  As I've been learning about hifi sound and going through all my CDs there are a few that seem like standouts in terms of SQ and one of them that has kind of become my test CD and which I keep coming back to is Sting's Soul Cages.

This CD was bought when the album came out, the original release from A&M Records dated 1991, catalog number 6405, barcode is 07502-16405-28. It gets high numbers on the Dynamic Range DB.

It is also marked as recorded in "Q Sound". Looking that up it seems it is not something that caught on. I'm not sure why because it really seems to work. The SQ is so rich, the bass is deep without being muddy or boomy (except on one track, Why Should I Cry for You, where it is clearly intentionally boomy with in your face timpani drum). The CD draws me back as much for the SQ as the songs themselves. 

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there for folks who might want to give it a listen or might have some thoughts on Q Sound.

Agree with you about Sting's use of his bass. I may be wrong about this but I never thought Sting was a standout bass player. He is certainly a world class singer and writer but I always felt his bass playing was good but not amazing. Certainly Soul Cages could have benefited from more up front bass playing, like with the Police, but I do get the impression that he wanted it more subdued.

As for the timpani drum, I just meant it sounded boomy in a good way, the way a timpani is supposed to sound. The emphasis in that song is 'boom-boom" . With my system it sounds like someone is hitting it right there in the room right in front of you.

Thanks jkingtut, we've been thinking about going back in the fall and that would be a great reason to do it. We drove through Helena several times on our previous trips. The last time we were there the river had flooded levee to levee and parts of Helena were under water.

I will look into the RJ set.