Various Artists – Unamas Master Selection (2021)
DSD256 (.dsf) 11,2 MHz/1 Bit | ~ 9.38 Gb | Time: 00:58:54
or 24-bit/192 kHz | Flac(Image + Cue) > 1.32 Gb
or 24-bit/44.1 kHz | Flac(Image + Cue) > 547 Mb
Official Digital Download | Genre: Classical | Label: Unamas
The album is a collection of gems that consist only of award-winning works of Professional Music Recording Award of Japan ‒ the most prestigious professional musical recording award in Japan ‒ and is a portfolio released by UNAMAS, the music label which has been releasing high quality works since 2007 the early days of Hi-Res surround sound.
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Various Artists – The Pink Panther and Friends (2016)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 50:26 minutes | 1,99 GB | Genre: Jazz
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 50:26 minutes | 928 MB
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © Fonè Records/Audiophile Productions
Conceived, recorded and produced by Giulio Cesare Ricci; Recorded in stereo DSD on the Pyramix Recorder using dCS A/D and D/A converters
6 New renditions of the historic theme signed by Henry Mancini, performed for Fonè by: Fausto Mesolella, Enzo Pietropaoli, Eleonora Bianchini, Riccardo Zegna and Giampaolo Casati, Peo Alfonsi and Salvatore Malore, Scott Halmiton’s trio with Paolo Birro and Alfred Kramer.
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Various Artists – The Hot Spot: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1990/2009/2011)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 40:50 minutes | 1,61 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 40:50 minutes | 788 MB
Genre: Soundtrack | Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: AcousticSounds | Front Cover | © Analogue Productions
An amalgamation of swampy blues, jazz and rock – all mixed and recorded in a sparse, bloomy and eerie sort of way. This recording is just so damn fine, so airy and warm. And the musician’s aboard on this Dennis Hopper film are a who’s who, including Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, Roy Rodgers, Earl Palmer and Tim Drummond. This has long been a highly sought after and collectible record among audiophiles. A true demonstration disc.
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Various Artists – Opus3: DSD Showcase 1 (2013)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,8 MHz | Time – 40:24 minutes | 1,68 GB
Official Digital Download – Source: DSDFile.com | Front cover
Showcase is a test/reference sampler for people interested in music and serious High Fidelity and who wants to test or enjoy good HiFi equipment with a carefully made selection of acoustic music, World, Folk, Blues, Jazz and Classical music in a harmonic mixture – from the latest Opus 3 releases.
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Various Artists – Proprius Records Audiophile Best (2016)
DSF Stereo DSD128, 1 bit/5,6 MHz | Time – 01:16:51 minutes | 6,06 GB | Genre: Classical, Choral, Jazz
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:16:51 minutes | 1,38 GB
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © 2xHD / Proprius Musik AB
In an advertisement for Proprius some years ago, Proprius founder Jacob Boëthius wrote: “A small record company can’t afford to put out bad discs. And you, the music lover, must be confident that what you buy is good”. He was aware that, in the final analysis, quality is what counts with regard to clients, record buyers, artists and sound engineers. This statement is mirrored totally in the 2xHD philosophy.
Proprius Records has always produced some of the most lifelike and incredibly realistic-sounding recordings available; from the mid-seventies on, it became pretty obvious to audiophiles that just about everything released by the label was a treasured commodity. With every recent advance in technology over the last couple of decades, these most highly regarded and sought-after recordings have been rereleased with regularity; most everyone out there has probably gladly bought them several times over in several different formats.
Now remastered in the optimum resolution from the original analog tapes – using the 2xHD proprietary system – the two audiophile labels, Proprius and 2xHD share an incomparable desire to reproduce and present the highest quality and most emotional listening experience.
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V.S.O.P. The Quintet – Tempest In The Colosseum (1977) [Japanese SACD Reissue 2007]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 69:21 minutes | Scans NOT included | 2,78 GB
or FLAC 2.0 (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Scans NOT included | 1,52 GB
Tempest in the Colosseum was recorded on July 23, 1977 in the Den-En Colosseum in Tokyo, Japan. Musicians for this performance were Herbie Hancock on keyboards, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Tony Williams on drums, Ron Carter on double bass, and Wayne Shorter on tenor and soprano saxophones. Originally the album was released in late 1977 only in Japan by Columbia.
Read moreV.S.O.P. The Quintet – Live Under The Sky (1979) [Japanese SACD Reissue 2007] SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC
V.S.O.P. The Quintet – Live Under The Sky (1979) [Japanese SACD Reissue 2007]
PS3 Rip | 2x SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 85:53 minutes | Scans included | 3,88 GB
or FLAC 2.0 (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/48 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,0 GB
V.S.O.P.: Live Under the Sky is a 1979 live album by the V.S.O.P. Quintet, a record of a performance at the 1979 Live Under the Sky Festival as it was performed live in Japan over two days. This, the fourth VSOP release, once again featured Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Ron Carter, and Freddie Hubbard.
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V.S.O.P. The Quintet – Five Stars (1979) [Japanese SACD Reissue 2007]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 32:38 minutes | Scans NOT included | 1,31 GB
or FLAC (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/48 kHz | Front, Scans NOT included | 369 MB
Recorded in Tokyo, Five Stars is a studio album featuring the Miles Davis alumnus quintet V.S.O.P. playing a handful of original compositions. Featured here are former Davis bandmates pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Tony Williams, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, joined by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. Released around the same time as the concert album Live Under the Sky, Five Stars showcases the group’s frenetic, modal post-bop, played in the spirit of Davis’ classic ’60s quintet.
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Valery Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra (Mariinsky) – Shostakovich Symphony 5 & 9 (2004)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 73:36 minutes | Artwork (PDF) | 4,24 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Artwork (PDF) | 1,36 GB
Features 2.0 Stereo and 5.1 multichannel surround sound | Decca/Philips # 470 651-2
The argument could be made that Valery Gergiev and his Kirov orchestra’s 2002 recording of Shostakovich’s Fifth and Ninth symphonies on Philips is the ne plus ultra of Shostakovich recordings. The sound of the recording is staggering: crisp, rich, and vivid. The playing of the orchestra is stunning: plush, powerful, and precise. The conducting is superb: strong, firm, and flexible.
The argument could also be made that this is far more a Gergiev/Kirov recording than a Shostakovich recording. Gergiev interprets like mad: pushing and pulling tempos, stopping, starting, then suddenly changing the tempo altogether. His louds are overwhelming, his quiets are almost inaudible, and the distance between the two is incommensurable. There are times in this recording when it sounds as if the music is going to explode from the incredible and inexorable intensity of Gergiev’s interpretations. While nothing like the recordings of Yevgeny Mravinsky with the Leningrad Philharmonic, the conductor and orchestra that gave the work its premiere, Gergiev with the Kirov’s recording is nothing if it’s not the ne plus ultra.
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Valery Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra (Mariinsky) – Shostakovich Symphony 4 (2004)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 64:14 minutes | Artwork (PDF) | 3,96 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Artwork (PDF) | 1,17 GB
Features 2.0 Stereo and 5.1 multichannel surround sound | Decca/Philips # 475 6190
Valery Gergiev holds the opening movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 together by sheer willpower. Since the gargantuan movement sprawls like a drunken giant, lurching from pseudo-exposition through inchoate development and faux-recapitulation and amorphous coda, nothing else but willpower could possibly do it. And, amazingly enough, it works. With the tremendously muscular playing of the Kirov Orchestra, Gergiev makes chaos cohere and even convince, if not quite compel. After the opening movement, Shostakovich’s Fourth does hold together and hold together brilliantly. The central movement is as tight and hard as a blackjack and the closing movement, although even larger and longer than the opening, has a dramatic logic as rigorous and severe as a machine gun. But Gergiev’s will power never relaxes and his closing movement is not only coherent and convincing, it is immensely compelling. Indeed, taken altogether, Gergiev and the Kirov’s Fourth is surely the most compelling recording of the work to come out of Russia since Kiril Kondrashin’s premiere recording from the ’60s. No higher praise is possible. Philips’ sound has the impact and immediacy of a sledgehammer.
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Valery Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra (Mariinsky) & Rotterdam Philarmonic Orchestra – Dmitry Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 “Leningrad” (2004)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 78:35 minutes | Artwork (PDF) | 3,84 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Artwork (PDF) | 1,35 GB
Features 2.0 Stereo and 5.1 multichannel surround sound | Decca/Philips # 470 623-2
By its very nature, patriotism is vulgar: loud and proud, bombastic and sentimental, and wholeheartedly simple-minded. Or is that less a description of patriotism than a précis of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7? Written during the siege of Leningrad at the start of the Great Patriotic War, the Seventh is incredibly vulgar — critics at its American premiere savaged it for its banality — and incredibly effective. Its trite themes, its hackneyed harmonies, its straight-four rhythms, its primary color scoring, its “play it to the last row of the balcony” climaxes: all of these things are vulgar, but all of them are — in the right performance — overwhelmingly effective and altogether inspiring. In this performance by Valery Gergiev conducting the Kirov Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seventh is incredibly vulgar and unbelievably loud, proud, bombastic, and sentimental. But it is also incredibly effective: the opening Allegretto is monstrously evil and absolutely devastating, the following Moderato is quiet but deadly, the following Adagio is heartbreakingly mournful, the closing Allegro non troppo is enormously celebratory, and the entire work is a colossal monument to patriotism. The conjoined Kirov and Rotterdam orchestras play with all the bloodthirsty enthusiasm of the Red Army taking Berlin in 1945, and Philips’ sound gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until the walls of the Reichstag come crashing down. Vulgar or not, this is as great a recording of Shostakovich’s Seventh as there has ever been.
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Various Artists – Top Gun (OST 1986) [1999 Special Edition]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 56:42 minutes | Scans included | 2,3 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 1,14 GB
A mega Soundtrack to a Mega-Movie! Fueled by the power of numerous hit singles, the 1986 Top Gun soundtrack quickly became a pop music phenomenon in its own right, and remains one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time. This expanded edition-with sound that’ll make you feel like you’re “mach 2 with your hair on fire” – contains additional liner notes, photos and 5 bonus cuts.
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Various Artists – Stockfisch Records – Closer To The Music Vol.5 (2015)
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 01:19:25 minutes | 1,64 GB
Genre: Country Blues, Jazz, Folk | Label: Stockfisch Records
Just as it’s four predecessors did, the compilation „closer to the music Vol.5 “ provides an aural overview of the latest and the forthcoming Stockfisch productions – this time for 2015. More than 79 minutes of unusual recordings and fascinating music.
Starting off with introductions to the soon-to-be-released albums:
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Various Artists – Stockfisch Records – Closer To The Music Vol.4 (2011)
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 01:13:12 minutes | 2,94 GB
Genre: Country Blues, Jazz, Folk | Label: Stockfisch Records
closer to the music Vol.4 offers more than 73 minutes of musical highlights to get in first touch with Stockfisch artists as well as sound and/or just for enjoyable listening:
„I fell in awe in front of the swift charms of this compilation, a collection of highly enjoyable pearls from the Stockfisch catalogue. The artistic excellence and the stupefying tonal quality of the ensemble will make it a gourmet´s choice for any soundsystem …“ There were so many positive and even enthusiastic feedbacks on our „closer to the music“ compilations volume 1 to 3, that we decided to release Vol.4 in 2011.
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