Demonstrating your Mac System

[carbonman]

It was March 24th that we were able to get out and about to buy some CDs. We ended up with Feist "The Reminder", Oscar Peterson "A 75th Birthday Celebration", Hans Zimmer "Thin Red Line", George Michael "Faith", plus Miles Davis Quintet "Cookin' ", "Relaxin' " and "Workin' ". They are holding our attention quite well for now.

 

[stugazz]

hi i am looking to set up a second sound system for my bdrm. i am looking for a some mac equiptment does anyon have any for sale?

 

[Laemmle]

Does Down Home music serve Peets coffee to the browsing clientèle? Would be a nice touch:thmbsp:



QUOTE=CarlV;1769661]Because they are a half mile away, http://www.downhomemusic.com/ and then a mile away, http://www.modlang.com/news/. Then if I want to go to the other side of Berkeley, http://www.saturnrecords.com/ has a ton of rare LP's, http://www.rasputinmusic.com/berkeley.html, and http://www.amoeba.com/store-locations/index.html. If I want to drive a half hour then the SF record stores come in to play and it would take a while to make a list.



Carl[/QUOTE]

 

[Laemmle]

I picked up a bunch of new music: KT Tunstall: Drastic Fantastic, The Waifs: Sundirt Wafer, Sara Bareilles: Little Voice, Amy Winehouse: Back to Black. I was in Barnes and Noble my favorite place now to buy music because I like being able to put listen to the tracks on the cd before I buy them. Where do you shop for food for your mcintosh ?:guitar:

Can you imagine that in a city such as New York, B&N is the only place left to purchase music on this type of scale.........we no longer enjoy the following: HMV, Tower, and soon to close Richard Branson's Virgin super stores......this is disgusting....

 

[Jem666]

This is the 6th album by Daniel Lanois "Here is what is"

For all intents and purposes these tracks are recorded live in living rooms with no or a minimum of overdubs...this translates into great dynamics, very low and articulate bass and the ambience of the rooms etched in the tracks...you can easily push your amps to the max with this record and still keep it musical and sweet.

...and of course the music is outstanding :thmbsp:

 

[2uberoller]

I picked up the beatles love cd/dvd combo after reading the above posts. While my guitar gently weeps is unbelievable !! The stereo separation is so much better than the original record. I have to say comparing the dvd audio to the cd on the mvp 861 in stereo mode the dvd has more detail, better base overall a more enjoyable sound: Because for example, the voices seem to linger in the air longer and gradually fade into dead silence more, Revolution almost made me fall out of my chair, Here comes the sun, come together there are big differences as well with the dvd vs cd. I don't know if these differences are purely because of the media or the player. I will have to listen to the dvd later in surround sound in the home theater. Anyone else compared these two disks on the same player in stereo:thmbsp: ? david

ps. thanks for the great recommendation

 

[2uberoller]

I wanted to ad this fantastic 180 g LP to the list of recommended records, get it you will not be disappointed: Donald Fagen:Morph The Cat double LP. This album will make your turntable sound like a $5000 SACD player.
Does anyone have any other 180 g LP's to recommend ?

 

[PHC1]

For those that know me, they know I am a blues fan. :yes: One of the albums that I keep coming back to is the "Dupree" "N" "McPhee" the 1967 Blue Horizon Session. I can't say this CD is best for showing off the system per se but it is a great recording of the legends of authentic "New Orleans" blues. :thmbsp: Warm, intimate recording of the great duo, Dupree vocals and McPhee blues guitar. While Dupree was 60 when this recording took place, his voice powerful, throaty, belching out the blues mixed with smoke and whiskey, McPhee was only 23 but was already on his way to one of the best blues guitarists of his time. His guitar playing style also comes across strong, emotional, creating "Louisiana" blues mood and complimenting Jack Dupree's powerful voice. Best enjoyed late at night with a shot of whiskey of your own. :thmbsp: Even if you are not a blues fan, you should get this one for the unique experience of some authentic Louisiana Blues. :yes:

http://www.amazon.com/Dupree-N-McPhee-Horizon-Session/dp/B0009Y8MRU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1210460199&sr=8-1

 

[CarlV]

Cool, I just ordered it. There is very little of the Tony McPhee catalog I do not own. I should have more Champion Jack Dupree though.
Groundhogs rock!


Carl

 

[PHC1]

Cool, I just ordered it. There is very little of the Tony McPhee catalog I do not own. I should have more Champion Jack Dupree though.
Groundhogs rock!


Carl

Carl you probably know this but "Champion" in his name came from the fact that he was a boxer in his teens winning most of his 107 fights and even briefly held the Indiana Lightweight title before returning to music. :boxing: I didn't know that but the CD has a nice booklet inside with some biography info on both Jack and Tony.

 

[CarlV]

Actually I had no idea Dupree was into boxing.
Tony is getting to be a real senior citizen nowadays. I have a bootleg of a club show he did a couple years ago, been that long since I played it. It is a bar audience recording. AK member modge lives nearby to him and sees him on the street occasionally.


Carl

 

[PHC1]

Actually I had no idea Dupree was into boxing.
Tony is getting to be a real senior citizen nowadays. I have a bootleg of a club show he did a couple years ago, been that long since I played it. It is a bar audience recording. AK member modge lives nearby to him and sees him on the street occasionally.


Carl

Time flies, don't it. :sigh: Good thing McIntosh gear ages gracefully, at least we can count on our gear growing old with us and probably even out-living us.

 

[PHC1]

Any fans of Roger Water's Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking here? I must have played that album at least 200 times during the last 7-8 years. I like how the whole CD is a continuous story. :yes:

 

[salm]

For those that know me, they know I am a blues fan. :yes:

Serge,
I discovered Doug MacLeod's Come To Find on XRCD recently. Great stuff! And the XRCD format is just amazing. I plan on buying a lot more of them, even artists I've never even heard of because the format is so good.

 

[rodH]

OK, I was in the mood to buy some SACDs so I just went through this whole thread trying to find some good recommendations. I cut and pasted most of the suggestions for sound quality (after a while I got tired of adding the "what makes your Mc needle move the most" and "what bands do you like" type stuff, so I didn't include all of them). Here are most of them, if you don't want to read the whole 32 pages (some are single tracks, some are complete albums, some are CD, SACD, XRCD, DVD-A or DVD......!!!!!=for albums people kept bringing up):



"Love" - the Beatles compilation - both DVD-A and Redbook!!!!!!
"Master and Commander Soundtrack – Redbook!!!!!
Midnight Sugar from Yamamoto, Tsuyoshi trio-jazz
Proprius limited edition 3 cd/sacd hybrid and 1 dvd set for Jazz at the Pawnshop!!!!!! http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=PRSAM7879

Steel Dan-Gaucho
GEORGE BENSON''s latest CD collaboration with Al Jarreau - Givin' It Up
Seals & Croft's "Summer Breeze"
Patti Austin duet with Al and with Chris Botti (his trumpeting)
Diana Krell in DVD-A
Patricia Barber Cafe blue and Verse
Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out SACD
Donald Fagen's Morph The Cat
Maroon 5 - Songs about Jane
The Eagles - Hotel California (XRCD or DVD-A)
Diana Krall - The look of Love
Dire Straits (XRCD)
Mannheim Steamroller - Fresh Aire IV particularly G Major Toccato
Andreas Vollenweider - Caverna Magica; White Winds;
The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium
Mark Knopfler-any
Buddy guy's Blues singer
Keb Mo's recordings are well produced
Guy Davis on Red house records
Lyle Lovett judges joshua ruth
Seether-One Cold Night
Dave Bruebeck "Gone with the Wind "
Pilhofer Jazz Quartet "Full Circle"

Joe Jackson "Big World".
Dire Straits check out the 20th Anniversary SACD Brothers in Arms Album
1. Dire Straits; Brothers in Arms SACD (new addition) - Brothers in Arms
2. Carla Bruni ; Quelqu'un m'a dit - Song of same name
3. Aaron Neville ; Bring it on home, the Soul Classics - Its raining in Georgia
4. Bryn Terfel ; Sings Favourties - Danny Boy (the best version I have ever heard! )
5. Summer Watson; SUMMER ; Beuceuse
6. Damien Rice; O; Blower's Daughter
7. Selena Jones; Best Audiophile Voices II - My Foolish Heart
8. Chie Ayado; BEST; Tenessee Waltz
9. Rolando Villazon; Gitano Zarzuelas Arias - Amor, vida de mi vida


Eliane ELIAS' Brazilian classics
Richard Thompson, "The Old Kit Bag"
Deadicated - A Grateful Dead Tribute
Patricia Barber
Modern Cool
Richard Thomspon: Front Parlor Ballads
linn records
Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto-Getz/Gilberto
Saint Saens Organ Symphony, it is on ATMA label SACD22331
Orchestre Metropolitan du Grand Montreal/Philippe Belanger
Pink Floyd "Money" SACD and one of these days
Elton John "Live" with the London Philharmonic Orchestra "Philadelphia Freedom" 5.1
Charlie Haden's Private Collections 1&2 on the Naim label
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played by Ton Koopman.
J.S Bach::Ogelwerke (Organ works)
Steve Davis Project - Quality of Silence
Arron Copeland's Appalachian Spring Suite
Loggins and Messina's Pathway to Glory
BILL FRISELL's ''I Heard it Through the Grapevine'' from ''EAST/WEST''.

Gene Ammons "Bad bossa Nova".

"Balada (For Heideh)" from Strunz and Farah "Americas" CD
Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint Marc
David Gates "FIRST" album


Debussy's Clair De Lune
Emerson Lake and Palmer's live album
Bach cantata "Sleepers Awake".
Borodin's "Polovetsian Dance #2 & #3"...
G-spot Tornado
Numbers" on the Minimum-Maximum SACD by Kraftwerk
Saint-Saens #3
Joe Walsh - But Seriously Folks
Kraftwerk - Computer World
Aero Dynamik
Grisman & Garcia
Claire Martin


A few really good concert DVD's:
Boz Scaggs - Greatest Hits Live (really high quality production, awesome sound. The video is great too)
Cream - Royal Albert Hall (Cream, 'nuff said)
Peter Gabriel - Growing Up Live (Another awesome production)

Tunes:
Beatles - Love (I can't get enough of this, now I find myself forcing it on my guests )
Norah Jones - Not Too Late
Morelbaum/Sakamoto - Casa
Alice In Chains - Jar Of Flies (You won't laugh after you hear it!)
Little Feat - Waiting For Columbus (Spanish Moon, Dixie Chicken-just too much fun)
Chicago Symphony - Russian Easter Overture (by Rimsky-Korsakov)
Dave Matthews Band - Anything they've recorded
Led Zep - Dazed and Confused (I can actually make the door shake with this one!)
Chicago - Very Best Of
Bare Naked Ladies - Rock Spectacle
Chris Rea - The Road To Hell

Other great demo references:

Black Eyed Peas "Pump It"
Kraftwork "Numbers" (on the sensational Minimum Maximum SACD)
The entire Dark Side of the Moon SACD
Janice Joplin's "Summertime"
Love DVD-A
"Moby Dick" on the incredible 2003 Led Zeppelin DVD (Bonham's masterpiece)
"Roundabout" on Yes's Fragile SACD
"Chunga's Basement" on Zappa's Quadaudiophiliac DVD-A (my favorite)
"So What" on Kind of Blue SACD in stereo
"Weapon's of Mass Distortion" on Crystal Method's Legion of Boom DVD-A

Steely Dan: Babylon Sisters
Thelonious Monk: Monks Music (45RPM) (Abide With Me just grabs you)
Frank Sinatra: Blues in the Night (That one is killer!)
Gerry Mulligan and Antonio Carlos Jobim: The Girl from Impanema
Warren Zevon: Don't Let Us Get Sick
Charles Mingus: Boogie Stop Shuffle
James Carter: Nuages (From Chasing the Gypsy)
Donald Fagen:Maxine

Dave Matthews Live at Radio City with Tim Reynolds Dolby Digital True HD on Blu-ray
Steely Dan Aja
Blue Coast Collection, The E.S.E. Sessions, Various Artists.
Glen Gould's Analogoue remastering of his 1982 Goldberg Variations
Murray Peraihah's (okay so I can't spell that name for some reason) Goldberg Variations from 2002
Lang Lang's Rachmaninoff Paganini Rhapsody SACD
Michael Hedges solo guitar compillation "Beyond Boundaries". "Rickovers Dream"
Jeff Beck's Rendition of "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"
Lyle Lovett's Pontiac Album.
the Avalanches "Since I left You."
Part I of Zappa's "Joe's Garage." Love playin' " Catholic girls"

Pink Floyd's "Pulse" DVD
Mannheim Steamroller's "Christmas" album
Cincinnati "1812 Overture" CD

Allison Kraus' Live
Mark Knopflers Sailing to Philadelphia
shine by Joni Mitchell
John McLaughlin Trio- Live at Royal Festival Hall.

Scarlotti - Keyboard Sonatas, Mikhail Pletnev

Vivaldi- any of the Vivaldi Edition issued on Opus 111 label.

1. Bryn Terfel sings favourites: Danny Boy, Au Fond du Temple Saint
2. Vienna Teng Dreaming Through the Noise: City hall, Nothing Without You
3. Chie Ayado LIFE; Yozora No Mukou
4. Pink Floyd Final Cut: paranoid eyes, the Fletcher Memorial Home
5. Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint Marc: Le Monde esta toi, Printemps de vie
6. Eric Bibb & Needed Time: Where the Green Grass Grows
7. Roberto Alagna Sacred Songs; Panis Angelicus, Ave Maria
8. Academy of Ancient Music Vivaldi 4 Seasons
9. Friend' n Fellow Covered; What a Wonderful World, Light my Fire
10. Eddie Higgins You Don't Know What Love is; Danny Boy
11. Rolando Vilazon Italian Opera Arias
12. Blue Coast Collection The ESE Sessions; Looking for a home, The Dog Song
13. The Absolute Sound 2005; Tiny Harvest-I lost my faith; Dave's True Story-Everlasting No; Sara K-stars;
14. Gadar Thor Cortes; Skyid.

"Whenever You're Ready", James Taylor from October Road
"I Love Being Here With You", Diana Krall from Live In Paris
"Your Next Bold Move", Ani DiFranco from Reckoning
"No Wonder", Kate McGarry from The Target
"Bird on a Wire", Jennifer Warnes Famous Blue Raincoat
Mozart's Symphony No. 29 in A, Academy of Ancient Music, Hogwood

Phantom of the Opera Overture and "The Phantom Of The Opera" song
Neil Young's Living With War
X-Ray Vision's Video Control (Has anyone else ever heard this?)

Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington "The Great Summit". Two favorite tracks are #3 Cottontail and #7 Black & Tan Fantasy.

Jack Johnson "On And On".

The Hot Club of San Francisco "Postcards From Gypsyland".

Natalie Merchant "Tigerlily".

Willie Nelson "Spirit".
1. Lou Reed: Transformer.
2. Stevie Ray Vaughan: In Step.

Bach - The Organs at First Congregational Church, Los Angeles
KT Tunstall: Drastic Fantastic,
The Waifs: Sundirt Wafer,
Sara Bareilles: Little Voice,
Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
Feist "The Reminder",
Oscar Peterson "A 75th Birthday Celebration",
Hans Zimmer "Thin Red Line",
George Michael "Faith",
Miles Davis Quintet "Cookin' ", "Relaxin' " and "Workin' "
6th album by Daniel Lanois "Here is what is"
Roger Water's Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking here
Doug MacLeod's Come To Find on XRCD

 

[rodH]

here was a good link as well for SACD reviews http://www.audaud.com/

 

[EasyRiderNYC]

Does anyone have any other 180 g LP's to recommend ?

Cat Power - Jukebox

Dusty In Memphis

Bob Dylan - Modern Times

The Flying Burrito Brothers - The Gilded Palace Of Sin

Donald Fagen - The Nightfly

 

[PHC1]

Serge,
I discovered Doug MacLeod's Come To Find on XRCD recently. Great stuff! And the XRCD format is just amazing. I plan on buying a lot more of them, even artists I've never even heard of because the format is so good.

Good stuff!

 

[bigpoppapump]

Neil Young, Blu Ray, Our Musical Future?

This story was in Saturday's WSJ. Does it portend the future source of music?
Will McIntosh eventually develop Blu Ray?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Forever Young
Neil Young's Long-Promised Archive
Is Actually in the Works
And Coming Out on Blu-ray
By ETHAN SMITH
May 16, 2008; Page W7

Since the 1980s, Neil Young has been telling fans he is close to releasing an exhaustive, interactive archive of music, photographs, video footage and other material from his storied career.

The project has achieved legendary status in the music world, not for the music it contains but because it has never surfaced, despite Mr. Young's periodic promises. The Canadian rocker has attributed the serial delays to technical shortcomings and sound-quality problems in media ranging from CD-ROMs to DVDs.


Getty Images
Neil Young circa 1970.
Last week, he announced his most concrete plans yet for the long-awaited project, using a medium few people can play and fewer still associate with music: Blu-ray. Sony's next-generation, high-resolution DVD recently won a format war against Toshiba's HD-DVD.

Mr. Young's first, five-disc installment is due this fall, probably in October, and is to cover his career from 1963 to 1972.

Among the memorabilia and artifacts to be digitally reproduced are letters from Mr. Young to his parents while on tours with his first band, the Squires, and business records. Some gigs in bars and high-school gyms around Canada paid the Squires as little as 10 Canadian dollars apiece.

"It's a life," says Elliot Roberts, Mr. Young's manager. "It's a biography. You see what he's writing about and the development of his writing."

Larry Johnson, the project's producer, says the first installment is to include about 128 songs, 18 of them never released before. There are to be 200 photographs, 160 lyrics manuscripts and more. Among the 90 articles and reviews are some less-than-favorable ones. "There were a lot of choices to be made," Mr. Roberts says. "Neil's choice was to leave the warts on."

Mr. Young has long been one of the audiophiles, including Bob Dylan, who complain about the sound quality of CDs, saying it is inferior to that of vinyl records and the reel-to-reel tape still used in some recording studios. Mr. Young's "Archives" is the first major use of Blu-ray as an audio medium. (Other performers, including Céline Dion and Shakira, have released concert videos on BD, or Blu-ray Disc.)

Even DVDs, which theoretically offer higher-quality sound than CDs, have drawbacks, Mr. Young said last week in San Francisco during a public unveiling of "Archives Volume 1." The event was hosted by Sun Microsystems, whose Java programming platform is used in the Blu-ray format.

"It wasn't really quite good enough," Mr. Young said of DVD sound quality. "You couldn't go through the archival materials and listen to the high-res music at the same time, which is what I thought that most of my users would want to do." Blu-ray's audio "sampling rate," a key factor in digital-sound quality, is more than four times higher than that of a standard CD.


Mr. Johnson, who has worked with Mr. Young since the two met at Woodstock, says the rocker talks of "Archives" as a near compulsion. Thanks to his love-hate relationship with technology, Mr. Young has obsessed over the project for years but had been unwilling or unable to complete it. "When we get it out," Mr. Johnson says, "he won't have to think about it anymore."

In Blu-ray, Mr. Young found a medium that resolved his two main problems, thanks to higher-quality audio and an animated, on-screen interface he says is "sort of like a videogame." The format addresses other issues, too. For instance, a purportedly exhaustive undertaking like "Archives" is bound to leave out material that surfaces later, or for which there isn't room. Thanks to a feature called BD-Live, Mr. Young and his collaborators can add material later, via Internet download, which can be stored on a hard drive in the Blu-ray player itself, where it will appear to a user as though it were part of the disc.

Still, not many fans own Blu-ray players. According to Sony, there are around six million Blu-ray players in North America, more than half of them in the company's PlayStation 3 videogame systems. (That's equal to 0.8% of the 750 million CD players, including those built into PCs, in North American homes and vehicles, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.) At the Sun Microsystems event, Mr. Young reminded the audience of the PlayStation tie-in. "Those PS3s are available everywhere," Mr. Young said. "Music lovers should take note."

Cheerleading aside, Mr. Young is in discussions with his label, Reprise Records, to release two later versions of the set, one on DVD and another on CD. Mr. Roberts, his manager, says users will inevitably make their own lower-resolution copies for use in cars or iPods. "It'll be copied down to [CD] anyhow, and it'll be even worse quality" than commercially released CDs.

Peter Standish, senior vice president for marketing at Reprise and its sister label, Warner Bros., says the company is working out how best to balance Mr. Young's concern with sound quality against the reality that few consumers can listen to Blu-ray discs. "We want to do right by Neil and by his fans," Mr. Standish says. "We're still formulating a decision" about whether and when to release the set on DVD and CD. As for plans to issue Blu-ray music releases for other artists, the executive adds, "It hasn't come up yet, but why not?"


The track record for physical music formats that purport to improve on CDs has been mixed at best, even as digital downloading has taken off. An alphabet soup of would-be successors have come and mostly gone without making a commercial dent. It's unclear whether a Blu-ray music disc can gain traction where SACD, HDCD, CDVU-Plus, DualDisc and DVD-A have not.

Among the material Mr. Young's fans might find in the first batch of "Archives" updates are songs by the Mynah Birds, a mid-'60s outfit that featured Mr. Young and Rick James, the late funk pioneer in his pre-"Super Freak" days. Although Mr. Young has Mynah Birds recordings stored at his ranch in Northern California, he left them out of "Archives." "He felt it wasn't really part of his body of work," Mr. Johnson says. "It may be something we add later."

"Archives" isn't the only material Mr. Young has recently dusted off. Last year, he released the long-awaited "Live at Massey Hall 1971," featuring early concert versions of songs such as "Old Man" and "Cowgirl in the Sand."

Mr. Young's collaborators say they are at work on volumes two through five of "Archives." Among the gems set for inclusion in the second volume is footage of Mr. Young jamming in a Northern California Chinese restaurant-cum-nightclub with an early incarnation of the band Devo.

The footage includes some of the "warts" the rocker has opted to leave in. Devo's punked-out fans, apparently unimpressed by Mr. Young's legendary status, mocked him with a play on his name, according to Mr. Johnson, who filmed the episode. He recalls with a laugh that they welcomed Mr. Young to the stage chanting, "Real Dung!"

Write to Ethan Smith at ethan.smith@wsj.com

 

[rodH]

A CD (redbook) that I enjoy listening to is Fiona Apple, Tidal. She is known to be a bit of an "uptight" female singer from the 90s, in reality, she only has one song that is such (her popular one), the rest of the CD has a sort of Jazzy feel to it. It seems to be recorded pretty well, there are multiple times where you here her moist lips come together and other such details. It reminds me of an SACD in how it sounds and is recorded.