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Chris Isaak - Baja Sessions CD. Sounds better than it should.

I'm always in search of well recorded CDs and someone here on Audiogon recommended Chris Isaak's Baja Sessions. I'm an Isaak fan so I found one on eBay for about $5.

It arrived today and I popped it into the Oppo and it sounds really good. "Loudness" levels sound on par with other well recorded and mastered CDs that I have. (Hi res streaming version also sounds fantastic.) I'm very sensitive to DR that is over compressed and can usually tell immediately if a piece is highly DR compressed. Out of curiosity I checked this CD on the DR Database and while it is not way over compressed it is in that 9-10 range that usually gives only marginal SQ.

All I can say is that it sounds great and DR isn't the only measure of SQ.
n80
cd318
2,636 posts
 
@n80,

No it's not the only measure of sq, not all music calls for a huge dynamic range. Besides recording, production and mastering all matter too.

However, don't you think it's an appalling state of affairs when vinyl releases regularly trounce their digital counterparts for dynamic range?

Just have a look to see how many of the highest average scores belong to vinyl releases.

Digital often gets a lot of criticism but it hardly seems fair to blame the medium when it's so regularly handicapped in this fashion. The recording industry is plainly not interested in exploiting the full capabilities of digital.

Only it's  commercial ones.

Looking at the dynamic range database I can't find anything of great interest amongst those few digital recordings up above +20 range. 

The highest CD recording seems to be a John Cage Concert for Piano album from 1993 (+24 avg).

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr/desc
tablejockey
3,916 posts
 
Chris Issak's  "Forever Blue" is another surprisingly good sounding album. The music alone IMO is solid , but it does sound convincing.
fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,629 posts
 
On Spotify not Qobuz.
Library it is.
rnrmf1971
81 posts
 
Baja Sessions is also hdcd, as I recall, and the Oppo may be decoding it depending which model you have.
Of course if you have the UDP-205, it’s the best player they ever made, imo, and exceeds the sound quality of their previous units, despite lacking hdcd decoding.

n80 OP
2,117 posts
 
My Oppo is the BDP-105D and I’m assuming it decodes HDCD because it flashed “HDCD” on its screen before the CD  started. 

@cd318, in terms of DR my ears are pretty happy at anything above 12. If you sort the DR database from highest DR you can find lots of CDs in the 16+ range. Some of the artists and titles with high DR are surprising. 
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