Best Record You Have Ever heard


Thought I would start this thread for all you vinyl lovers out there.

The rules are simple:
1. Only post one album, the absolute best you have heard.
2. It must be something you have heard on VINYL.
3. Both the recording AND musical content must be impeccable
and I do mean BOTH!
4. Try to be as specific as possible i.e/ version, year, re-issue, original, 45RM,direct to disc, half speed mastered etc...

Here is mine.

Artist: John Frusciante
Album: Curtains
Release: Record COllection
Date: 2005
Recording: It was done in his living room, fully acoustic album. Mastered by Bernie Grundman Hollywood CA.
dfelkai
Its hard to pick a single best recording from the many (but still not enough!) out there ... so I will just pick the most recent one I have heard. It is Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade played by Chicago Symphony and conducted by Fritz Reiner. Was recorded in 1956 and issued as an LP under the Living Stereo brand. I have the DSD SACD version. It is amazing to hear the quality of this recording made more than 50 years ago ... recorded in three channel (left, center and right) and then mixed down to two channels for stereo. Makes one wonder why recording engineers spent so many years lost in the wilderness ...
Great thread!

The one that puts the instrument in the room with me is:

Mercury Stereo SR#-9016
Bach/Starker, Suites for Unaccompanied Cello Complete
Reissue, 3 disks at 33 1/3 RPM
originally recorded in 1966

I guess it is the scale and single instrument that make it sound so convincing. The performance and recording are superb. The music is sublime.
The Ray Brown Trio "Soular Energy" release from Pure Audiophile puts 99% of audiophile records to shame. Recorded sound doesn't get any better than that. If all recorded music sounded like that, live performances would go the way of the dinosaurs. Simply unbelievable.