Haven’t played this LP in a while!
An Ellington octet recording that has a nice mellow “having fun” vibe.
Finally my stereo is back together and sounding good!! Just got back from a short “business” trip to NOLA. Saw Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet at Vaughn’s in the Bywater. Really fun band! Danced till 2:30 A.M., then on to another crazy bar. Trips to NOLA always make me want to listen to this!! A very outstanding drummer from NOLA. Give Loran’s Dance a listen: big fat groove!!!
I have a 24/96 FLAC copy of this: sounds so good! Recording just makes me happy!!
Somebody mentioned this recording recently so I picked it up. Fun performances and very good sound.
Last one on a cold, dark, rainy night in Chicago. It’s warm in front of my stereo. The Billie Holiday stuff is so great! In her prime!
Now this excellent sounding SACD by this extremely talented pianist. Geri can play and man has she got an impressive musical mind!
Favorite Sunday morning music of all time!! I’m playing the remastered CD. I have the Steve Hoffman 45 LP too. The LP is WAY better. Too lazy to pull out LPs much anymore.
Disc 1. An American treasure.
It’s been a week of Monk for me:
I love me some Monk. Or ALL Monk.
Now it’s Duke.
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Friday I changed the footers under my Rega RP3 (from four VooDoo Cable IsoPods to Herbie’s Audio Lab Iso-Cups with Moss Green balls (the RP3 sits on a PowerBase) . . . Both are EXCELLENT footers for this table but the Iso-Cups have added a touch of richness that is very welcome sometimes. Right now this excellently-recorded two LP set is sounding fantastic!
Now this fantastic LP. Love Flora!
I just put on my new SACD of Orff’s Carmina Burana (Chandos 5067), a live recording (complete with annoying applause at end) of the London Symphony Orchestra–Hickox, 2008. I haven’t listened that critically yet (extremely promising), but I am struck by how high I have had to turn up the gain to play it (DS/DMP). The recording is an outlier in terms of my usual gain settings. Since it’s kinda raucous at places, I had expected to have to turn it down.
Does anyone have any insights as to why the gain requirements should be unusual in this recording? I doubt it’s a manifestation of PTSD from that intimidating Medieval Latin course I took 40 years ago, since I did like the Goliard Poets.
One nice technical characteristic of the recording is that it sounds really good even when massive chorus and rambunctious orchestral resources are used, a scenario in other recordings and systems that can suffer from sizzly fizzly grating digititis malignans.
My guess is that in order to retain the dynamics (and allow it to sound so good when the “massive chorus and rambunctious orchestral resources are used”) the recording level is set very wide, and little or no compression is used. Therefore there is a wide range from “quiet” to “very loud” and the average volume level will be lower than on quite a few other discs. Indeed it often seems that compressed audio is more the norm than audio with a wide dynamic range.
lonson said Indeed it often seems that compressed audio is more the norm than audio with a wide dynamic range.Most interesting. I always assumed that I preferred a maximum dynamic range, but now I wonder if that is impractical. The Chandos SCAD Carmina Burana (v. supra), is either TOO LOUD or too quiet, so that frequent volume adjustments are needed to listen,like playing a video game with the remote. Wouldn't defrocked medieval monks have been well-acquainted with Ms. Goldilocks?
The trick is to turn the volume up so that the quiet sections are just loud enough. The loud bangy sections (of which there are a good number) will be LOUD, just as they are when attending a performance of the piece.
I recorded a full orchestra performing Holst’s Planets yesterday (a big orchestra: 6 French horns, 4 trumpets, six timpani, 2 harps, women’s chorus, etc.). The dynamic range as performed was from almost indiscernibly quiet to borderline painful. My recording captures the full dynamic range. The RMS value is probably something like -30dB which is fairly quiet. Thus, you need to turn up the volume to listen. The quiet sections will be quiet; loud, will be loud.
Now a week of Jackie McLean:
Elk saidThe trick is to turn the volume up so that the quiet sections are just loud enough…The quiet sections will be quiet; loud, will be loud.
Indeed, you speak the truth, oh wise one. More careful audition from the listening chair proves a wonderful experience of this excellent performance. Use as background music from another room, not so much. It would be cool if there were a switch to change from full dynamic to compressed mode for that flexibility. With only one choice, I vote for wide dynamic range.
Love The Planets. Perhaps I should launch into them later today.