Naim Sampler

The HDtracks Ultimate Download Experience. Each hand-selected track was carefully chosen to showcase the unique facets of your high-end system – from the blackest blacks to the most harmonious highs.

Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection.
When the "Disco Music" reigned in the early 80's, many of us, rockers, we were in mourning. But all was not lost!

Essential: A masterpiece of Fusion music collection.
Coming at the absolute crest of Windham Hill’s artistic and financial success, this is arguably the album to recommend if you are only to have one Windham Hill album.

Telarc's seventh SACD multi - genre sampler is a great tool for reaching out to the consumer and providing a selection of jazz, pop, crossover and world music in surround. Continuing in the Telarc and Heads Up tradition, this sampler is hybrid - playable on standard CD players as well as SACD players. This sampler features music from several of the more popular Telarc and Heads Up SACD releases of the past several years. The sampler kicks off with the big band sound, in a really big way, as Randy Brecker is joined by his late brother Michael on the "Some Skunk Funk." Other offerings include soul legend Ray Charles singing the classic "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," and hot new bassist Esperanza Spalding with Fourplay on "Prelude for Lovers," and much more.

This is Telarc's first Stereo / Multichannel SACD sampler. It offers a wide variety of Jazz and Classical selections recorded in Analog, PCM and DSD so it made for an interesting comparison of the three main types of recording.
From the liner notes on level differences on this Telarc Sampler SACD: "Our goal in compiling this sampler was to present the listener with a variety of differing approaches to creating a surround sound experience, using various musical examples.

I have never been much of a classical music fan (on recorded music anyway) but hearing this Fone recording it actually makes sense for the 1st time! Listening to the SACD layer the music has striking 3-dimentional naturality but more importantly, PASSION! I have never felt that classical music had passion in a CD recording, & I always felt vinyl had too low SNR for classical music. The difference between the SACD & CD layer is quite obvious, & not subtle like on some discs. Listening to the CD layer (which is very good for a CD) results in a massive loss of coherence & passion – just the reason I never enjoyed classical on CD.