Ok Bob,
Good news, bad news!!
You know I really liked the Wood HDCD, I relistened to it again and its what I would call a really good CD and a great demo treasure for sure.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out this is a HD CD, which is a 20 bit vs 16 bit cd. Never realized this when I purchased it, on my new Oppo BD 83 it pops up as a HDCD and I did a google search and read about HDCD's...now to look for more HDCDs!!
The bad news for me is the Joss Stone CD, Soul Sessions.
I can see that this artist is special and has lots of talent for sure....but
the overall quality of this recording to me was not that stellar.
I was shocked that the quality of the recording was not better, after all these really great recordings in this thread this one, again "to me" with my electronics, Salk SongTowers and room, it just was very plain, and a dull recording.
The songs were great as far and I thought something was wrong with my system and I cycled thru the DSP modes, turned Audessy on and off. None of these things seem to help the overall quality of the recording. I listen to CD's via my Onkyo 805 receivers "Pure Audio" mode....what comes in goes to the amp and out. I also take the cd out from the Oppp BD83 to the amp....using the new DACs in the OPPO.
The content and Joss Sones performance was stellar, its just that the recording felt compressed to me and lacked in dynamic range. Maybe this was done on purpose to tone down the background instrumnets and vocals to handle the awesome dynnamic range of Joss Stones voice.
Is it me, am I loosing my 'ear'...
Help
Alex