Do the warp9 and you will fully understand how important the "clean treble" is. It is ear fatiguing after listening if the sound is very direct and not clean.
Yes, the Sheffield Wagner can be almost unlistenable unless treble is tip-top best. I was surprised it sounded as good as it did on your system.
Finding excellent stereo Wagner recordings in NM condition is difficult. There are LPs with snippets and movements but complete pieces such as Lohengrin or Siegfried are difficult. If you want power, conflict and death - big full bore hammer smashing yet beautiful as only Wagner can do - try 'Siegfried's Funeral March' from Twilight of the Gods. If you want gorgeous tippy-topmost trebled - higher than R.Strauss in Zarathustra - try Prelude To Act I From Lohengrin and then the Lohengrin Bridal March with wonderful chorus.
Tang, I am so happy to find you are exploring big orchestral music, late 19th-early 20thC, because your system can do it so well. You set a goal. Video is video but I get a chance to hear what is possible with some of the music I really enjoy.
I got the Lp box set about 15 years ago at record show in Zurich...essentially unplayed. First time I ever saw black label Royal Sound Stereo from Decca
Yes. Usually ROH seats aren't that expensive as the most expensive there aren't the best, but this is heavily sold out so you end up buying the most expensive. And normal classical in other halls is much cheaper compared to ROH
Yes. Usually ROH seats aren't that expensive as the most expensive there aren't the best, but this is heavily sold out so you end up buying the most expensive. And normal classical in other halls is much cheaper compared to ROH
Last time I was there was for La Boheme with family and my son (aged 10 then) kept asking me why the lady threw the man her socks during Quando m'en vo. I told him it was her knickers and he looked really disgusted.
Yes, the Sheffield Wagner can be almost unlistenable unless treble is tip-top best. I was surprised it sounded as good as it did on your system.
Finding excellent stereo Wagner recordings in NM condition is difficult. There are LPs with snippets and movements but complete pieces such as Lohengrin or Siegfried are difficult. If you want power, conflict and death - big full bore hammer smashing yet beautiful as only Wagner can do - try 'Siegfried's Funeral March' from Twilight of the Gods. If you want gorgeous tippy-topmost trebled - higher than R.Strauss in Zarathustra - try Prelude To Act I From Lohengrin and then the Lohengrin Bridal March with wonderful chorus.
Tang, I am so happy to find you are exploring big orchestral music, late 19th-early 20thC, because your system can do it so well. You set a goal. Video is video but I get a chance to hear what is possible with some of the music I really enjoy.
You must have the Sheffield album so you very much understand what I said about the treble of the system need to be clean to listen this album without ear ache. Thank you very much Tima for directing to interesting orchestral music. I will look into those pieces. My preference is actually more in Mahler and Bruckner. I think they have more interesting works than Wagner.
Tima. I was listening to this Bruckner 9 with my current setup. I would say this could be the best orchestral recording I have ever heard.
To be frank Brian it is tiring testing speaker cable for me. Just to put Kuro speaker cable back will give me sweat. It is heavy, super stiff, cannot bend much. Kuro bi-wire speaker cable is almost like two set of solid core speaker cables in one sleeve. The space behind my speaker is also very tight. It would also take time for the cable to settle once I put them back in. Quite a turn off just to think. Anyway I can say that cleaner electricity that I have now would make Kuro sings much better. The presentation would not change and the tone would still be top down. Ambient cues come from excellent high. While the tone of Denon is more bottom up. The ambient cues come from bass nuances. It is very interesting to hear different type of ambient cues one from having excellent treble one from excellent bass.
To be frank Brian it is tiring testing speaker cable for me. Just to put Kuro speaker cable back will give me sweat. It is heavy, super stiff, cannot bend much. Kuro bi-wire speaker cable is almost like two set of solid core speaker cables in one sleeve. The space behind my speaker is also very tight. It would also take time for the cable to settle once I put them back in. Quite a turn off just to think. Anyway I can say that cleaner electricity that I have now would make Kuro sings much better. The presentation would not change and the tone would still be top down. Ambient cues come from excellent high. While the tone of Denon is more bottom up. The ambient cues come from bass nuances. It is very interesting to hear different type of ambient cues one from having excellent treble one from excellent bass.
These days I have been listening a lot Wagner, Mahler exciting pieces. Here is Wagner's Die Walkure by Erich Leinsdorf I would like to recommend. I have a dozen Die Walkure but sonically this is the best. Interpretation wise it is also very good imo. I actually like Solti and Stokowski most but sonically could not find records that get close to this dirc-to-disc by Sheffield Lab. It is performed by LA Philharmonic. SL27-5L28. You can use this to test your system. Do the warp9 and you will fully understand how important the "clean treble" is. It is ear fatiguing after listening if the sound is very direct and not clean.
Very good as expected, I have this record too, great to test tone, articulation, dynamics and I am anxious to listen to it once more after watching your video but my new room is still not ready. It is one of my go to records for testing and enjoying at the same time. I can not listen to records I do not enjoy just for testing, for that I use test records
I am eager to hear your vintage setup with the neumann. You did what can be done with a vdh, thank you for sharing with us the journey!
You must have the Sheffield album so you very much understand what I said about the treble of the system need to be clean to listen this album without ear ache. Thank you very much Tima for directing to interesting orchestral music. I will look into those pieces. My preference is actually more in Mahler and Bruckner. I think they have more interesting works than Wagner.
Tima. I was listening to this Bruckner 9 with my current setup. I would say this could be the best orchestral recording I have ever heard.
Yes, I bought the Wagner and Prokofiev Sheffields when they first came out. I have not listened to them for quite a while for the reasons we discuss, although the Prokofiev is not as problematic.
Same for me wrt Wagner. It is John Williams Star Wars music - a nice sweet but not too often. I have as much Mahler as I do Beethoven, followed by Sibelius, Tchaikovsky. I am building my collection of Shoshtakovich, some Stravinsky, some Bruckner.
Your ERC Carl Schuricht/Vienna Phil Bruckner 9 is playing as I write - thank you for full recording!! It is wonderful, even through my computer speakers. It takes a system like yours to do it justice, eg ~25:00 -- 29:00 - the orchestra all holds together so well, big brass, timpani.
For folks interested in exploring Bruckner, check John Berky's Web site. He has a regular newsletter, an amazing Bruckner discography and keeps up with new releases and performances.
Apart from the loud and the bold, next symphonies to try out might be softer ones.
Schubert's Great (9th symphony): The Szell on Columbia SAX will be great, and is only a few hundred unlike Szell's Beethoven. My RCA German press of Schubert’s 9th/Munch is better than my Decca ED1 performance by Krips, and low cost, and was played at yours Tang when I was there, and you had liked it then so maybe try now.
The other key one is Debussy La Mer. This apart from being nice to listen to is a key system test because the soft quiet moves and swells can easily sound boring if one has a system where you have to reach for the remote to increase the volume when things go down, and decrease the volume when the music swells. Columbia SAX Giulini, will be a few hundred, but the Giulini on DGG 2531264 is extremely low price and good, I really enjoyed using it for auditioning at Anamighty Sound. The cover is a picture of waves, and you should feel like waves gently washing over you as it softly rises and falls
The other key one is Debussy La Mer. This apart from being nice to listen to is a key system test because the soft quiet moves and swells can easily sound boring if one has a system where you have to reach for the remote to increase the volume when things go down, and decrease the volume when the music swells.
This is very interesting, it means you like compression. If soft passages are low and swells are high and there is a big difference in volume within two, it means there is less compression. Am I missing something?
People at home generally do not like very quiet passages and tend to turn the volume up as they are used to microscopic hearing of even soft passages as generally recordings are compressed. This is not always bad, we would have no crooners without it, and it is useful in a lot of situations in a variety of musical genres. However, classical recordings tend to use less compression hence larger volume differences between soft and loud passages. If your stereo system accommodates this difference I take it as a positive.
This is very interesting, it means you like compression. If soft passages are low and swells are high and there is a big difference in volume within two, it means there is less compression. Am I missing something?
It is the sea. Stand on a beach, especially when the ocean is up and surfers are out. Incoming wave is sound swelling up (but not compresses), outgoing is relatively much quieter, receding. Different from La Mer, try Mendelssohn's Fingals Cave which is shoreline rock cliffs ocean rise and fall. Debussy's music is genius - more like open ocean than shore.
It is the sea. Stand on a beach, especially when the ocean is up and surfers are out. Incoming wave is sound swelling up (but not compresses), outgoing is relatively much quieter, receding. Different from La Mer, try Mendelssohn's Fingals Cave which is shoreline rock cliffs ocean rise and fall. Debussy's music is genius - more like open ocean than shore.
You are even deeper Howie. Your craw cracking noise is in fact what is happening when listen quiet passage in Debussy vinyls. You better have one hell of a clean pressing to listen to those soft quieter passages. In fact the whole La Mer. I pass.
