Quality of the Stereophile Recording CDs on webs?

Ake: The audio quality on the Stereophile CD's I own is excellent, although I have not always found the performances to be terribly stimulating. I use the disks mostly for "demo" purposes, or when I am checking the sound of my system, but I rarely play the disks for their musical content. The exception to this case may be the recent clarinet quintet recording, which features a fine chamber group and soloist and excellent audio quality.

I agree completely with Sdcampbell. I use the Stereophile CDs to tune my system/room for frequency response in conjunction with SPL meters and to evaluate tweaks / changes to the sound chain. Recommended.

I have tried their Beethoven Piano pieces and I enjoy them a great deal and play them quite frequently. I find they are great background music to work to. The recording are good, though I'm not sure though that I would enthuse about the tone of the piano they used, but since it was a specially outfitted one that could play back prepared recordings and they coudn't reposition it for the recording, I wouldn't hold this against them. I also find them quite useful in judging system components since there is quite a bit of variation in the content of the recordings but they were recorded over a period of about two days so they are very consistent internally. OTOH, they are useful to me because I know what they should sound like because I listen to them frequently, your milage may vary.

Greg