Your Latest CD/DVD/Download Purchase

[Pianorak]

Muzio Clementi: Piano Sonatas Opp 34/ 36/ 37/ 46 - Howard Shelley.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Eh?

The Gieseking Icon box is 8 discs for £25.99, that's a bit more than £1 a disc, unless you can offer a link to an £8 offer.

Sorry Bryn, I must have caught the very end of their January sale. I think the price then was £6.99 or £7.99 and I had to plough through pages of rock/pop trivia to find it. Certainly my three purchases together cost no more than £25.99.

[Don Petter]

Sorry Bryn, I must have caught the very end of their January sale. I think the price then was £6.99 or £7.99 and I had to plough through pages of rock/pop trivia to find it. Certainly my three purchases together cost no more than £25.99.

Currently £9.98+£1.26 from an Amazon vendor.

[Bryn]

Not a CD, but a CD sized Blu-ray just dropped through the letterbox. Mahler's 9th with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Claudio Abbado will soon be spinning here. A step up from the DVD of him conducting the GMJO, perhaps?

On the basis of the trailer on that disc, I have just ordered:



from hmv.com They seem to have the best price at the moment, £17.99 including UK p&p.

[Cellini]

Not a CD, but a CD sized Blu-ray just dropped through the letterbox. Mahler's 9th with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Claudio Abbado will soon be spinning here. A step up from the DVD of him conducting the GMJO, perhaps?

Just out of curiosity Bryn, how much does a Blu-ray player cost, and I take it that its audio visual? Can you play ordinary CD's and DVD on them as well? I suppose the blu-ray discs are dear though at £15 plus?

I'm a bit behind with all this latest technology, and I should look it up on the net I know, but I'm being lazy and wondererd what your expert opinion was on this subject!

[Bryn]

These days, Cellini, they start at around £80 and climb from there. I have tried three, two of which, a Sansui and an Onkyo, had very noisy cooling fans. Last November, after reading a number of very positive revirews, i got a Cambridge Audio multi-format Blu-ray player which also plaus CD, CD-R, DVD, DVD+R. DVD-R, DVD Audio, SACD, etc. It cost rather more than the others (more than the total for the two of them) but it is in a much higher performance category. As far as I am aware, all Blu-ray players also handle CD and DVD, but not SACD or DVD Audio (for both of which I required playback compatibility). I know one fellow contributor here has had problems trying to play a Blu-ray Audio disc on his Sony Blu-ray player. It's still a fairly young format, and firmware updates via the Internet are required avery so often. Blu-ray diascs can also take quite a while to load ans start.

It is worth mentioning that while the Naxos single Blu-ray Audio discs I have only contain about the same duration of music as a standard CD, each of those in the "The Virtual Haydn" set hold around 5 to 6 hours of high definition audio, with a choice of 2 channel stereo or surround for each option.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Nielsen and Bruch violin concertos (Znaider - EMI) and Mengelberg in Wagner, Humperdinck, Mahler and R Strauss on Naxos. Worth a punt at £1.99 ea!

Listened to Mozart pf concs 23 & 24 from the above-mentioned super-bargain Gieseking Icon box. Worthwhile performances pretty well wrecked by amazingly scrawny HMV recordings from '51 and '53

[Cellini]

I would be prepared to pay up to £300 for a good reliable player, but I see that they don't even play all B-ray discs with certainty and some play DVD and CD and even SCD.

There does not seem to be a huge library of discs available yet, with some using recordings made 20+ years ago, so the originals may not be that good.

I'm really interested in instrumentalists (especially string players and chamber musak) and some opera maybe.

[Bryn]

I'm afraid the model I chose is £100 above your limit, Cellini, but I would encourage you to consider it nonetheless:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/audio-visual/blu-ray-players/cambridge-audio-azur-650bd-blu-ray-player-684714/review

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?PID=492

One minor annoyance is that the USB input does not allow playback of FLAC, aac, or WAV files. It is basically for mp3 or wma files. Neither will it handle FLV files captured from the iPlayer. However, I know of no Blu-ray player which can.

[Cellini]

It sounds impressive and I will have it on my list if I go ahead. It's a pity about .wav files, as I sometimes have these from editing or whatever. Thanks for the details and I will do some more research.

[Dave2002]

Cellini and Bryn

You can pay even more for a Blu Ray player. The Oppo models - see http://www.oppo-bluray.co.uk/ - may be as good or better than the Cambridge Audio ones. I don't actually know, though I have an earlier model DVD player which doubles up as an SACD player, and it is pretty good. It all depends what you want to do with such a machine though. My Oppo DVD player will also play DVD audio discs, whereas the Sony Blu Ray machine I bought last year won't do that. Finding a player which will play all formats well is quite hard.

If you're interested in SACDs there are issues about the output formats. HDMI outputs will probably work into a modern AV amp, but it's rather likely that any SPDIF outputs will be suppressed when SACDs are played. This may mean that you have to connect your amp(s) up with lots of analogue interconnects - really lots if you want to have surround sound. Depends on the models a bit.

[Dave2002]

PS: Last CD purchase was of the Dvorak piano quintet played by the Vihan quartet, coupled with the Schumann. Previous one was perhaps the Camarilla Ensemble CD, though the John Marsh symphonies CD and the Cosi fan tutte set with Kiri Te Kanawa also dropped through the letter box recently. Last CD played was also Cosi fan tutte - the ROH Davis one with Caballe and Baker.

[Bryn]

Dave, the Cambridge Audio appears to be based on an Oppo model, but the reviews I have read suggest the PSU and general build of the Cambridge Audio version is better.

[Cellini]

Cellini and Bryn

You can pay even more for a Blu Ray player. The Oppo models - see http://www.oppo-bluray.co.uk/ - may be as good or better than the Cambridge Audio ones. I don't actually know, though I have an earlier model DVD player which doubles up as an SACD player, and it is pretty good. It all depends what you want to do with such a machine though. My Oppo DVD player will also play DVD audio discs, whereas the Sony Blu Ray machine I bought last year won't do that. Finding a player which will play all formats well is quite hard.

If you're interested in SACDs there are issues about the output formats. HDMI outputs will probably work into a modern AV amp, but it's rather likely that any SPDIF outputs will be suppressed when SACDs are played. This may mean that you have to connect your amp(s) up with lots of analogue interconnects - really lots if you want to have surround sound. Depends on the models a bit.

Thanks Dave2002 for the information.

I would not be too interested in the SACD playback at present (though this could change) and also no interest in surround sound, or DVD Audio discs.

I'm sure surround sound is good, but at the moment I'm really just keen on excellent stereo and high quality visuals where I would use DVD and Blu-ray discs, mainly for solo and chamber music, and occasionally the odd film ... But I'm not sure how many specialist chamber music discs are out there either on DVD or Blu-ray (Or even Ted Ray ... )

[Don Petter]

Charity shop gleanings today:

Handel: Dixit Dominus, Nisi Dominus, Salve Regina/Preston (Archiv 423 594-2)
Delius: Brigg Fair, Song of Summer, In a Summer Garden, etc/Hughes (ASV CD CDA 627)
Frank Martin: Mass, Passacaille, c/w
Pizzetti: Requiem, De Profundis/O'Donnell (Hyperion CDA 67017)
Rachmaninov: Vespers, Op.37/Svechnikov (Melodia/Chant du Monde CLB 0278 522)

None listened to yet, but a satisfying haul for £5, which I am greatly looking forward to hearing.