What HI-Fi 50 Albums for Audiophiles

What Hi-Fi have published a list of 50 albums they suggest might be found in an audiophile’s collection. How many do you have (counting Classical by composition rather than recording) ?

I’m a bare pass at 25/50. Hopefully I get to keep my badge.

Which albums would you have left out, and what would you have included instead ?

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I’ve only got 10 and I haven’t played all 0f them. I have material from some of the artists though.
Good to see Frank Sinatra in there. Those early 60’s albums are a recording masterclass.

I only score 18, and considering (according to Roon) that I have 4,915 albums in my collection, that’s a pretty poor hit-rate ! :astonished:

Depends on the country you live I think.
I worked for 22 years in the Netherlands in hifi stores but these CD’s…
Here almost everybody with interest in hifi has “Jazz at the Pawnshop”.
From this list I have ONE, ha ha.

Damn, I thought I’d be a contender for the fewest (with six), but @Roony’s already beaten me. Have to agree that the list is way too rock/hip-hop oriented. I count two jazz albums (up to four if you include Sinatra and Nina Simone, which is questionable). And two classical albums? Pfui.

Looks like a list put together by a seventeen year old to show how cool and alternative they are. Hopeless nonsense.

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I think its a solid list.

I’m afraid I’m not in the club. Zero for me…

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6 for me, have to try listen to some of the ones I haven’t heard. My sig-picture should have been in there instead of Wish you where there, or why not The Wall.

I’ve got 18. Probably 4-5 more I should have, the rest I haven’t heard of at all.

Well you must try The Frank Sinatra, a master piece of quality.

For my money, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers and Sinatra’s Swingin’ Session (best available versions, of course) are both the equal sonically and superior musically to In the Wee Small Hours (which admittedly isn’t half bad). I suspect that the listed album is the only Sinatra album the list compiler has heard.

(My rule of thumb is that any Sinatra album with some form of “Swing” in the name is a good one. Wow-ee wow wow!)

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I scored ~40 out of 50. This is a great great list of records (essentials perhaps)…but I wouldn’t list more than 10 or 20 of them as “audiophile” or “reference” recordings. This is a list for music appreciators/critics, not audiophiles. Great list though! If you have none of these records in your collection, then I’d argue you need to widen out a bit. You’re officially missing out on some amazing music while you’ve had Aja on repeat the last thirty years.

As I type I’m listening to Mogwai’s The Hawk Is Howling. Not really audiophile material, but damn fine album. Masterpiece perhaps.

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You’ve expanded nicely on my point. Those guys knew how to record.

From the latest Computer Audiophile blog entry below. The what hifi list did come across, to me, as a list to impress rather than a list to listen to. Anyway, recommending music is a pointless exercise. Where was the thrash metal or dubstep or many of the other genres that cannot possibly be included in such a small sample. Expand the list to five hundred or so and it might be useful. Saying if you do or don’t have these albums means anything about you or your musical tastes is meaningless.

Having said all of that I like lists of music I haven’t heard of and will go listen to the many on this list I don’t know.

As for Mogwai, Young Team is obviously the place to be :slight_smile:

“However, for much of the conversation we all talked about music. And here’s the disconnect, nobody talked about Diana Krall, Rebecca Pidgeon, or the latest quad DSD or 24/384 recording of a guy beating tree trunks with Japanese urushi drumsticks. If you like that stuff, I’m very happy for you because you’ll be in heaven at a HiFi show. We all talked about music made by the likes of David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Blind faith, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, and Prince. I have to ask, why is it that none of these artists graced a single playlist in any of the rooms in which I visited?”

If I’m trying to sell 6 figure equipment I know what I’m playing and maybe more specifically not playing. :innocent:

I’m not a collector of high quality recordings, I just buy the music I like. I have some super nice recordings but my taste doesn’t seem to match the one from the list above. I’m fine with that :slight_smile:

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Obviously, those who have most of the listed 50 will find it a satisfactory listing and those with few will find it strange and, probably, irrelevant. I have, I am guessing, about 12 although all 2-3 are not ever listening to. They were somehow just acquired.

The only classical item is a quite nice but unremarkable recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti is accompanied by a comment that suggests that the writer has little interest in nor knowledge of classical music. I return the favor in that I have little interest in nor knowledge of most of the rest of the listings.

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17, pretty meaningless, but all lists are -but can be fun as well.

I see no point in criticising someone else’s list, or gaining any satisfaction by mirroring it.

The what are your favourite albums thread is really the place to be.

.sjb

I’ve got 12. Don’t listen to much hip hop so that ruled out quite a few. I thought the list was a little pretentious.