What is your personal reference audiophile recording (best sound quality)?

[Boris75]

Perhaps my favourite test CD is Master of Chinese Percussion K2HD. It is also very nice musically speaking.

[Boris75]

My favourite test disc is Bartok's wooden prince by Boulez and the CSO, DG (yes, I know, DG is not one of our usual audiophile labels, but this disc is different and won a grammy for recording quality):

By the way, I have recordings which I find to offer better music, sound quality or both. But as it happens this CD, which is very good on both music and sound quality, was the first one I used when I started to care about the quality of music reproduction and therefore I know it inside out, and for this reason it has become my reference. In particular, the introduction of the Wooden Prince is pretty challenging to hifi systems as it starts from strings playing a very low level and yet it is important to hear individual instruments emerge quietly one after the other from this also quiet background. In my first mid-fi system (Yamaha CD player, NAD B320, JMLab DB28 speakers) I tended to use the first two or three minutes of the disc to go and get a cup of coffee or something as it sounded as nothing happened. With my current setup these first three minutes of music are riveting. Another thing: it is really the Wooden Prince that I recommend in this CD; the Cantata Profana is well recorded as well but I find it awfully boring.

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[Boris75]

excellent choices. Cantate Domino which recording is that?

 

There are many versions. My favourite ones are the Proprius SACD and the FIM K2HD CD:

[Boris75]

For everyone's information, there is a thread on the Steve Hoffman forum that deals with a closely related question to the one we are addressing here and offers many attractive disc recommendations.

 

[P.S.: Though I am a long-time CA member, I am not really sure that posting such links to other fora is allowed. If this is not authorised, I'll gladly drop this post.]

[Boris75]

Hey we forgot Hope!

16/44.1 but this sounds good!

 

The Analogue Productions SACD of Hope is great.