[vn412]

A friend of mine told me that if you use IWON.com and have points, you can buy CDs for really really REALLY low prices....like 8 bucks for brand new ones! I'm going to check this out right now

Just wanted to let you guys know!

 

[Xevion]

Last time I went to Circut City, many CDs costed around $3-$6. Of course you would have to like classical music to get any value out of em

.

 

[vn412]

hm sounds good.....are they actually GOOD recordings? I bought a classical music CD a few days ago from the warehouse and it sounded worse than my radio! of course, the CD only cost me 5 bucks........

 

[neil]

CDnow has a $9.99 CD Sale Page.. and man alive, they even have Jeff Buckley : Grace on sale for $9.99. I mean, holy smokes.. if you don't own this one already, treat yourself to one of the best rock artists of our time, and unfortunately, died at a very young age.

 

[Xevion]

Well, my copy of Beethoven's 9th costed me $5 or $6, and it sounds alright. It isn't amazing quality but definantly good enough. The performance is fair to decent, again, nothing amazing but still pertty good.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Quote:

Originally posted by vn412 hm sounds good.....are they actually GOOD recordings? I bought a classical music CD a few days ago from the warehouse and it sounded worse than my radio! of course, the CD only cost me 5 bucks........

People have been saying that the Naxos CD's sound pretty good, and they're cheap.

 

[DanG]

Naxos is a decent label that brings some really good unknown artists to the attention of people who wouldn't hear them otherwise. But the recordings are really hit-and-miss. For example, I have a recording of Saint-Saens' "Introduction and Rondo Cappriccioso in C-Minor" (I think it's C-minor

) but I can't listen to it through my headphones because if your system is resolving-enough, you can hear the breating of Dong-Suk Kang, the violinist, throughout the whole recording.

I've heard there are other problems with some of the recordings. But I still listen to my recordings of Liszt's Annees de Pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) performed by Jeno Jando. The performance is very good, as is the recording quality of the CD.

Just make sure you look into the quality of each recording before you buy!

 

[MacDEF]

I love Naxos -- their theory is that many of the "lesser" orchestras are just as good as the "big" ones, so they do all their recordings with lesser musicians and then sell their CDs for 1/2 of what the big labels do.

Naxos CDs are generally very good performances and *most* are very good recordings, as well. Although, as DanG mentioned, sometimes you'll get one that just doesn't sound very good. I've got around 10 or 12 Naxos CDs, and I've been lucky -- they're all very good. But I have heard a couple that weren't good at all.

 

[vn412]

yeah i actually went CD shopping today....dont go to media play! the prices are insanely high!

 

[stuartr]

For me, I find that with classical, it is much more important to find a performance you like, than a recording you like. As for hearing breathing etc....I really dig that. It draws me into the recording. I have an awesome recording put out by Deutsche Grammophon that is called something like Masterworks for Cello, played by Rostropovich. The quality is excellent, and the music uncommon. At one point in the recording, he is really sawing at the strings, and you can hear the reverbs and him grunting...it is very visceral. As for Naxos, I agree, usually a good label, but sometimes not. My favorite way (and this is somewhat hard to do) to buy classical cd's is to go to the concerts. Often the performers bring their cds, especially if they are not that well known. If you like the performance, you can just pick it up right there (usually a little more expensive though...15 dollars for the sake of no change etc.). Plus, you can usually talk to the performers afterwards (if it is a small, or college concert), and it is always cool to have met the people that are making the beautiful music that is coming through your phones!

 

[vn412]

i agree. I have a set called "The most beautiful Classical melodies" from Costco and it states on the front that it is recorded at a high quality. You can hear EVERYTHING....pages tuning, heavy breathing...stuff like that. You can tell EXACTLY where the people are sitting and how close they are to the mic. amazing stuff

 

[KR...]

Most of those cheap classical CDs sound like crap, that way I only buy from audiophile labels when it comes to classical.

 

[Xevion]

I too, like to hear some of the background sounds, like a person breathing, the pages flipping, it makes the music have more of a live feeling, and it also shows further that there is a real person playing that insturment.

 

[sacriste]

Try cheap-cds.com, they sell brand news from 9 to 12 bucks and are faster than CDNOW. I bought some audiophile records for 9: Portraits Of Cuba, Joe Jackson, Nightfly.

 

[DanG]

Audiophile may claim to have better sound quality, but if you look at their selection, sometimes it's not so great. I usually end up getting Sony titles just because you can find some amazing performers there. Yo-yo Ma and Isaac Stern are two that come to mind -- as playing together on Isaac Stern: A Life in Music. You just won't find that with the pretentious Chesky records who seem to be fools enough to think that the recording quality is more importnant than the performance. As has been stated before by many people, performance always comes first. Recording quality can be an impediment, but never anything that boosts an inferior performance over a decently recorded superior performance.

I have a Chesky "Gold" CD -- Fritz Reiner and the CSO performing Brahms' Concerto No. 4. Fritz Reiner is a conductor with quite a good reputation. But when I listened to the CD a little more critically, the performance isn't so good. Maybe Telarc and MFSL are better, but I don't think I'm going to spend $20 on a CD again.

That said, the Saint-Saens performance I'm speaking of is to me unlistenable because of the breathing. This guy is breathing right into the microphone, very evenly and steadily, throughout the entire performance! It just gets on my nerves.