Mapleshade records: Pick the best of

Hi, Sean:

I own 24 Mapleshade CD's, and intend, in response to your post, to write an article that provides information about each recording. Unfortunately, I do not have time to do that today, and I am travelling to Sacramento for the weekend. Hence, I'll have to write the article early next week, and will post it as a new thread on Audiogon, under the title "Review of 24 Mapleshade CD's". In the meantime, feel free to contact me directly if you have questions about any specific Mapleshade releases.

Audiomax: I think that we are in the same boat. I read the descriptions of these discs and none of them comes across as exciting to me. That's why i posted the question that i did. I was hoping that someone else was brave enough to go out on that limb and report back for the rest of us : )

Scott: That is quite a daunting task and one that would be of benefit for all Agoner's everywhere. I wish you the best on your trip and look forward to reading your summaries when you get a chance. Sean
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An audiophile friend passed to me a recent Maple Shade quarterly mailer. The hyperbole of the sound engineer talk got to me (the little green symbol in the blurb for most of the disks indicate audiophile or near-SADC recording quality via their two channel anolog recordings--i.e., essentially "live" in the studio) so I ordered six CDs.

I'm a jazzhead, and I like reggae. If you've ever been to a live reggae gig, where there's quality amplification and muscianship, the low end is like nothing on earth. Maple Shade tries to capture it with Midnite's "Ras Mek Peace." It's terrific audio quality re voice and most of the music but the low end is muddy on the first few tracks. Nice try, and if there's some benefit of the doubt, my audiophile buddy tells me his Krell reference subwoofer, Musical Fidelity amp and preamp and $8K worth of speaker cable and interconnects will clear up that attempt to capture live reggae base.

May I suggest, however, recordings of merit if you are a jazz fan: The C-Nuts and Gerard D'Angelo Trio are excellent, both quality of the music and audio quality through the frequency range.

Also, look into the John Cocuzzi jazz combo...nice, hot old school vibraphone-led group with a couple of vocals. The A la Carte Brass and Percussion group CDs will make you feel like you're back in New Orleans...great sound and FUN performances.

Another vote for the A la Carte discs. The theme from I Love Lucy is slammin. I also really like the Frank Foster - We Do It Different disc. Extremely dymnamic presentation of a big band. John Faddis' trumpet sounds exactly like I've heard it live.