Music and Recording Features

Sidebar: The Music Comes First

With this music feature, we're trying some new things. First, we've created a playlist on Qobuz that lists most of the individual tracks mentioned in this review; it can be accessed here. The feature refers to many whole albums, however; rather than load up the playlist with individual tracks, making it unwieldy, we've instead included URLs to the albums, on Qobuz or Tidal. If you're a Roon user, you can import the list into Roon by favoriting it in Qobuz. To access a complete album, see the link.

If you're expecting hi-fi sound, a word of warning: Like most Stereophile reviewers—perhaps all—Jason is a music lover foremost, and his knowledge of lieder spans the whole recorded era, including the early part. Consequently, his overview is not limited to modern, hi-rez albums and tracks in pristine sound; to limit it that way would be to leave out too much. On the contrary: Many of these recordings are pre-stereo, and a few are quite old, in "vintage" sound.

This is consistent with my view of what it means to be an audiophile. Music comes first. Our systems cannot make every recording sound "live"; few recordings have that potential, and to limit ourselves to modern pristine recordings that do would deprive us of most recorded music. I believe our systems serve us best when they make recordings sound like themselves and allow us to use their technology to extract all the nuance and spirit from even the most imperfect recordings. Does a top-notch system better reveal a recording's flaws? Perhaps, but it better reveals its spirit, too. Other views exist, and I respect them. But to me, our systems exist to extract spirit, life, and meaning from great music, not to perform a Memorex magic trick.—Jim Austin