What are your favorite recordings that sound best to you?


What would be the best sounding records you have ever listened to that sound best to you regardless of its genre, pressing, mastering, label, value or a technology used to record it?

esputnix

My best sounding albums are the audiophile specialty recordings like the Mapleshade label or Sheffield Labs. But it may not be the best music or performance, that is a different subject. 

Dire Straits - On Every Street:

  • When it Comes to You
  • You and Your Friend
  • Planet of New Orleans

Patricia Barber - Cafe Blue (45 RPM ONESTEP IMPEX):

  • Taste of Honey
  • Nardis

Charles Mingus - Ah Um:

  • Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Metallica - Metallica Black Album:

  • Wherever I May Roam

David Crosby: "If I could only remember my name" now available on the 50th anniversary reissue.

Dire Straits: " Brothers in Arms" on the JVC XRCD2 issue.

Most of the Pat Metheny albums on ECM.

I own about 2500 LPs.  So at any given moment there are a few thousand LPs that I have not listened to "lately".  Seems to me that every time I pull out a few LPs that are not in regular rotation, I discover another gem.  Therefore, it would be utterly impossible to name one favorite. However, one can always bank on Reference Recordings, Sheffield, ECM, Pablo, Contemporary (for jazz), Riverside (for jazz), the latter day version of Impulse ("Jasmine"), and an occasional other oddball and surprising label to provide a memorable listening experience.  This is on either of my two audio systems using any of the 5 cartridges and tonearms currently mounted on 5 turntables.

 

 

 

 

Billy Barber - both

Grusin - Discovered Again!

Kevin Gilbert - The Shaming of the True 

ELP - '70 debut