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Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recording
Unlike most Direct to Disc recordings, this album actually contains real music worth listening to — but only when the pressing lets the energy of the musicians through, in concert, of course, with reasonably high fidelity to the sound of their instruments.
Brass without bite is boring.
Drummers who drum too delicately will put you to sleep.
But the focus of this commentary is on dynamic vocals.
To Know You Is to Love You has the potential to come right at you in a shockingly powerful way. This lady gets LOUD.
It sounds like there is virtually no compression on Ms Houston’s vocals whatsoever. There has to be a limiter of some kind, but when she starts to really belt it out, you will not believe how powerfully she can sing. Might just give you goosebumps.
Don’t Misunderstand on side two has an equally dynamic vocal and is probably my favorite track on the album.
The loudest choruses of Got to Get You into My Life / I’ve Got the Music in Me are a tough test for any system as well.
This could easily be the most dynamic vocal album you have ever heard. It’s right up there at the top for us too.
A Big Speaker Record
Let’s face it, this is a Big Speaker record. It requires a pair of speakers that can play cleanly at something approaching live music levels. If you don’t own speakers that can do that, this record will never really sound the way it should.
It demands to be played loud. It simply cannot come to life the way the producers, engineers and artists involved intended if you set it at the volume most audiophiles are comfortable with.
This is also the kind of recording that caused me to pursue Big Systems driving Big Dynamic Speakers. You need a lot of piston area to bring the dynamics of this recording to life, and to get the size of all the instruments to match their real life counterparts.
For that you need big speakers in big cabinets, the kind I’ve been listening to for more than forty years. (My last small speaker was given the boot around 1974 or so.) To tell you the truth, the Big Sound is the only sound I enjoy. Anything less is just not for me.
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