I’ve always been a lover of really good hi-fi to listen to music. My exploration began over 40 years ago, when I bought a couple of active Meridian speakers from a local musician. I remember playing Jate Bush’s “Hounds of Love” on CD and thinking “This music seems really odd!” I was hearing whole elements that I had never heard before as the new speakers pulled out more detail from the recordings. In recent times, after visiting “The Spinning Room” in Leeds, I have reignited my interest in upgrading my system and once again have been amazed at the huge variation of sonic quality in mixing and mastering. One of the main surprises in upgrading the system is how much different really good power cables make in improving sound quality, but that will be the subject of a future blog.
Lets start with the great sounding albums
Lets start on a positive note with great sounding vinyl that was brilliantly mixed and mastered. Its also important to note that the actual vinyl pressing makes a big difference and without sounding like some obsessive audio geek, its a bit like the difference between a great restaurant and a basic gastro pub! Here are some of the albums that to my ears on my gear sound absolutely fantastic and a joy to listen to
Graceland – Paul Simon
Aja – Steely Dan
Continuum – John Mayer
Hoodoo Man Blues – Junior Wells (45 rpm version)
A Kind of Blue – Miles Davis (Mobile Fidelity version)
Robbie Robertson – Robbie Robertson
Mysterious Traveller – Weather Report
These are all personal preferences of course and interestingly I find that albums from mid 1970s often sound great
Two of many albums that I love, but IMO don’t sound great
Here are two albums that on vinyl to my ears don’t sound great. In many instances I had to check my system to see if all was ok because sonically the mixes just didn’t sound right. I’m looking at different pressings for some of these as I love the material
Little Earthquakes – Tori Amos – I’m looking at getting the 2 album version now
Hounds of Love – Kate Bush
Both of these sound really lacking to my ears! There are, of course, many more, and it’s not down to the technology or time when they were recorded. “Hoodoo Man Blues” was recorded in mid-1965 and was probably recorded in an afternoon, and itsounds amazing!
A game changer for CD format, a few tweaks and its pure magic
Until recently, I had a collection mostly on CD. I started listening to vinyl and fell back in love with sound. I also discovered several game-changing tweaks that made my CDs sound terrific. The first was to upgrade the mains cables for all equipment. Surely a mains cable is a mains cable you may ask? Well, if you look at investing and exploring some really high end ones, these make an amazing difference. I was literally shocked at how the exact same gear sounded so much better. The next change was upgrading the power amp to a class A Valvet unit.
The previous meridian one was very good but the Valvet made a huge sonic difference. The final change was picking up a Meridian 800 ref CD player. When these came out over 25 years ago, they cost 10,000 pounds, so they were totally out of reach. I found one for 800 quid as its old school tech, but sounds amazing when I use it simply as a CD transport.
CDs now sound very similar to vinyl, and albums like the Rickie Lee Jones anthology sound absolutely fantastic. The exploration continues, and of course, it’s all about personal taste, but you may be amazed at how much more enjoyable your listening experience can be once you look at some of what I am discussing here. Finally I’m delighted to report that all my released material to date mixed and mastered by Carl Rosamond sounds amazing on all formats and can be found here
