50 of the best hi-fi albums for audiophiles

A Mercury Living Presence box set will give you 50 in a compact single box. 

Props to What Hi-Fi for compiling the list and linking it to a stream. I haven’t made it through yet, but while "Automatic for the People" is a very good lp, the sonics are not to audiophile standards on my 1st press lp.

Not an album, but a stream: this summer BBC Radio 3 has experimented with full red book standard 16/44 streams of live classical broadcasts (compressed in lossless FLAC). What was remarkable was that the average recorded level was much lower than I have heard elsewhere. So there was plenty of headroom for a very high dynamic range. It was pretty spectacular. The music was often great too.

"We didn't set ourselves the task of picking the absolute, definitive best 50 albums for audiophiles.

"We did, however, manage to compile the below list of 50 records (and a little further listening for each) we feel span genres, styles of production and sonic character rather well. If nothing else, they'll give your hi-fi a workout and, hopefully, broaden your musical horizons at least a little."

> From the introduction to the article