What Are Your Reference Discs? or Specific Reference Tracks

I was just surfing old music I felt like listening to, and the Lovett album immediately struck me as especially expressive of my system’s improved capabilities. It’s a great reference disk.

It seems clear that MC uses Year of the Cat as a standard reference track, and its bona fides as a reference track are proved by the way it renders the various instruments. (Viz., "sounded more like sax than ever,", "each note on a piano is three strings…and its way more real now than ever," "things are rendered so clear and distinct from each other.") Indeed, the track exhibits this more the other tracks/artists he mentions in the quotation, so if Year of the Cat stands above/beyond them, I cannot see how it does *except as* a reference track. Unless it is just above/beyond them for the musical content, in which case it wouldn’t be necessary to dwell on the acoustic details.

I would highly recommend the new album by Rag n Bone Man - Life by Misadventure.
Let your ears decide. 

I would have to rate this one an amethyst.

Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft  Out Here. In There.

First to admit that this isn't an album for everyone or probably a lot less than that but as much as I liked it previously the new stereo has elevated this to the top of my favorites group.

Sidsel Endresen is recorded without reverb or special effects so her voice sounds like a voice and it's pure and true.  There is a track where she does things with that voice that previously was just a little too weird so I would usually just skip that track. Now nothing but jaw dropping amazing.

This album has bass. Low room shaking bass and chess thumping bass.
Bugge Wesseltoft is into unusual sounding percussion that attacks from everywhere with a piano that just ties it all together,

This album is so unusual because there are great accessible tracks that most people could enjoy but Bugge is into new conceptions' of jazz which takes the soundscape to new places that are so much more enjoyable with quality sound.

Unfortunately I doubt if this album will ever be a white hot stamper but for me I'd probably buy it and have to invest in a turntable just to see what it could do.

In Get Better Sound, Jim Smith lists about 180 CDs (no LPs, he explains why) that he finds useful in one way or another. Of these, one (standard, non-audiophile release) is is favorite and in another chapter he details specific sections and what parameter they are used to optimize.

https://www.getbettersound.com/

I and many others have found many useful suggestions in this book.

Bobo stensons  war orphans/ecm cd
Bobo stensons cantando/ecm cd
Peter erskine as it is ecm/cd
Sound track the mission/cd
These have been go to forever i guess...