Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Re: Recommended Music

Don't forget the 'Talking Heads Brick' available in Europe as individual CD/DVD-As. Totally comprehensive collection wth lots of bonus / extended tracks. Beautiful sound.

R.E.Ms hits album too is a good listen.

Dire Straits 'Brother's in Arms' and Mark Knopfler's 'Shangri-La'.

And for totally different reasons

Roy Orbison's 'Black and white Night'

Blue Man Group's 'Audio'

Natalie Merchant's 'Tigerlily'

~M~

BT: Soundtrack to the movie 'Monster'

Its a DTS DVD and is absolutely sublime. Gorgeous use of surround sound: subtle at times but also appropriate to the movie. It also makes full use of the dynamic range available and is very testing of subwoofers at times.

Play at -10db or so.
Testing tracks are:
1, 2, 16, 21-24.
Deepest bass is track 16 approx 78mins

Well, I`m an avid Mark Knopfler fan and I would like recommend the following:-

Golden Heart - HDCD
Shangri-La - DVD Audio
A Night in London - DVD Video

Pure quality and genius.

The Beatles "Love" Cirque Du Soleil show soundtrack will be released on Nov 20th.

The DVD is audio only and will contain 81 minutes of music in both 5.1 surround sound and stereo (presented in DVD-Audio MLP, DTS, Dolby and PCM).

Has anyone tried DVD audio discs from german audiophile secialists Tacet? You can also get them on SACD I think.
I have bought several of their DVDAs recently (classical chamber music, mostly) in 24/48 and 24/96 formats. The sound quality is generally outstandingly natural and unforced on my stereo setup, although the discs have no dedicated stereo track. Some of the discs are several hours(!)long; but most are only of average length.
For those with surround systems their approach is interesting, but might not be to everyone's taste, and it is bound to be problematic if you have small rear speakers, because they generally aim to put you in the middle of the musicians; or you may find yourself listening to a Schubert piano work with the piano behind you. Hmnnn.... Not that this bothers me with my simple stereo set up.

They don't feature big name artists or huge orchestral works, but they do have some good chamber musicians and I particularly like the Auryn String quartet, whose mid-period Beethoven quartets(four on one disc)are sublime.

Michael,

How did you source these Tacet discs? On-line?? Local store??

Looked at DVD-A's on CD-WOW the other day.... vast majority listed were "awaiting delivery" !!! So any experiences re on-line sources (apart from Amazon) from 'Hikers would be welcome.

Rgds

George.

I don't know how he sourced them, but you can look at their website , or have a look at Amazon.de ( here ) or Amazon.co.uk ( here ) . If either link doesn't work, use the search function>Search Classical and Opera and enter Tacet as label (you can narrow it down to DVD-A as format on .de, or enter DVD as title on .co.uk, but knowing Amazon search, you might end up with some titles missing).
From experience, unless you're in Germany Amazon.co.uk is normally less expensive than .de, especially for shipping.
I've bought a lot of DVD Audio's from DVD Pacific, here .
I've also bought quite a few DVD-A's from Amazon Japan, mostly jazz ( here ), but also things like the soundtrack (actually symphonic suite, most of it is identical to the OST) to the anime film AKIRA (both film and soundtrack recommended, soundtrack here ).
You can access all/most of the DVD-A's Amazon Japan carry here , please note that imports are mixed with Japanese releases (you used to be able to sort imports/Japan only).

As noted elsewhere, some of my favourite DVD-A's have only been released this year (Pere Ubu: The Modern Dance, Dual Disc, but DVD side is DVD-A) and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy: The Letting Go.
And I'm really looking forward to the Doors: Perception box set, 6 CD's + 6 DVD-A's (least expensive at Amazon UK last time I checked).

EDIT: DVD Pacific DVD-A link added, was functional again 10 minutes after I sent them an email about the link being down.

I will still wait for iTrax to get wma video (with lossless multi-channel audio) for download, but I'm afraid it may become a bit pricey when thinking about the needed bandwidth.

Martyna Jakubowicz 'Tylko Dylan'

Polish Singer covering Bob Dylan, the recording is astonishing.

Sung in Polish


http://merlin.pl/frontend/browse/product/4,398635.html

I believe these sets have come up in discussion once or twice before, though not in this thread. I thought some here might like to know that the third in the series of ‘Complete Recordings` box sets of music from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is out in the US on Tuesday the 20th of November (this year`s set being the complete score for The Return of the King, obviously).

As with the past two sets, this is a CD and DVD-A combination, the difference being that it spans no less than four CDs this time, and a double-sided DVD-A. I don`t know what`s happening about a UK release but I am ordering my US copy via Axel Music who got last year`s Two Towers set to me bang on time.

Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall from the performance archives series.

Includes a DVD with stereo pcm 24/96 sound. Highly recommended!

Excellent stuff.